Mary had not wanted Delilah and her father for Thanksgiving. "But we can't have Leila and the General without them," she said to Barry, after a conversation with Leila over the telephone, "and it wouldn't seem like Thanksgiving without the Dicks."
"Delilah," said Barry, comfortably, "is good fun. I'm glad she is coming."
"She may be good fun," said Mary, slowly, "but she isn't—our kind."
"Leila said that to me," Barry told her. "I don't quite see what you girls mean."
"Well, you wouldn't," Mary agreed; "men don't see. But I should think when you look at Leila you'd know the difference. Leila is like a little wild rose, and Delilah Jeliffe is a—tulip."
"I like tulips," murmured Barry, audaciously.
Mary laughed. What was the use? Barry was Barry. And Delilah Jeliffe would flit in and out of his life as other girls had flitted; but always there would be for him—Leila.
"If you were a woman," she said, "you'd know by her clothes, and the pink of her cheeks, and by the way she does her hair—she's just a little too much of—everything—Barry."
"There's just enough of Delilah Jeliffe," said Barry, "to keep a man guessing."
"Guessing what?" Mary demanded with a spark in her eyes.
"Oh, just guessing," easily.
"Whether she likes you?"
Barry nodded.
"But why should you want to know, Barry? You're not in love with her."
His blue eyes danced. "Love hasn't anything to do with it, little solemn sister; it's just in the—game."
Later they had a tilt over inviting Mary's lodger.
"It seems so inhospitable to let him spend the day up there alone."
"I don't see how he could possibly expect to dine with us," Barry said, hotly. "You don't know anything about him, Mary. And I agree with Porter—a man's bank reference isn't sufficient for social recognition. And anyhow he may not have the right kind of clothes."
"We are to have dinner at three o'clock," she said, "just as mother always had it on Thanksgiving Day. If you don't want me to ask Roger Poole, I won't. But I think you are an awful snob, Barry."
Her eyes were blazing.
"Now what have I done to deserve that?" her brother demanded.
"You haven't treated him civilly," Mary said. "In a sense he's a guest in our house, and you haven't been up to his rooms since he came—and he's a gentleman."
"How do you know?"
"Because I do."
"Yet the other day you hinted that Delilah Jeliffe wasn't a lady, not in your sense of the word—and that I couldn't see the difference because was a man. I'll let you have your opinion of Delilah Jeliffe if you'll let me have mine of Roger Poole."
So Mary compromised by having Roger down for the evening. "We shall be just a family party for dinner," she said. "But later, we are asking some others for candle-lighting time. We want everybody to come prepared to tell a story or recite, or to sing, or play—in the dark at first, and then with the candles."
His pride urged him to refuse—to spurn this offer of hospitality from the girl who had once forgotten that he was in the house!
But as he stood there on the threshold of the Tower Rooms, her smile seemed to draw him, her voice called him, and he was young—and desperately lonely.
So as he dressed carefully on Thanksgiving afternoon, he had a sense of exhilaration. For one night he would let himself go. He would be himself. No one should snub him. Snubs came from self-consciousness—he who was above them need not see them.
When at last he entered the drawing-room, it was unillumined except for the flickering flame of a fire of oak logs. The guests, assembling wraith-like among the shadows, were given, each, an unlighted candle.
Roger found a place in a big chair beside the piano, and sat there alone, interested and curious. And presently Pittiwitz, stealing toward the hearth, arched her back under his hand, and he reached down and lifted her to his knee, where she stretched herself, sphinx-like, her amber eyes shining in the dusk.
With the last guest seated, Barry stood before them, and gave the key to the situation.
"Everybody is to light a candle with some stunt," he explained. "You know the idea. All of you have some parlor tricks, and you're to show them off."
There were no immediate volunteers, so Barry pounced on Leila.
"You begin," he said, and drew her into the circle of the firelight.
She looked very childish and sweet as she stood there with her unlighted candle, and sang a lullaby. Mary Ballard played her accompaniment softly, sitting so near to Roger in his dim corner that the folds of her velvet gown swept his foot.
And when the song was finished, Leila touched a match to her candle and stood on tiptoe to set it on the corner of the mantel, where it glimmered bravely.
General Dick and Mr. Jeliffe came next. Solemnly they placed two cushions on the hearth-rug, solemnly they knelt thereon, facing each other. Then intently and conscientiously they played the old game of "Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold." The General's fat hands met Mr. Jeliffe's thin ones alternately and in unison. Not a mistake did they make, and, ending out of breath, the General found it hard to rise, and had to be picked by Porter, like a plump feather pillow.
