In Which Little-Lovely Leila Sees a Picture in an Unexpected Place; and in Which Perfect Faith Speaks Triumphantly Over the Telephone.
Whatever Delilah Jeliffe might lack, it was not originality. The apartment which she chose for her winter in Washington was like any other apartment when she went into it, but the changes which she made—the things which she added and the things which she took away, stamped it at once with her own individuality.
The peacock screen before the fireplace, the cushions of sapphire and emerald and old gold on the couch, the mantel swept of all ornament except a seven-branched candlestick; these created the first impression. Then one's eyes went to an antique table on which a crystal ball, upborne by three bronze monkeys, seemed to gather to itself mysteriously all the glow of firelight and candlelight and rich color. At the other end of the table was a low bowl, filled always with small saffron-hued roses.
In this room, one morning, late in Lent, Leila Dick sat, looking as out of place as an English daisy in a tropical jungle.
Leila did not like the drawn curtains and the dimness. Outside the sun was shining, gloriously, and the sky was a deep and lovely blue.
She was glad when Lilah sent for her.
"You are to come right to her room," the maid announced.
"Heavens, child," said the Delilah-beauty, who was combing her hair, "I didn't promise to be up with the birds."
"The birds were up long ago," Leila perched herself on an old English love-seat. "We're to have lunch before we go to Fort Myer, and it is almost one now."
Lilah yawned, "Is it?" and went on combing her hair with the air of one who has hours before her. She wore a silken négligée of flamingo red which matched her surroundings, for this room was as flaming as the other was subdued. Yet the effect was not that of crude color; it was, rather, that of color intensified deliberately to produce a contrast. Delilah's bedroom was high noon under a blazing sun, the sitting-room was midnight under the stars.
With her black hair at last twisted into wonderful coils, Delilah surveyed her face reflectively in the mirror, and having decided that she needed no further aid from the small jars on her dressing table, she turned to her friend.
"What shall I wear, Leila?"
"If I told you," was the calm response, "you wouldn't wear it."
Delilah laughed. "No, I wouldn't. I simply have to think such things out for myself. But I meant what kind of clothes—dress up or motor things?"
"Porter will take us out in his car. You'll need your heavy coat, and something good-looking underneath, for lunch, you know."
"Is Mary Ballard going?"
"Of course. We shouldn't get Porter's car if she weren't."
"Mary wasn't with us the day we had tea with him in the Park."
"No, but she was asked. Porter never leaves her out."
"Are they engaged?"
"No, Mary won't be."
"She'll never get a better chance," Delilah reflected. "She isn't pretty, and she's rather old style."
Leila blazed. "She's beautiful——"
"To you, duckie, because you love her. But the average man wouldn't call Mary Ballard beautiful."
"I don't care—the un-average one would. And Mary Ballard wouldn't look at an ordinary man."
"No man is ordinary when he is in love."
"Oh, with you," Leila's tone was scornful, "love's just a game."
Lilah rose, crossed the room with swift steps, and kissed her. "Don't let me ruffle your plumage, Jenny Wren," she said; "I'm a screaming peacock this morning."
"What's the matter?"
"I'm not the perfect success I planned to be. Oh, I can see it. I've been here for three months, and people stare at me, but they don't call on me—not the ones I want to know. And it's because I am too—emphasized. In New York you have to be emphatic to be anything at all. Otherwise you are lost in the crowd. That's why Fifth Avenue is full of people in startling clothes. In the mob you won't be singled out simply for your pretty face—there are too many pretty faces; so it is the woman who strikes some high note of conspicuousness who attracts attention. But you're like a flock of cooing doves, you Washington girls. You're as natural and frank and unaffected as a—a covey of partridges. I believe I am almost jealous of your Mary Ballard this morning."
"Not because of Porter?"
"Not because of any man. But there are things about her which I can't acquire. I've the money and the clothes and the individuality. But there's a simplicity about her, a directness, that comes from years of association with things I haven't had. Before I came here, I thought money could buy anything. But it can't. Mary Ballard couldn't be anything else. And I—I can be anything from a siren to a soubrette, but I can't be a lady—not the kind that you are—and Mary Ballard."
Saying which, the tropic creature in flamingo red sat down beside the cooing dove, and continued:
"You were right just now, when you said that the un-average man would love Mary Ballard. Porter Bigelow loves her, and he tops all the other men I've met. And he'd never love me. He will laugh with me and joke with me, and if he wasn't in love with Mary, he might flirt with me—but I'm not his kind—and he knows it."
She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "There are other fish in the sea, of course, and Porter Bigelow is Mary's. But I give you my word, Leila Dick, that when I catch sight of his blessed red head towering above the others—like a lion-hearted Richard, I can't see anybody else."
For the first time since she had known her, Leila was drawn to the other by a feeling of sympathetic understanding.
"Are you in love with him, Lilah?" she asked; timidly.
Lilah stood up, stretching her hands above her head. "Who knows? Being in love and loving—perhaps they are different things, duckie."
With which oracular remark she adjourned to her dressing-room, where, in long rows, her lovely gowns were hung.
Leila, left alone, picked up a magazine on the table beside her glanced through it and laid it down; picked a bonbon daintily out of a big box and ate it; picked up a photograph——
"Mousie," said Lilah, coming back, several minutes later, "what makes you so still? Did you find a book?"
