In Which Mary Faces the Winter of Her Discontent; and in Which Delilah Sees Things in a Crystal Ball.
The summer slipped by, monotonously hot, languidly humid. And it was on these hot and humid days that Mary felt the grind of her new occupation. She grew to dread her entrance into the square close office room, with its gaunt desks and its unchanging occupants. She waxed restless through the hours of confinement, escaping thankfully at the end of a long day.
She longed for a whiff of the sea, for the deeps of some forest, for the fields of green which must be somewhere beyond the blue-gray haze which had settled over the shimmering city.
She began to show the effects of her unaccustomed drudgery. She grew pale and thin. Aunt Isabelle was worried. The two women sat much by the fountain. Mary had begged Aunt Isabelle to go away to some cooler spot. But the gentle lady had refused.
"This is home to me, my dear," she had said, "and I don't mind the heat. And there's no happiness for me in big hotels."
"There'd be happiness for me anywhere that I could get a breath of coolness," Mary said, restlessly. "I can hardly wait for the fall days."
Yet when the cooler days came, there was the dreariness of rain and of sighing winds. And now it was November, and Roger Poole had been away a year.
The garden was dead, and Mary was glad. Dead gardens seemed to fit into her mood better than those which bloomed. Resolutely she set herself to be cheerful; conscientiously, she told herself that she must live up to the theories which she had professed; sternly, she called herself to account that she did not exult in the freedom which she had craved. Constantly her mind warred with her heart, and her heart won; and she faced the truth that all seasons would be dreary without Roger Poole.
Her letters to him of late had lacked the spontaneity which had at first characterized them. She knew it, and tried to regain her old sense of ease and intimacy. But the doubts which Porter had planted had borne fruit. Always between her and Roger floated the vision of the little saint in red.
It was inevitable that Roger's letters should change. He ceased to show her the side which for a time he had so surprisingly revealed. Their correspondence became perfunctory—intermittent.
"It is my own fault," Mary told herself, yet the knowledge did not make things easier.
And now began the winter of her discontent. If any one had told her in her days of buoyant self-confidence that she would ever go to bed weary and wake up hopeless, she would have scorned the idea; yet the fact remained that the fruit of her independence was Dead Sea apples.
It was a letter from Barry which again brought her head up, and made her life march once more to a martial tune.
"I have found the work for which I am fitted," he wrote; "you don't know how good it seems. For so many years I went to my desk like a boy driven to school. But now—why, I work after hours for the sheer love of it—and because it seems to bring me nearer to Leila."
This from Barry, the dawdler! And she who had preached was whimpering about heat and cold, about long hours and hard work—as if these things matter!
Why, life was a Great Adventure, and she had forgotten!
And now she began to look about her—to find, if she could, some ray to illumine her workaday world.
She found it in the friendliness and companionship of her office comrades—good comrades they were—fighting the battle of drudgery shoulder to shoulder, sharing the fortunes of the road, needing, some of them, the uplift of her courage, giving some of them more than they asked.
As Mary grew into their lives, she grew away somewhat from her old crowd. And if, at times, her gallant fight seemed futile—if at times she could not still the cry of her heart, it was because she was a woman, made to be loved, fitted for finer things and truer things than writing cabalistic signs on a tablet and transcribing them, later, on the typewriter.
Leila had refused to be dropped from Mary's life. She came, whenever she could, to walk a part of the way home with her friend, and the two girls would board a car and ride to the edge of the town, preferring to tramp along the edges of the Soldiers' Home or through the Park to the more formal promenade through the city streets.
It was during these little adventures that Mary became conscious of certain reserves in the younger girl. She was closely confidential, yet the open frankness of the old days was gone.
Once Mary spoke of it. "You've grown up, all in a minute, Leila," she said. "You're such a quiet little mouse."
Leila sighed. "There's so much to think about."
Watching her, Mary decided. "It is harder for her than for Barry. He has his work. But she just waits and longs for him."
In waiting and longing, Little-Lovely Leila grew more mouse-like than ever. And at last Mary spoke to the General. "She needs a change."
He nodded. "I know it. I am thinking of taking her over in the spring."
"How lovely. Have you told her?"
"No—I thought it would be a grand surprise."
"Tell her now, dear General. She needs to look forward."
So the General, who had been kept in the house nearly all winter by his rheumatism, spoke of certain baths in Germany.
"I thought I'd go over and try them," he informed his small daughter, on the day after his talk with Mary, "and you could stop and call on Barry."
"Barry!" She made a little rush toward him. "Dad,Dad, do you mean it?"
"Yes."
She tucked her head into his shoulder and cried for happiness. "Dad, I've missed him so."
With this hope held out to her, Little-Lovely Leila grew radiant. Once more her feet danced along the halls, and the music of her voice trilled bird-like in the big rooms.
Delilah, discussing it with her artist, said: "Leila makes me believe in Romance with a big R. But I couldn't love like that."
Colin smiled. "You'd love like a lioness. I've subdued you outwardly, but within you are still primitive."
"I wonder——" Delilah mused.
"The man for you," Colin turned to her suddenly, "is Porter Bigelow. Of course I'm taking it from the artist's point of view. You're made for each other—a pair of young gods—his red head just topping your black one—It was that way at the garden party; any one could see it."
Delilah laughed. "His eyes aren't for me. With him it is Mary Ballard. If I were in love with him, I should hate Mary. But I don't; I love her. And she's in love with Roger Poole."
Colin looked up from the samples from which he and Delilah were choosing her spring wardrobe.