And now the candles were three!
Then Barry and Delilah danced, a dance which they had practiced together. It had in it just a hint of wildness, and just a hint of sophistication, and Delilah in her dress of sapphire chiffon, with its flaring tunic of silver net, seemed in the nebulous light like some strange bird of the night.
And now the candles were five!
Following, Leila went to the piano, and Porter and Mary gave a minuet. They had learned it at dancing-school, and it had been years since they had danced it. But they did it very well; Porter's somewhat stiff bearing accorded with its stateliness, and Mary, having added to her green velvet gown a little Juliet cap of lace and a lace fan, showed the radiant, almost boyish beauty which had charmed Roger on the night of the wedding.
His pulses throbbed as he watched her. They were a well-matched pair, this young millionaire and the pretty maid. And as their orderly steps went through the dance, so would their orderly lives, if they married, continue to the end. But what could Porter Bigelow teach Mary Ballard of the things which touch the stars?
And now the candles were seven! And the spirit of the carnival was upon the company. Song was followed by story, and story by song—until at last the room seemed to swim in a golden mist.
And through that mist Mary saw Roger Poole! He was leaning forward a little, and there was about him the air of a man who waited.
She spoke impetuously.
"Mr. Poole," she said, "please——"
There was not a trace of awkwardness, not a hint of self-consciousness in his manner as he answered her.
"May I sit here?" he asked. "You see, my pussy cat holds me, and as I shall tell you about a cat, she gives the touch of local color."
And then he began, his right hand resting on the gray cat's head, his left upon his knee.
He used no gestures, yet as he went on, the room became still with the stillness of a captured audience. Here was no stumbling elocution, but a controlled and perfect method, backed by a voice which soared and sang and throbbed and thrilled—the voice either of a great orator, or of a great actor.
The story that he told was of Whittington and his cat. But it was not the old nursery rhyme. He gave it as it is written by one of England's younger poets. Since he lacked the time for it all, he sketched the theme, rounding it out here and there with a verse—and it seemed to Mary that, as he spoke, all the bells of London boomed!
"'_Flos Mercatorum_,' moaned the bell of All Hallowes,'There was he an orphan, O, a little lad, alone!''Then we all sang,' echoed happy St. Saviour's,'Called him and lured him, and made him our own.'"
And now they saw the little lad stealing toward the big city, saw all the color and glow as he entered upon its enchantment, saw his meeting with the green-gowned Alice, saw him cold and hungry, faint and footsore, saw him aswoon on a door-step.
"'Alice,' roared a voice, and then, O like a lilied angel,Leaning from the lighted door, a fair face unafraid,Leaning over Red Rose Lane, O, leaning out of ParadiseDrooped the sudden glory of his green-gowned maid!"
Touching now a lighter note, his voice laughed through the lovely lines; of the ship which was to sail beyond the world; of how each man staked such small wealth as he possessed; "for in those days Marchaunt adventurers shared with their prentices the happy chance of each new venture."
But Whittington had nothing to give. "Not a groat," he tells sweet Alice. "I staked my last groat in a cat!"
"'Ay, but we need a cat,'The Captain said. So when the painted shipSailed through a golden sunrise down the Thames,A gray tail waved upon the misty poop,And Whittington had his venture on the seas!"
The ringing words brought tumultuous applause. Pittiwitz, startled, sat up and blinked. People bent to each other, asking: "Who is this Roger Poole?" Under his breath Barry was saying, boyishly, "Gee!" He might still wonder about Mary's lodger, he would never again look down on him. And Delilah Jeliffe sitting next to Barry murmured, "I've heard that voice before—but where?"
Again the bells boomed as the story swept on to the fortune which came to the prentice lad—the price paid for his cat in Barbary by a king whose house was rich in gems but sorely plagued with rats and mice.
Then Whittington's offer of his wealth to Alice, her refusal, and so—to the end.
"'I know a way,' said the Bell of St. Martin's.'Tell it and be quick,' laughed the prentices below!'Whittington shall marry her, marry her, marry her!Peal for a wedding,' said the Big Bell of Bow."
Roger stopped there, and with Pittiwitz in his arms, rose to light his candle. All about him people were saying things, but their words seemed to come to him through a beating darkness. There was only one face—Mary's, and she was leaning toward him, or was it above him? "It was wonderful," she said.