No, Leila had not found a book, and the photograph was back where she had first discovered it, face downward under the box of chocolates. And she was now standing by the window, her veil drawn tightly over her close little hat, so that one might not read the trouble in her telltale eyes. The daisy drooped now, as if withered by the blazing sun.
But Delilah saw nothing of the change. She wore a saffron-hued coat, which matched the roses in the other room, and her leopard skins, with a small hat of the same fur.
As she surveyed herself finally in the long glass, she flung out the somewhat caustic remark:
"When I get down-stairs and look at Mary Ballard, I shall feel like a Beardsley poster propped up beside a Helleu etching."
After lunch, Porter took Aunt Isabelle and Barry and the three girls to Fort Myer. The General and Mr. Jeliffe met them at the drill hall, and as they entered there came to them the fresh fragrance of the tan bark.
As the others filed into their seats, Barry held Leila back. "We will sit at the end," he said. "I want to talk to you."
Through her veil, her eyes reproached him.
"No," she said; "no."
He looked down at her in surprise. Never before had Little-Lovely Leila refused the offer of his valuable society.
"You sit beside—Delilah," she said, nervously, "She's really your guest."
"She is Porter's guest," he declared. "I don't see why you want to turn her over to me." Then as she endeavored to pass him, he caught her arm.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"Nothing," faintly,
"Nothing——" scornfully. "I can read you like a book. What's happened?"
But she merely shook her head and sat down, and then the bugle sounded, and the band began to play, and in came the cavalry—a gallant company, through the sun-lighted door, charging in a thundering line toward the reviewing stand—to stop short in a perfect and sudden salute.
The drill followed, with men riding bareback, men riding four abreast, men riding in pyramids, men turning somersaults on their trained and intelligent steeds.
One man slipped, fell from his horse, and lay close in the tan bark, while the other horses went over him, without a hoof touching, so that he rose unhurt, and took his place again in the line.
Leila hid her eyes in her muff. "I don't like it," she said. "I've never liked it. And what if that man had been killed?"
"They don't get killed," said Barry easily. "The hospital is full of those who get hurt, but it is good for them; it teaches them to be cool and competent when real danger comes."
And now came the artillery, streaming through that sun-lighted entrance, the heavy wagons a featherweight to the strong, galloping horses. Breathless Leila watched their manoeuvres, as they wheeled and circled and crisscrossed in spaces which seemed impossibly small—horses plunging, gun-wagons rattling, dust flying—faster, faster—— Again she shut her eyes.
But Mary Ballard, cheeks flushed, eyes dancing, turned to Porter. "Don't you love it?" she asked.
"I love you——" audaciously. "Mary, you and I were born in the wrong age. We belong to the days of King Arthur. Then I could have worn a coat of mail and have stormed your castle, and I shouldn't have cared if you hurled defiance from the top turret. I'd have known that, at last, you'd be forced to let down the drawbridge; and I would have crossed the moat and taken you prisoner, and you'd have been so impressed with my strength and prowess that you would——"
"No, I wouldn't," said Mary quickly.
"Wait till I finish," said Porter, coolly. "I'd have shut you up in a tower, and every night I'd have come and sung beneath your window, and at last you'd have dropped a red rose down to me."
They were laughing together now, and Delilah on the other side of Porter demanded, "What's the joke?"
"There isn't any," said Porter; "it is all deadly earnest—for me, if not for Mary."
And now a horse was down; there was a quick bugle-note, silence. Like clockwork, everything had stopped.
People were asking, "Is anybody hurt?"
Barry looked down at Leila. Then he leaned toward her father. "I'm going to take this child outside," he said; "she's as white as a sheet. She doesn't like it. We will meet you all later."
Leila's color came back in the sunshine and air and she insisted that Barry should return to the hall.
"I don't want you to miss it," she said, "just because I am so silly. I can stay in Porter's car and wait."
"I don't want to see it—it's an old story to me."
So they walked on toward Arlington, entering at last the gate which leads into that wonderful city of the nation's Northern dead, which was once the home of Southern hospitality. In a sheltered corner they sat down and Barry smiled at Little-Lovely Leila.
"Are you all right now, kiddie?"
"Yes," but she did not smile.
He bent down and peered through her veil. "Take it off and let me look at your eyes."
With trembling hands, she took out a pin or two and let it fall.
"You've been crying."
"Oh, Barry," the words were a cry—the cry of a little wounded bird.
He stopped smiling. "Blessed one, what is it?"
"I can't tell you."
"You must."
"No."
A low-growing magnolia hid them from the rest of the world; he put masterful hands on her shoulders and turned her face toward him—her little unhappy face.
"Now tell me."
She shook herself free. "Don't, Barry."
He flushed suddenly and sensitively. "I know I'm not much of a fellow."
She answered with a dignity which seemed to surmount her usual childishness, "Barry, if a man wants a woman to believe in him, he's got to make himself worthy of it."
"Well," defiantly, "what have I done?"
"What have I done?"[Illustration: "What have I done?"]
"What have I done?"[Illustration: "What have I done?"]
"Don't you know?"
"No-o."
"Then I'll tell you. Yes, Iwilltell you," with sudden courage. "I was at Delilah's this morning, and I saw your picture, and what you had written on it——"
He stared at her, with a sense of surging relief. If it was only that he had to explain about—Lilah. A smile danced in his eyes.
"Well?"
"I know you like to—play the game—but I didn't think you'd go as far as that——"
"How far?"
"Oh, you know."
"I don't."
"Barry!"
"I don't. I wish you'd tell me what you mean, Leila."
"I will." Her eyes were not reproachful now, they were blazing. She had risen, and with her hands tucked into her muff, and her veil blowing about her flushed cheeks, she made her accusation. "You wrote on that picture, 'To the One Girl—Forever.' Is that the way you think of Delilah, Barry?"
"No. It is the way I think of you. And how did that picture happen to be in Delilah's possession? I sent it to you."
"To me?"
"Yes, I took it over to you yesterday, and left it with one of the maids—a new one. I intended, to go in and give it to you, but when she said you had callers, I handed her the package——"
"And I thought—oh, Barry, what else could I think?"
She was so little and lovely in her tender contrition, that he flung discretion to the winds. "You are to think only one thing," he said, passionately, "that I love you—not anybody else, not ever anybody else. I haven't dared put it into words before. I haven't dared ask you to marry me, because I haven't anything to offer you yet. But I thought you—knew——"
Her little hand went out to him. "Oh, Barry," she whispered, "do you really feel that way about me?"
"Yes. More than I have said. More than I can ever say."
He drew her down beside him on the bench. "Our world won't want us to get married, Leila; they will say that I am such a boy. But you will believe in me, dear one?"
"Always, Barry."
"And you love me?"
"Oh, you know it."
"Yes, I know it," he said, in a moved voice, as he raised her hands and kissed them, "I know it—thank God."
After the drill, Porter took the whole party back to Delilah's for tea. And when her guests had gone, and the black-haired beauty went to her flamingo room to dress for dinner, she found a note on her pincushion.
"I have taken Barry's picture, because he meant it for me; it was a mistake, your getting it. He left it with the new maid one day when you were at our house, and she handed it to you instead of to me—she mixed up our names, just as the maids used to mix them up at school. And I know you won't mind my taking it, because with you it is just a game to play at love—with Barry. But it is my life, as you said that day in the Park. And to-day Barry told me that it is his life, too. And I am very happy. But this is our secret, and please let it be your secret until we let the rest of the world know——"
Delilah, reading the childish scrawl, smiled and shook her head. Then she went to the telephone and called up Leila.
"Duckie," she said, "I'll dance at your wedding. Only don't love him too much—no man is worth it."
Then, triumphant from the other end of the line, came the voice of Perfect Faith—"Oh, Barry's worth it. I've known him all my life, Lilah, and I've never had a single doubt."
In Which Roger Sallies Forth in the Service of a Damsel in Distress, and in Which He Meets Dragons Along the Way.
In the weeks which followed the trip to Fort Myer, Mary found an astonishing change in her brother. For the first time in his life he seemed to be taking things seriously. He stayed at home at night and studied. He gave up Jerry Tuckerman and the other radiant musketeers. She did not know the reason for the change but it brought her hope and happiness.
Barry saw Leila often, but, as yet, no one but Delilah Jeliffe knew of the tie between them.
"I ought to tell Dad," Leila had said, timidly; "he'd be very happy. It is what he has always wanted, Barry."
"I must prove myself a man first," Barry told her, "I've squandered some of my opportunities, but now that I have you to work for, I feel as strong as a lion."
They were alone in the General's library. "It is because you trust me, dear one," Barry went on, "that I am strong."
She slipped her little hand into his. "Barry—it seems so queer to think that I shall ever be—your wife."
"You had to be. It was meant from the—beginning."
"Was it, Barry?"
"Yes."
"And it will be to the end. Oh, I shall always love you, dearly, dearly——"
It was idyllic, their little love affair—their big love affair, if one judged by their measure. It was tender, sweet, and because it was their secret, because there was no word of doubt or of distrust from those who were older and wiser, they brought to it all the beauty of youth and high hope.
Thus the spring came, and the early summer, and Barry passed his examinations triumphantly, and came home one night and told Mary that he was going to marry Leila Dick. As he told her his blue eyes beseeched her, and loving him, and hating to hurt him, Mary withheld the expression of her fears, and kissed him and cried a little on his shoulder, and Barry patted her cheek, and said awkwardly: "I know you think I'm not worthy of her, Mary. But she will make a man of me."
Alone, afterward, Mary wondered if she had been wise to acquiesce—yet surely, surely, love was strong enough to lift a man up to a woman's ideal—and Leila was such a—darling.
She put the question to Roger Poole that night. In these warmer days she and Roger had slipped almost unconsciously into close intimacy. He read to her for an hour after dinner, when she had no other engagements, and often they sat in the old garden, she with her note-book on the arm of the stone bench—he at the other end of the bench, under a bush of roses of a hundred leaves. Sometimes Aunt Isabelle was with them, with her fancy work, sometimes they were alone; but always when the hour was over, he would close his book and ascend to his tower, lest he might meet those who came later. There were many nights that he thus escaped Porter Bigelow—nights when in the moonlight he heard the murmur of voices, mingled with the splash of the fountain; and there were other nights when gay groups danced upon the lawn to the music played by Mary just within the open window.