"It is a great poem."
"I don't mean that—it was the way you—gave it."
Outwardly calm, he carried his candle and set it in its place.
Then he came back to Mary—Mary with the shining eyes. This was his night! "You liked it, then?"
For a moment she did not speak, then she said again, "It was wonderful."
There were other people about them now, and Roger met them with the ease of a man of the world. Even Barry had to admit that his manners were irreproachable, and his clothes. As for his looks, he was not to be matched with Mary's auburn Apollo—one cannot compare a royal stag and a tawny-maned lion!
During the rest of the program, Roger sat enthroned at Mary's side, and listened. He watched the candles, an increasing row of little pointed lights. He went down to supper, and again sat beside Mary—and knew not what he ate. He saw Porter's hot eyes upon him. He knew that to-morrow he must doff his honors and be as he had been before. However, "who knows but the world may end to-night," he told himself, desperately.
Thus he played with Fate, and Fate, turning the tables, brought him at last to Delilah Jeliffe as the guests were saying "good-bye."
"Somewhere I've heard your voice," she said with the upsweep of her lashes. "It isn't the kind that one is likely to forget."
"Yet you have forgotten," he parried.
"I shall remember," she said. "I want to remember—and I shall want to hear it again."
He shook his head. "It was my—swan song——"
"Why?"
He shrugged. "One isn't always in the mood——"
And now it was she who shook her head. "It isn't a mood with you, it's your life."
She had him there, so he carried the conversation lightly to another topic. "I had not thought to give Whittington until I saw Pittiwitz."
"And Mary's green gown?"
Again he parried. "It was dark. I could not see the color of her gown."
"But 'love has eyes.'" The words were light and she meant them lightly. And she went away laughing.
But Roger did not laugh.
And when Mary came to look for him he was gone.
And up-stairs, his evening stripped of its glamour, he told himself that he had been a fool! The world wouldnotend to-night. He had to live the appointed length of his days, through all the dreary years.
In Which Mary Brings Christmas to the Tower Rooms; and in Which Roger Declines a Privilege for Which Porter Pleads.
On Christmas Eve, Mary and Susan Jenks brought up to Roger a little tree. It was just a fir plume, but it was gay with tinsel and spicy with the fragrance of the woods, and it was topped by a wee wax angel.
In vain Mary and Barry and even Aunt Isabelle had urged Roger to join their merrymaking downstairs. Aunt Frances, having delayed her trip abroad until January, was coming; and except for Leila and General Dick and Porter Bigelow, it was to be strictly a family affair.
But Roger had refused. "I'm not one of you," he had told Mary. "I'm a bee, not a butterfly, and I shouldn't have joined you on Thanksgiving night. When you're alone, if I may, I'll come down—but please—not with your guests."
He had not joined them often, however, and he had never again shown the mood which had possessed him when his voice had charmed them. Hence they grew, as the days went on, to know him as quiet, self-contained man, whose eyes burned now and then, when some subject was broached which moved him, but who, for the most part, showed at least an outward serenity.
They grew to like him, too, and to depend upon him. Even Aunt Isabelle went to him for advice. He had such an attentive manner, and when he spoke, he gave his opinion with an air of comforting authority.
But always he avoided Porter Bigelow, he avoided Leila, and most of all, he avoided Delilah Jeliffe, although that persistent young person would have invaded the Tower Rooms, if Mary had not warned her away.
"He is very busy, Lilah," she said, "and when he isn't, he comes down here."
"Don't you ever go up?" Delilah's tone was curious.
"No," said Mary, "Why should I?"
Delilah shrugged. "If a man," she said, "had looked at me as he looked at you on Thanksgiving night, I should be, to say the least—interested——"
Mary's head was held high. "I like Roger Poole," she said, "and he's a gentleman. But I'm not thinking about the look in his eyes."
Yet she did think of it, after all, for such seed does the Delilah-type of woman sow. She thought of him, but only with a little wonder—for Mary was as yet unawakened—Porter's passionate pleading, the magic of Roger Poole's voice—these had not touched the heart which still waited.
"Since Mahomet wouldn't come to the mountain," Mary remarked to her lodger as Susan deposited her burden, "the mountain had to come to Mahomet. And here's a bit of mistletoe for your door, and of holly for your window."
He took the wreaths from her. "You are like the spirit of Christmas in your green gown."