Yet he thanked the gods for the part which he was allowed to play in her life. He lived for that one hour out of the twenty-four. He dared not think what a day would be if he were deprived of that precious sixty minutes.
Now and then, when she had been very sure that no one would come, he had stayed with her in the moonlight, and the little bronze boy had smiled at him from the fountain, and there had been the fragrance of the roses, and Mary Ballard in white on the stone bench beside him, giving him her friendly, girlish confidences; she discussed problems of genteel poverty, the delightful obstinacies of Susan Jenks, the dominance of Aunt Frances. She gave him, too, her opinions—those startling untried opinions which warred constantly with his prejudices.
And now to-night—his advice.
"Do you think love can change a man's nature? Make a weak man strong, I mean?"
He laid down his book. "You ask that as if I could really answer it."
"I think you can. You always seem to be able to put yourself in the other person's place, and it—helps."
"Thank you. And now in whose place shall put myself?"
"The girl's," promptly.
He considered it. "I should say that the man should be put to the test before marriage."
"You mean that she ought to wait until she is sure that he is made over?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I feel that way. But what if the girl believes in him? Doesn't dream that he is weak—trusts him absolutely, blindly? Should any one try to open her eyes?"
"Sometimes it is folly to be wise. Perhaps for her he will always be strong."
"Then what's the answer?"
"Only this. That the man himself should make the test. He should wait until he knows that he is worthy of her."
She made a little gesture of hopelessness, just the lifting of her hands and letting them drop; then she spoke with a rush of feeling.
"Mr. Poole—it is Barry and Leila. Ought I to let them marry?"
He smiled at her confidence in her ability to rule the destinies of those about her.
"I fancy that you won't have anything to do with it. He is of age, and you are only his sister. You couldn't forbid the banns, you know."
"But if I could convince him——"
"Of what?" gravely. "That you think him a boy? Perhaps that would tend to weaken his powers."
"Then I must fold my hands?"
"Yes. As things are now—I should wait."
He did not explain, and she did not ask, for what she should wait. It was as if they both realized that the test would come, and that it would come in time.
And it did come.
It was while Leila was on a trip to the Maine coast with her father.
July was waning, and already an August sultriness was in the air. Those who were left in town were the workers—every one who could get away was gone. Mary, with the care of her house on her hands, refused Aunt Frances' invitation for a month by the sea, and Aunt Isabelle declined to leave her.
"I like it better here, even with the heat," she told her niece, "than running around Bar Harbor with Frances and Grace."
Barry wrote voluminous letters to Leila, and received in return her dear childish scrawls. But the strain of her absence began to tell on him. He began to feel the pull toward old pleasures and distractions. Then one day Jerry Tuckerman arrived on the scene. The next night, he and Barry and the other radiant musketeers motored over to Baltimore by moonlight. Barry did not come home the next day, nor the next, nor the next. Mary grew white and tense, and manufactured excuses which did not deceive Aunt Isabelle. Neither of the tired pale women spoke to each other of their vigils. Neither of them spoke of the anxiety which consumed them.
Then one night, after a message had come from the office, asking for an explanation of Barry's absence; after she had called up the Country Club; after she had called up Jerry Tuckerman and had received an evasive answer; after she had exhausted all other resources, Mary climbed the steps to the Tower Rooms.
And there, sitting stiff and straight in a high-backed chair, with her throat dry, her pulses throbbing, she laid the case before Roger Poole.
"There is no one else—I can speak to—about it. But Barry's been away for nearly a week from the office and from home—and nobody knows where he is. And it isn't the first time. It began before father died, and it nearly broke his heart. You see, he had a brother—whose life was ruined because of this. And Constance and I have done everything. There will be months when he is all right. And then there'll be a week—away. And after it, he is dreadfully depressed, and I'm afraid." She was shivering, though the night was hot.
Roger dared not speak his sympathy. This was not the moment.
So he said, simply, "I'll find him, and when I find him," he went on, "it may be best not to bring him back at once. I've had to deal with such cases before. We will go into the country for a few days, and come back when he is completely—himself."
"Oh, can you spare the time?"
"I haven't taken any vacation, and—so there are still thirty days to my credit. And I need an outing."
He prepared at once to go, and when he had packed a little bag, he came down into the garden. There was moonlight and the fragrance and the splashing fountain. Roger was thrilled by the thought of his quest. It was as if he had laid upon himself some vow which was sending him forth for the sake of this sweet lady. As Mary came toward him, he wished that he might ask for the rose she wore, as his reward. But he must not ask. She gave him her friendship, her confidence, and these were very precious things. He must never ask for more—and so he must not ask for a rose.
And now he was standing just below her on the terrace steps, looking up at her with his heart in his eyes.
"I'll find him," he said, "don't worry."
She reached out and touched his shoulder with her hand. "How good you are," she said, wistfully, "to take all of this trouble for us. I feel that I ought not to let you do it—and yet—we are so helpless, Aunt Isabelle and I."
There was nothing of the boy about her now. She was all clinging dependent woman. And the touch of her hand on his shoulder was the sword of the queen conferring knighthood. What cared he now for a rose?
So he left her, standing there in the moonlight, and when he reached the bottom of the hill, he turned and looked back, and she still stood above him, and as she saw him turn, she waved her hand.
In days of old, knights fought with dragons and cut off their heads, only to find that other heads had grown to replace those which had been destroyed.
And it was such dragons of doubt and despair which Roger Poole fought in the days after he had found Barry.
The boy had hidden himself in a small hotel in the down-town district of Baltimore. Following one clue and then another, Roger had come upon him. There had been no explanations. Barry had seemed to take his rescue as a matter of course, and to be glad of some one into whose ears he could pour the litany of his despair.
"It's no use, Poole. I've fought and fought. Father helped me. And I promised Con. And I thought that my love for Leila would make me strong. But there's no use trying. I'll be beaten. It is in the blood. I had an uncle who drank himself to death. And back of him there was a grandfather."
They had been together for two days. Barry had agreed to Roger's plans for a trip to the country, and now they were under the trees on the banks of one of the little brackish rivers which flow into the Chesapeake. They had fished a little in the early morning, then had brought their boat in, for Barry had grown tired of the sport. He wanted to talk about himself.
"It's no use," he said again; "it's in the blood."
Roger was propped against a tree, his hat off, his dark hair blown back from his fine thin face.
"Our lives," he said, "are our own. Not what our ancestors make them."
"I don't believe it," Barry said, flatly. "I've fought a good fight, no one can say that I haven't. And I've lost. After this do you suppose that Mary will let me marry Leila? Do you suppose the General will let me marry her?"
"Will you let yourself marry her?"
Barry's face flamed. "Then you think I'm not worthy?"
"It is what you think, Ballard, not what I think."
Barry pulled up a handful of grass and threw it away, pulled up another handful and threw it away. Then he said, doggedly, "I'm going to marry her, Poole; no one shall take her away from me."
"And you call that love?"
"Yes. I can't live without her."
Roger with his eyes on the dark water which slipped by the banks, taking its shadows from the darkness of the thick branches which bent above it said quietly, "Love to me has always seemed something bigger than that—it has seemed as if love—great love took into consideration first the welfare of the beloved."
There was a long silence, out of which Barry said tempestuously, "It will break her heart if anything comes between us. I'm not saying that because am a conceited donkey. But she is such a constant little thing."
Roger nodded. "That's all the more reason why you've got to pull up now, Ballard."
"But I've tried."
"I knew a man who tried—and won."
"How?" eagerly.
"I met him in the pine woods of the South. I was down there to recover from a cataclysm which had changed—my life. This man had a little shack next to mine. Neither of us had much money. We lived literally in the open. We cooked over fires in front of our doors. We hunted and fished. Now and then we went to town for our supplies, but most of our things we got from the schooner-men who drove down from the hills. My neighbor was married. He had a wife and three children. But he had come alone. And he told me grimly that he should never go back until he went back a man."
"Did he go back?"
"Yes. He conquered. He looked upon his weakness not merely as a moral disease, but as a physical one. And it was to be cured like any other disease by removing the cause. The first step was to get away from old associations. He couldn't resist temptation, so he had come where he was not tempted. His occupation in the city had been mental, here it was largely physical. He chopped wood, he tramped the forest, he whipped the streams. And gradually he built up a self which was capable of resistance. When he went back he was a different man, made over by his different life. And he has cast out his—devil."
The boy was visibly impressed.
"His way might not be your way," Roger concluded, "but the fact that he fought a winning battle should give you hope."
The next day they went back. Mary met them as if nothing had happened. The basket of fish which they had brought to be cooked by Susan Jenks furnished an unembarrassing topic of conversation. Then Barry went to his room, and Mary was alone with Roger.
She had had a letter from him, and a message by telephone; thus her anxiety had been stilled. And she was very grateful—so grateful that her voice trembled as she held out her hands to him.
"How shall I ever thank you?" she said.
He took her hands in his, and stood looking down at her.
He did not speak at once, yet in those fleeting moments Mary had a strange sense of a question asked and answered. It was as if he were calling upon her for something she was not ready to give—as if he were drawing from her some subconscious admission, swaying her by a force that was compelling, to reveal herself to him.
And, as she thought these things, he saw a new look in her eyes, and her breath quickened.
He dropped her hands.
"Don't thank me," he said. "Ask me again to do something for you. That shall be my reward."
In Which a Scarlet Flower Blooms in the Garden; and in Which a Light Flares Later in the Tower.
In September everybody came back to town, Porter Bigelow among the rest.
He telephoned at once to Mary, "I'm coming up."
She was radiant. "Constance and Gordon arrived Monday, and I want you for dinner. Leila will be here and the General and Aunt Frances and Grace from New York."
His growl came back to her. "And that means that I won't have a minute alone with you."
"Oh, Porter—please. There are so many other girls in the world—and you've had the whole summer to find one."
"The summer has been a howling wilderness. But mother has put me through my paces at the resorts. Mary, I've learned such a lot of new dances to teach you."
"Teach them to Grace."
He groaned. "You know what I think of Grace Clendenning."