"This?" She was wearing the green velvet—with a low collar of lace. "Oh, I've had this for ages, but I like it——" She broke off to say, wistfully, "It seems as if you ought to come down—as if up here you'd be lonely."
Susan Jenks, hanging the mistletoe over the door, was out of range of their voices.
"I am lonely," Roger said, "but now with my little tree, I shall forget everything but your kindness."
"Don't you love Christmas?" Mary asked him. "It's such a friendly time, with everybody thinking of everybody else. I had to hunt a lot before I found the wax angel. It needed such a little one—but I always want one on my tree. When I was a child, mother used to tell me that the angel was bringing a message of peace and good will to our house."
"If the little angel brings me your good will, I shall feel that he has performed his mission."
"Oh, but you have it," brightly. "We are all so glad you are here. Even Barry, and Barry hated the idea at first of our having a lodger. But he likes you."
"And I like Barry," he said. "He is youth—incarnate."
"He's a dear," she agreed. Then a shadow came into her eyes. "But he's such a boy, and—and he's spoiled. Everybody's too good to him. Mother was—and father, though father tried not to be. And Leila is, and Constance—and Aunt Isabelle excuses him, and even Susan Jenks."
Susan Jenks, having hung all the wreaths, had departed, and was not there to hear this mention of her shortcomings.
"I see—and you?" smiling.
She drew a long breath. "I'm trying to play Big Sister—and sometimes I'm afraid I'm more like a big brother—I haven't the—patience."
His attentive face invited further confidence. It was the face of a man who had listened to many confidences, and instinctively she felt that others had been helped by him.
"You see I want Barry to pass the Bar examination. All of the men of our family have been lawyers, But Barry won't study, and he has taken a position in the Patent Office. He's wasting these best years as a clerk."
Then she remembered, and begged, "Forgive me——"
"There's nothing to forgive," he said. "I suppose I am wasting my years as a clerk in the Treasury Department—but there's this difference, your brother's life is before him—mine is behind me. His ambitions are yet to be fulfilled. I have no—ambitions."
"You don't mean that—you can't mean it?"
"Why not?"
"Because you're a man! Oh, I should have been the man of our family—and Barry and Constance should have been the girls." Her eyes blazed.
"You think then, as I heard you say the other night on the stairs, that the world is ours; yet we men let it stand still."
Her head went up. "Yes. Perhaps you do have to fight for what you get. But I'd rather die fighting than smothered."
He laughed a good boyish laugh. "Does Barry know that you feel that way?"
"I'm afraid," penitently, "that I make him feel it, sometimes. And he doesn't know that it is because I care so much. That it is because I want him to be like—father."
He smiled into her misty eyes. "Perhaps if you weren't so militant—in your methods——"
"Oh, that's the trouble with Barry. Everybody's too good to him. And when I try to counteract it, Barry says that I nag. But he doesn't understand."
Her voice broke, and by some subtle intuition he was aware that her burden was heavier than she was willing to admit.
She stood up and held out her hand. "Thank you so much—for letting me talk to you."
He took her hand and stood looking down at her.
"Will you remember that always—when you need to talk things out—that the Tower Room—is waiting?"
And now there were steps dancing up the stairs, and Barry whirled in with Little-Lovely Leila.
"Mary," he said, "we are ready to light the tree, and Aunt Frances is having fits because you aren't down. You know she always has fits when things are delayed. Poole, you are a selfish hermit to stay off up here with a tree of your own."
Roger, who had stepped forward to speak to Leila, shook his head. "I don't deserve to be invited. And you're all too good to me."
"Oh, but we're not," Leila spoke in her pretty childish way; "we'd love to have you down. Everybody's just crazy about you, Mr. Poole."
They shouted at that.
"Leila," Barry demanded, "are you crazy about him? Tell me now and get the agony over."
Leila, tilting herself on her pink slipper toes almost crowed with delight at his teasing: "I said,everybody——"
Barry advanced to where she stood in the doorway.
"Leila Dick," he announced, "you're under the mistletoe, and you can't escape, and I'm going to kiss you. It's my ancient and hereditary privilege—isn't it, Poole? It's my ancient and hereditary privilege," he repeated, and now he was bending over her.
"Barry," Mary expostulated, "behave yourself."
But it was Leila who stopped him. Her little hands held him off, her face was white. "Barry," she whispered, "Barry—please——"
He dropped her hands.
"You blessed baby," he said, with all his laughter gone. "You're like a little sweet saint in an altar shrine!"