"Porter, she's beautiful. She wears little black frocks with wide white collars and cuffs and looks perfectly adorable. To-night she's going to wear a black tulle gown and a queer flaring black tulle head-dress, and with her red hair—you won't be able to drag your eyes from her."
"I've enough red hair of my own," Porter informed her, "without having to look at Grace's."
"I'll put you opposite her at dinner. Come and see, and be conquered."
Roger Poole was also invited to the home-coming dinner. Mary had asked nobody's advice this time. Of late Roger and Barry had been much together, and it was their friendship which Mary had exploited, when Constance, somewhat anxiously, had asked, on the day preceding the dinner, if she thought it was wise to include the lonely dweller in the Tower Rooms.
"He's really very nice, Constance. And he has been a great help to Barry."
It was the first time that they had spoken of their brother. And now Constance's words came with something of an effort. "What of Barry, Mary?"
"He is more of a man, Con. He is trying hard for Leila's sake."
"Gordon thinks they really ought not to be engaged."
The sisters were in Mary's room, and Mary at her little desk was writing out the dinner list for Susan Jenks. She looked up and laid down her pen. "Then you've told Gordon?"
"Yes. And he says that Barry ought to go away."
"Where?"
"Far enough to give Leila a chance to get over it."
"Do you think she would ever get over it, Con?"
"Gordon thinks she would."
Mary's head went up. "I am not asking what Gordon thinks. What do you think?"
"I think as Gordon does." Then as Mary made a little impatient gesture, she added, "Gordon is very wise. At first it seemed to me that he was—harsh, in his judgment of Barry. But he knows so much of men—and he says that here, in town, among his old associations—Barry will never be different. And it isn't fair to Leila."
Mary knew that it was not fair to Leila. She had always known it. Yet she was stubbornly resentful of the fact that Gordon Richardson should be, as it were, the arbiter of Barry's destiny.
"Oh, it is all such a muddle, Con," she said, and put the question aside. "We won't talk about it just now. There is so much else to say—and it is lovely to have you back, dearest—and you are so lovely."
Constance was curled up on Mary's couch, resting after her journey. "I am so happy, Mary. No woman knows anything about it, until she has had it for herself. A man's strength is so wonderful—and Gordon's care of me—oh, Mary, if there were only another man in the world for you like Gordon I should be perfectly content."
It was a fervent gentle echo of Aunt Frances' demand upon her, and Mary suppressing her raging jealousy of the man who had stolen her sister, asked somewhat wistfully, "Can you talk about me, for a minute, and forget that you have a husband?"
"I don't need to forget Gordon," was the serene response. "I can keep him in the back of my mind."
Mary picked up her pen, and underscored "Soup"; then: "Constance, darling," she said, "would you feel dreadfully if I went to work?"
"What kind of work, Mary?"
"In one of the departments,—as stenographer."
"But you don't know anything about it."
"Yes, I do, I've been studying ever since you went away."
"But why, Mary?"
"Because—oh, can't you see, Constance? I can't be sure of—Barry—for future support. And I won't go with Aunt Frances. And this house is simply eating up the little that father left us. When you married, I thought the rental of the Tower Rooms would keep things going, but it won't. And I won't sell the house. I love every old stick and stone of it. And anyhow, must I sit and fold my hands all the rest of my life just because I am a woman?"
"But Mary, dear, you will marry—there's Porter."
"Constance, I couldn't think of marriage that way—as a chance to be taken care of. Oh, Con, I want to wait—for love."
"Dearest, of course. But you can live with us. Gordon would never consent to your working—he thinks it is dreadful for a woman to have to fight the world."
Mary shook her head. "No, it wouldn't be fair to you. It is never fair for an outsider to intrude upon the happiness of a home. If your duet is ever to be a trio, it must not be with my big blundering voice, which could make only a discord, but a little piping one."
She looked up to meet Constance's shy, self-conscious eyes.
Mary flew to her, and knelt beside the couch. "Darling, darling?"
And now the list was forgotten and Susan Jenks coming up for it was made a party to that tremulous secret, and the fate of the dinner was threatened until Mary, coming back to realities, kissed her sister and went to her desk, and held herself sternly to the five following courses of the family dinner which was to please the palates of those fresh from Paris and London and from castles by the sea; and which was to test to the utmost the measure of Susan's culinary skill.
At dinner the next night, Gordon Richardson looked often and intently at Roger Poole, and when, under the warmth of the September moon, the men drifted out into the garden to smoke, he said, "I've just placed you."
Roger nodded. "I thought you'd remember. You were one of the younger boys at St. Martin's—you haven't changed much, but I couldn't be sure."
Gordon hesitated. "I thought I heard from someone that you entered the Church."
"I had a church in the South—for three years."
Gordon tried to keep the curiosity out of his voice.
"And you gave it up?"
"Yes. I gave it up."
That was all. Not a word of the explanation for which he knew Gordon was waiting. Nothing but the bare statement, "I gave it up."
They talked a little of St. Martin's after that, of their boyish experiences. But Roger was conscious that Gordon was weighing him, and asking of himself, "Why did he give it up?"
The two men were sitting on the stone bench where Roger had so often sat with Mary. The garden was showing the first signs of the season's blight. Fading leaf and rustling vine had replaced the unspringing greenness and the fragrant growth of the summer. There were, to be sure, dahlias and chrysanthemums and cosmos. But the glory of the garden was gone.
Then into the garden came Mary!
She was wrapped in a thin silken, scarlet cloak that belonged to Constance. As she passed through the broad band of light made by the street lamp. Roger had a sudden memory of the flame-like blossoming of a certain slender shrub in the spring. It had been the first of the flowers to bloom, and Mary had picked a branch for the vase on his table in the Tower sitting-room.
"Constance wants you, Gordon," Mary said, as she came nearer; "some one has called up to arrange about a dinner date, and she can't decide without you."
She sat down on the stone bench, and Roger, who had risen at her approach, stood under the hundred-leaved bush from which all the roses were gone.
"Do you know," he said, without warning or preface, "that it seemed to me that, as you came into the garden, it bloomed again."
Never before had he spoken thus. And he said it again. "When you came, it was as if the garden bloomed."
He sat down beside her. "Is any one going to claim you right away? Because if not, I have something I want to say."
"Nobody will claim me. At least I hope nobody will. Grace Clendenning is telling Porter about the art of woman's dress. She takes clothes so seriously, you know. And Porter is interested in spite of himself. And Barry and Leila are on the terrace steps, looking at the moon over the river, and Aunt Frances and Aunt Isabelle and General Dick are in the house because of the night air, so there's really no one in the garden but you and me."
"Just you—and—me——" he said, and stopped.
She was plainly puzzled by his manner. But she waited, her arms wrapped in her red cloak.
At last he said, "Your brother-in-law and I went to school together."
"Gordon?"
"Yes. St. Martin's. He was younger than I, and we were not much together. But I knew him. And after he had puzzled over it, he knew me."
"How interesting."
"And he asked me something about myself, which I have never told you; which I want to tell you now."
He was finding it hard to tell, with her eyes upon him, bright as stars.
"Your brother said he had heard that I had gone into the Church—that I had a parish. And what he had heard was true. Until five years ago, I was rector of a church in the South."
"You?" That was all. Just a little breathed note of incredulity.
"Yes. I wanted to tell you before he should have a chance to tell, and to think that I had kept from you something which you should have been told. But I am not sure, even now, that it should be told."
"But on Christmas Eve, you said that you did not believe——"
"I do not."
"And was that the reason you gave it up?"
"No. It is a long story. And it is not a pleasant one. Yet it seems that I must tell it."
The wind had risen and blew a mist from the fountain. The dead leaves rustled.
Mary shivered.
"Oh, you are cold," Roger said, "and I am keeping you."
"No," she said, mechanically, "I am not cold. I have my cloak. Please go on."
But he was not to tell his story then, for a shaft of strong light illumined the roadway, and a big limousine stopped at the foot of the terrace steps. They heard Delilah Jeliffe's high laugh; then Porter's voice in the garden. "Mary, are you there?"
"Yes."
"Grace Clendenning and her mother are going, and Delilah and Mr. Jeliffe have motored out to show you their new car."
There was deep disapproval in his voice. Mary rose reluctantly as he joined them. "Oh, Porter, must I listen to Delilah's chatter for the rest of the evening?"
"You made me listen to Grace's. This is your punishment."
"I don't want to be punished. And I am very tired, Porter."
This was a new word in Mary Ballard's vocabulary, and Porter responded at once to its appeal.
"We will get rid of Delilah presently, and then Gordon and Constance will go with us for a spin around the Speedway. That will set you up, little lady."
Roger stood silent by the fountain. Through the veil of mist the little bronze boy seemed to smile maliciously. During all the years in which he had ridden the dolphin, he had seen men and women come and go beneath the hundred-leaved bush. And he had smiled on all of them, and by their mood they had interpreted his smiles.
Roger's mood at this moment was one of impotent rebellion at Porter's air of proprietorship, and it was with this air intensified that, as Mary shivered again Porter drew her wrap about her shoulders, fastening the loop over the big button with expert fingers and said, carelessly, "Are you coming in with us, Poole?"
"No. Not now."
Above the head of the little bronze boy, level glance met level glance, as in the moonlight the men surveyed each other.
Then Mary spoke.
"Mr. Poole, I am so sorry not to hear the rest of the—story."
"You shall hear it another time."
She hesitated, looking up at him. It was as if she wanted to speak but could not, with Porter there to listen.
So she smiled, with eyes and lips. Just a flash, but it warmed his heart.
Yet as she went away with Porter, and passed once more through the broad band of the street lamp's light which made of her scarlet cloak a flaming flower, he looked after her wistfully, and wondered if when she had heard what he had to tell she would ever smile at him like that again.
Delilah, fresh from a triumphal summer, was in the midst of a laughing group on the porch.
As Mary came up, she was saying: "And we have taken a dear old home in Georgetown. No more glare or glitter. Everything is to be subdued to the dullness of a Japanese print—pale gray and dull blue and a splash of black. This gown gives the keynote."
She was in gray taffeta, with a girdle of soft old blue, and a string of black rose-beads. No color was on her cheeks—there was just the blackness of her hair and the whiteness of her fine skin.
"It's great," Barry said,
Delilah nodded. "Yes. It has taken me several years to find out some things." She looked at Grace and smiled. "It didn't take you years, did it?"