Then, with another sudden change of mood, he whirled her away as quickly as he had come, and Mary, following, stopped on the threshold to say to Roger:
"We shall all be away to-morrow. We are to dine at General Dick's. But I am going to church in the morning—the six o'clock service. It's lovely with the snow and the stars. There'll be just Barry and me. Won't you come?"
He hesitated. Then, "No," he said, "no," and lest she should think him unappreciative, he added, "I never go to church."
She came back to him and stood by the fire. "Don't you believe in it?" She was plainly troubled for him. "Don't you believe in the angels and the shepherds, and the wise men, and the Babe in the Manger?"
"No," he said dully, "I don't believe."
"Oh," it was almost a cry, "then what does Christmas mean to you? What can it mean to anybody who doesn't believe in the Babe and the Star in the East?"
"It means this, Mary Ballard," he said, impetuously, "that out of all my unbelief—I believe in you—in your friendliness. And that is my star shining just now in the darkness."
She would have been less than a woman if she had not been thrilled by such a tribute. So she blushed shyly. "I'm glad," she said and smiled up at him.
But as she went down-stairs, the smile faded. It was as if the shadow of the Tower Rooms were upon her. As if the loneliness and sadness of Roger Poole had become hers. As if his burden was added to her other burdens.
Aunt Frances, more regal than ever in gold and amethyst brocade, was presiding over a mountainous pile of white boxes, behind which the unlighted tree spread its branches.
"My child," she said reprovingly, as Mary entered, "I wonder if you were ever in time for anything."
And Porter whispered in Mary's ear as he led her to the piano: "Is this a merry Christmas or a Contrary-Mary Christmas? You look as if you had the weight of the world on your shoulders."
She shook her head. Tears were very near the surface. He saw it and was jealously unhappy. What had brought her in this mood from the Tower Rooms?
And now Barry turned off the lights, and in the darkness Mary struck the first chords and began to sing, "Holy Night——"
As her voice throbbed through the stillness, little stars shone out upon the tree until it was all in shining glory.
Up-stairs, Roger heard Mary singing. He went to his window and drew back the curtains. Outside the world was wrapped in snow. The lights from the lower windows shone on the fountain, and showed the little bronze boy in a winding sheet of white.
But it was not the little bronze boy that Roger Poole saw. It was another boy—himself—singing in a dim church in a big city, and his soul was in the words. And when he knelt to pray, it seemed to him that the whole world prayed. He was bathed in reverence. In his boyish soul there was no hint of unbelief—no doubt of the divine mystery.
He saw himself again in a church. And now it was he who spoke to the people of the Shepherds and the Star. And he knew that he was making them believe. That he was bringing to them the assurance which possessed his own soul—and again there were candles on the altar, and again he sang, and the choir boys sang, and the song was the one that Mary Ballard was singing——
He saw himself once more in a church. But this time there was no singing. There were no candles, no light except such as came faintly through the leaded panes. He was alone in the dimness, and he stood in the pulpit and looked around at the empty pews. Then the light went out behind the windows, and he knelt in the darkness; but not to pray. His head was hidden in his arms. Since then he had never shed a tear, and he had never gone to church.
Mary's song was followed by carols in which the other voices joined—Porter's and Barry's and Leila's; General Dick's breathy tenor, Aunt Isabelle's quaver, Aunt Frances' dominant note—with Susan Jenks and the colored maid who helped her on such occasions, piping up like two melodious blackbirds in the hall.
Then General Dick played Santa Claus, handing out the parcels with felicitous little speeches.
Constance had sent a big box from London. There were fads and fripperies from Grace Clendenning in Paris, while Aunt Frances had evidently raided Fifth Avenue and had brought away its treasures.
"It looks like a French shop," said Leila, happy in her own gifts of gloves and silk stockings and slipper buckles and beads, and the crowning bliss of a little pearl heart from Barry.
Porter's offering to Mary was a quaint ring set with rose-cut diamonds and emeralds.
Aunt Frances, hovering over it, exclaimed at its beauty. "It's a genuine antique?"
He admitted that it was, but gave no further explanation.
Later, however, he told Mary, "It was my grandmother's. She belonged to an old French family. My grandfather met her when he was in the diplomatic service. He was an Irishman, and it is from him I get my hair."
"It's a lovely thing. But—Porter—it mustn't bind me to anything. I want to be free."