Grace smiled back. The two women were as far apart as the poles. Grace represented the old Knickerbocker stock, Lilah, a later grafting. Grace studied clothes because it pleased her to make fashions a fine art. Delilah studied to impress. But each one saw in the other some similarity of taste and of mood, and the smile that they exchanged was that of comprehension.
Aunt Frances did not approve of Delilah. She said so to Grace going home.
"My dear, they live on the West Side—in a big house on the Drive. My calling list stops east of the Park."
Grace shrugged. "Mother," she said, "I learned one thing in Paris—that the only people worth knowing are the interesting people, and whether they live on the Drive or in Dakota, I don't care. And we've an awful lot of fossils in our set."
Mrs. Clendenning shifted the argument. "I don't see why General Dick allows Leila to be so much with Miss Jeliffe."
"They were at school together, and the General and Mr. Jeliffe are old friends."
Her mother shrugged. "Well, I hope that if we stay here for the winter that they won't be forced upon us. Washington is such a city of climbers, Grace."
Grace let the matter drop there. She had learned discretion. She and her mother viewed life from different angles. To attempt to reconcile these differences would mean, had always meant, strife and controversy, and in these later years, Grace had steered her course toward serenity. She had refused to be blown about by the storms of her mother's prejudices. In the midst of the conventionality of her own social training, she had managed to be untrammeled. In this she was more like Mary than the others of her generation. And she loved Mary, and wanted to see her happy.
"Mother," she asked abruptly, "who is this Roger Poole?"
Mrs. Clendenning told her that he was a lodger in the Tower Rooms—a treasury clerk—a mere nobody.
Grace challenged the last statement. "He's a brilliant man," she said. "I sat next to him at dinner. There's a mystery somewhere. He has an air of authority, the ease of a man of the world."
"He is in love with Mary," said Mrs. Clendenning, "and he oughtn't to be in the house."
"But Mary isn't in love with him—not yet."
"How do you know?"
In the darkness Grace smiled. How did she know? Why, Mary in love would be lighted up by a lamp within! It would burn in her cheeks, flash in her eyes.
"No, Mary's not in love," she said.
"She ought to marry Porter Bigelow."
"She ought not to marry Porter. Mary should marry a man who would utilize all that she has to give. Porter would not utilize it."
"Now what do you mean by that?" said Mrs. Clendenning, impatiently. "Don't talk nonsense, Grace."
"Mary Ballard," Grace analyzed slowly, "is one of the women who if she had been born in another generation would have gone singing to the lions for the sake of an ideal; she would have led an army, or have loaded guns behind barricades. She has courage and force, and the need of some big thing in her life to bring out her best. And Porter doesn't need that kind of wife. He doesn't want it. He wants to worship. To kneel at her feet and look up to her. He would require nothing of her. He would smother her with tenderness. And she doesn't want to be smothered. She wants to lift up her head and face the beating winds."
Mrs. Clendenning, helpless before this burst of eloquence on the part of her usually restrained daughter, asked, tartly, "How in the world do you know what Porter wants or Mary needs?"
"Perhaps," said Grace, slowly, "it is because I am a little like Mary. But I am older, and I've learned to take what the world gives. Not what I want. But Mary will never be content with compromise, and she will always go through life with her head up."
Mary's head was up at that very moment, as with cheeks flaming and eyes bright, she played hostess to her guests, while in the back of her brain were beating questions about Roger Poole.
Freed from the somewhat hampering presence of Mrs. Clendenning, Delilah was letting herself go, and she drew even from grave Gordon Richardson the tribute of laughter.
"It was an artist that I met at Marblehead," she said, "who showed me the way. He told me that I was a blot against the sea and the sky, with my purples and greens and reds and yellows. I will show you his sketches of me as I ought to be. They opened my eyes; and I'll show you my artist too. He's coming down to see whether I have caught the idea."
And now she moved down the steps. "Father will be furious if I keep him waiting any longer. He's crazy over the car, and when he drives, it is a regular Tam O'Shanter performance. I won't ask any of you to risk your necks with him yet, but if you and the General are willing to try it, Leila, we will take you home."
"I haven't fought in fifty battles to show the white feather now," said the General, and Leila chirruped, "I'd love it," and presently, with Barry in devoted attendance, they drove off.
Mary, waiting on the porch for Porter to telephone for his own car, which was to take them around the Speedway, looked eagerly toward the fountain. The moon had gone under a cloud, and while she caught the gleam of the water, the hundred-leaved bush hid the bench. Was Roger Poole there? Alone?
She heard Porter's voice behind her. "Mary," he said, "I've brought a heavy wrap. And the car will be here in a minute."
Aunt Isabelle had given him the green wrap with the fur. She slipped into it silently, and he turned the collar up about her neck.
"I'm not going to have you shivering as you did in that thin red thing," he said.
She drew away. It was good of him to take care of her, but she didn't want his care. She didn't want that tone, that air of possession. She was not Porter's. She belonged to herself. And to no one else. She was free.
With the quick proud movement that was characteristic of her, she lifted her head. Her eyes went beyond Porter, beyond the porch, to the Tower Rooms where a light flared, suddenly. Roger Poole was not in the garden; he had gone up without saying "Good-night."