"You are free. Do you remember when you were a kiddie that I gave you a penny ring out of my popcorn bag? You didn't think that ring tied you to anything, did you? Well, this is just another penny prize package."
So she wore it on her right hand and when he said "Good-night," he lifted the hand and kissed it.
"Girl, dear, may this be the merriest Christmas ever!"
And now the tears overflowed. They were alone in the lower hall and there was no one to see. "Oh, Porter," she wailed, "I'm missing Constance dreadfully—it isn't Christmas—without her. It came over me all at once—when I was trying to think that I was happy."
"Poor little Contrary Mary—if you'd only let me take care of you."
She shook her head. "I didn't mean to be—silly, Porter."
"You're not silly." Then after a silence, "Shall you go to early service in the morning?"
"Yes."
"May I go?"
"Of course. Barry's going, too."
"You mean that you won't let me go with you alone."
"I mean nothing of the kind. Barry always goes. He used to do it to please mother, and now he does it—for remembrance."
"I'm so jealous of my moments alone with you. Why can't Leila stay with you to-night, then there will be four of us, and I can have you to myself. I can bring the car, if you'd rather."
"No, I like to walk. It's so lovely and solemn."
"Be sure to ask Leila."
She promised, and he went away, having to look in at a dance given by one of his mother's friends; and Mary, returning to join the others, pondered, a little wistfully, on the fact that Porter Bigelow should be so eager for a privilege which Roger Poole had just declined.
In Which Aunt Frances Speaks of Matrimony as a Fixed Institution and is Met by Flaming Arguments; and in Which a Strange Voice Sings Upon the Stairs.
Aunt Frances stayed until after the New Year. But before she went she sounded Aunt Isabelle.
"Has Mary said anything to you about Porter Bigelow?"
"About Porter?"
"Yes," impatiently, "about marrying him. Anybody can see that he's dead in love with her, Isabelle."
"I don't think Mary wants to marry anybody. She's an independent little creature. She should have been the boy, Frances."
"I wish to heaven she had," Aunt Frances' tone was fervent. "I can't see any future for Barry, unless he marries Leila. If he were not so irresponsible, I might do something for him. But Barry is such a will-o'-the-wisp."
Aunt Isabelle went on with her mending, and Aunt Frances again pounced upon her.
"And it isn't just that he is irresponsible. He's—— Did you notice on Christmas Day, Isabelle—that after dinner he wasn't himself?"
Aunt Isabelle had noticed. And it was not the first time. Her quick eyes had seen things which Mary had thought were hidden. She had not needed ears to tell the secret which was being kept from her in that house.
Yet her sense of loyalty sealed her lips. She would not tell Frances anything. They were dear children.
"He's just a boy, Frances," she said, deprecatingly, "and I am sorry that General Dick put temptation in his way."
"Don't blame the General. If Barry's weak, no one can make him strong but himself. I wish he had some of Porter Bigelow's steadiness. Mary won't look at Porter, and he's dead in love with her."
"Perhaps in time she may."
"Mary's like her father," Aunt Frances said shortly. "John Ballard might have been rich when he died, if he hadn't been such a dreamer. Mary calls herself practical—but her head is full of moonshine."
Aunt Frances made this arraignment with an uncomfortable memory of a conversation with Mary the day before. They had been shopping, and had lunched together at a popular tea room. It was while they sat in their secluded corner that Aunt Frances had introduced in a roundabout way the topic which obsessed her.
"I am glad that Constance is so happy, Mary."
"She ought to be," Mary responded; "it's her honeymoon."
"If you would follow her example and marry Porter Bigelow, my mind would be at rest."
"But I don't want to marry Porter, Aunt Frances. I don't want to marry anybody."
Aunt Frances raised her gold lorgnette, "If you don't marry," she demanded, "how do you expect to live?"
"I don't understand."
"I mean who is going to pay your bills for the rest of your life? Barry isn't making enough to support you, and I can't imagine that you'd care to be dependent on Gordon Richardson. And the house is rapidly losing its value. The neighborhood isn't what it was when your father bought it, and you can't rent rooms when nobody wants to come out here to live. And then what? It's a woman's place to marry when she meets a man who can take care of her—and you'll find that you can't pick Porter Bigelows off every bush—not in Washington."
Thus spoke Worldly-Wisdom, not mincing words, and back came Youth and Romance, passionately. "Aunt Frances, a woman hasn't any right to marry just because she thinks it is her best chance. She hasn't any right to make a man feel that he's won her when she's just little and mean and mercenary."
"That sounds all right," said the indignant dame opposite her, "but as I said before, if you don't marry,—what are you going to do?"
Faced by that cold question, Mary met it defiantly. "If the worst comes, I can work. Other women work."
"You haven't the training or the experience." Aunt Frances told her coldly; "don't be silly, Mary. You couldn't earn your shoe-strings."
And thus having said all there was to be said, the two ate their salad with diminished appetite, and rode home in a taxi in stiff silence.
Aunt Frances' mind roamed back to Aunt Isabelle, and fixed on her as a scapegoat. "She's like you, Isabelle," she said, "with just the difference between the ideals of twenty years ago and to-day. You haven't either of you an idea of the world as a real place—you make romance the rule of your lives—and I'd like to know what you've gotten out of it, or what she will."
"I'm not afraid for Mary." There was a defiant ring in Aunt Isabelle's voice which amazed Aunt Frances. "She'll make things come right. She has what I never had, Frances. She has strength and courage."
It was this conversation with Aunt Frances which caused Mary, in the weeks that followed, to bend for hours over a yellow pad on which she made queer hieroglyphics. And it was through these hieroglyphics that she entered upon a new phase of her friendship with Roger Poole.
He had gone to work one morning, haggard after a sleepless night.
As he approached the Treasury, the big building seemed to loom up before him like a prison. What, after all, were those thousands who wended their way every morning to the great beehives of Uncle Sam but slaves chained to an occupation which was deadening?
He flung the question later at the little stenographer who sat next to him. "Miss Terry," he asked, "how long have you been here?"
She looked up at him, brightly. She was short and thin, with a sprinkle of gray in her hair. But she was well-groomed and nicely dressed in her mannish silk shirt and gray tailored skirt.
"Twenty years," she said, snapping a rubber band about her note-book.
"And always at this desk?"
"Oh, dear, no. I came in at nine hundred, and now I am getting twelve hundred."
"But always in this room?"
She nodded. "Yes. And it is very nice. Most of the people have been here as long as I, and some of them much longer. There's Major Orr, for example, he has been here since just after the War."
"Do you ever feel as if you were serving sentence?"
She laughed. She was not troubled by a vivid imagination. "It really isn't bad for a woman. There aren't many places with as short hours and as good pay."
For a woman? But for a man? He turned back to his desk. What would he be after twenty years of this? He waked every morning with the day's routine facing him—knowing that not once in the eight hours would there be a demand upon his mentality, not once would there be the thrill of real accomplishment.
At noon when he saw Miss Terry strew bird seed on the broad window sill for the sparrows, he likened it to the diversions of a prisoner in his cell. And, when he ate lunch with a group of fellow clerks in a cheap restaurant across the way, he wondered, as they went back, why they were spared the lockstep.
In this mood he left the office at half-past four, and passing the place where he usually ate, inexpensively, he entered a luxurious up-town hotel. There he read the papers until half-past six; then dined in a grill room which permitted informal dress.
Coming out later, he met Barry coming in, linked arm in arm with two radiant youths of his own kind and class. Musketeers of modernity, they found their adventures on the city streets, in cafes and cabarets, instead of in field and forest and on the battle-field.
Barry, with a flower in his buttonhole, welcomed Roger uproariously. "Here's Whittington," he said. "You ought to hear his poem, fellows, about a little cat. He had us all hypnotized the other night."
Roger glanced at him sharply. His exaggerated manner, the looseness of his phrasing, the flush on his cheeks were in strange contrast to his usual frank, clean boyishness.
"Come on, Poole," Barry urged, "we'll motor out in Jerry's car to the Country Club, and you can give it to us out there—about Whittington and the little cat."
Roger declined, and Barry took quick offense. "Oh, well, if you don't want to, you needn't," he said; "four's a crowd, anyhow—come on, fellows."
Roger, vaguely troubled, watched him until he was lost in the crowd, then sighed and turned his steps homeward.
As Roger ascended to his Tower, the house seemed strangely silent. Pittiwitz was asleep beside the pot of pink hyacinths. She sat up, yawned, and welcomed him with a little coaxing note. When he had settled himself in his big chair, she came and curled in the corner of his arm, and again went to sleep.
Deep in his reading, he was roused an hour later by a knock at his door.
He opened it, to find Mary on the threshold.
"May I come in?" she asked, and she seemed breathless. "It is Susan's night out, and Aunt Isabelle is at the opera with some old friends. Barry expected to be here with me, but he hasn't come. And I sat in the dining-room—and waited," she shivered, "until I couldn't stand it any more."
She tried to laugh, but he saw that she was very pale.
"Please don't think I'm a coward," she begged. "I've never been that. But I seemed suddenly to have a sort of nervous panic, and I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind if I sat with you—until Barry—came——"
"I'm glad he didn't come, if it is going to give me an evening with you." He drew a chair to the fire.
They had talked of many things when she asked, suddenly, "Mr. Poole, I wonder if you can tell me—about the examinations for stenographers in the Departments—are they very rigid?"
"Not very. Of course they require speed and accuracy."
She sighed. "I'm accurate enough, but I wonder if I can ever acquire speed."
He stared. "You——?"
She nodded. "I haven't mentioned it to any one. One's family is so hampering sometimes—they'd all object—except Aunt Isabelle, but I want to be prepared to work, if I ever need to earn my living."
"May you never need it," he said, fervently, visions rising of little Miss Terry and her machine-made personality. What had this girl with the fair hair and the shining eyes to do with the blank life between office walls?
"May you never need it," he repeated. "A woman's place is in the home—it's a man's place to fight the world."
"But if there isn't a man to fight a woman's battles?"
"There will always be some one to fight yours."
"You mean that I can—marry? But what if I don't care to marry merely to be—supported?"
"There would have to be other things, of course," gravely.
"What, for example?"
"Love."
"You mean the 'honor and obey' kind? But don't want that when I marry. I want a man to say to me, 'Come, let us fight the battle together. If it's defeat, we'll go down together. If its victory, we'll win.'"
This was to him a strange language, yet there was that about it which thrilled him.
Yet he insisted, dogmatically, "There are men enough in the world to take care of the women, and the women should let them."
"No, they should not. Suppose I should not marry. Must I let Barry take care of me, or Constance—and go on as Aunt Isabelle has, eating the bread of dependence?"
"But you? Why, one only needs to look at you to know that there'll be a live-happy-ever-after ending to your romance."
"That's what they thought about Aunt Isabelle. But she lost her lover, and she couldn't love again. And if she had had an absorbing occupation, she would have been saved so much humiliation, so much heart-break."
She told him the story with its touching pathos. "And think of it," she ended, "right here in our garden by the fountain, she saw him for the last time."
Chilled by the ghostly breath of dead romance, they sat for a while in silence, then Mary said: "So that's why I'm trying to learn something—that will have an earning value. I can sing and play a little, but not enough to make—money."
She sighed, and he set himself to help her.
"The quickest way," he said, "to acquire speed, is to have some one read to you."
"Aunt Isabelle does sometimes, but it tires her."
"Let me do it. I should never tire."
"Oh, wouldn't you mind? Could we practice a little—now?"
And so it began—the friendship in which he served her, and loved the serving.
He read, slowly, liking to see, when he raised his eyes, the slim white figure in the big chair, the firelight on the absorbed face.
Thus the time slipped by, until with a start, Mary looked up.
"I don't see what is keeping Barry."
Then Roger told her what he had been reluctant to tell. "I saw him down-town. I think he was on his way to the Country Club. He had been dining with some friends."
"Men friends?"
"Yes. He called one of them Jerry."
He saw the color rise in her face. "I hate Jerry Tuckerman, and Barry promised Constance he'd let those boys alone."
Her voice had a sharp note in it, but he saw that she was struggling with a gripping fear.
This, then, was the burden she was bearing? And what a brave little thing she was to face the world with her head up.
"Would you like to have me call the Country Club—I might be able to get your brother on the wire."
"Oh; if you would."
But he was saved the trouble. For, even while they spoke of him, Barry came, and Mary went down to him.
A little later, there were stumbling steps upon the stairs, and a voice was singing—a strange song, in which each verse ended with a shout.
Roger, stepping out into the dark upper hall, looked down over the railing. Mary, a slender shrinking figure; was coming with her brother up the lower flight. Barry had his arm around her, but her face was turned from him, and her head drooped.
Then, still looking down, Roger saw her guide those stumbling steps to the threshold of the boy's room. The door opened and shut, and she was alone, but from within there still came the shouted words of that strange song.
Mary stood for a moment with her hands clenched at her sides, then turned and laid her face against the closed door, her eyes hidden by her upraised arm.