"Poole? I knew his wife," he said abruptly; "it was her picture that I showed you the other night—the little saint in the Fra Angelico pose—it didn't come to me until afterward that he might be the same Poole of whom I had heard you speak."
Delilah swept across the room, and turned the canvas outward. "Roger Poole's wife," she said, "of all things!" Then she stood staring silently.
"You didn't tell us who she was."
"No," he was weighing mentally Porter's attitude in the matter, "no one knew but Bigelow."
"And he showed this to Mary?" They looked at each other, and laughed. "Perhaps all's fair in love," Delilah murmured, at last, "but I wouldn't have believed it of him."
As she turned the picture toward the wall, Delilah decided, "Mary Ballard is worth a hundred of such women as this."
"A woman like you is worth a hundred of them," Colin stated deliberately.
Delilah flushed faintly. Colin Quale was giving to her something which no other man had given. And she liked it.
"Do you know what you are doing to me?" she said, as she sat down by the window. "You are making me think that I am like the pictures you paint of me."
"You are," was the quiet response; "it's just a matter of getting beneath the surface."
There was a pause during which his fingers and eyes were busy with the shining samples—then Delilah said: "If Leila and her father go to Germany in May, I'm going to get Dad to go too. I don't suppose you'd care to join us? You'll want to get back to that girl in Amesbury or Newburyport, or whatever it is."
"What girl?"
"The one you are going to marry."
"There is no girl," said Colin quietly, "in Amesbury or Newburyport; there never has been and there never will be." Coming close, he held against her cheek a sample of soft pale yellow. "Leila Dick wears that a lot, but it's not for you." He stood back and gazed at her meditatively.
"Colin," she protested, "when you look at me that way, I feel like a wooden model."
He smiled, "That's what you have come to mean to me," he said; "I don't want to think of you as a woman."
"Why not?" asked daring Delilah.
"Because it is, to say the least, disturbing."
He occupied himself with his samples, shaking his head over them.
"None of these will do for the Secretary's dinner. You must have lace with many flounces caught up in the new fashion. And I shall want your hair different. Take it down."
She was used to him now, and presently it fell about her in all its shining sable beauty; and as he separated the strands, it was like a thing alive under his hands.
He crowned her head with the braids in a sort of old-fashioned coronet. And so arranged, the old fashion became a new fashion, and Delilah was like a queen.
"You see—with the lace and your pearl ornaments. There is nothing startling; but no one will be like you."
And there was no one like her. And because of the dress, which Colin had planned, and because of the way which he had taught her to do her hair, Delilah annexed to her train of admirers on the night of the Secretary's dinner a distinguished titled gentleman, who was looking for a wife to grace his ancestral halls—and who was impressed mightily by the fact that Delilah looked the part to perfection.
He proposed to her in three weeks, and was so sure of his ability to get what he wanted that he was stunned by her answer:
"Perhaps I'll make up my mind to it. I'll give you your answer when I come over in the spring."
"But I want my answer now."
"I'm sorry. But I can't."
When she told Colin of her abrupt dismissal of the discomfited gentleman, she asked, almost plaintively, "Why couldn't I say 'yes' at once? It is the thing I've always wanted."
"Have you really wanted it?"
"Of course."
"Not of course. You want other things more."
"What for example?"
"I think you know."
She did know, and she drew a quick breath. Then laughed.
"You're trying to teach me to understand my—emotions, Colin, as you have taught me to understand my clothes."
"You're an apt pupil."
Tea came in, just then, and she poured for him, telling his fortune afterward in his teacup.
"Are you superstitious?" she asked him, having worked out a future of conventional happiness and success.
"Not enough to believe what you have told me." He was flickering his pale lashes and smiling. "Life shall bring me what I want because I shall make it come."
"Oh, you think that?"
"Yes. All things are possible to those of us who believe they are possible."
"Perhaps to a man. But—to a woman. There's Leila, for example. I'm afraid——"
"You mustn't be. Life will come right for her."
"How do you know?"
"It comes right for all of us, in one way or another. You'll find it works out. You're afraid for your little friend because of Ballard—he's pretty gay, eh?"
"Yes. More, I think, than she understands. But everybody else knows that they sent him away for that. And I can't see any way out. If he marries her he'll break her heart; if he doesn't marry her he'll break it—and there you have it."
"You must not put these 'ifs' in their way. There'll be some way out."
She rose and went to a table to a little cabinet which she unlocked.
"You wouldn't let me have my crystal ball in evidence," she said, "because it doesn't fit in with the rest of my new furnishings—but it tells things."
"What things?"
"I'll show you." She set it on the table between them. "Put your hand on each side of it."
He grasped it with his flexible fingers. "Don't invent——" he warned.
She began to speak slowly, and she was still at it when Porter's big car drove up to the door, and he came in with Mary and Leila.
"I picked up these two on their way home," Porter explained; "it is raining pitchforks, and I'm in my open car. And so, kind lady, dear lady, will you give us tea?"
Colin and Delilah, each a little pale, breathing quickly, rose to greet their guests.
"She's been telling my fortune," Colin informed them, while Delilah gave orders for more hot water and cups. "It's a queer business."
Porter scoffed. "A fake, if there ever was one."
Colin mused. "Perhaps. But she has the air of a seeress when she says it all—and she has me slated for a—masterpiece—and marriage."
Leila, standing by the table, touched the crystal globe with doubtful fingers. "Do you really see things, Delilah?"
"Sit down, and I'll prove it."
Leila shrank. "Oh, no."
But Porter insisted. "Be a sport, Leila."
So she settled herself in the chair which Colin had occupied, her curly locks half hiding her expectant eyes.
And now Delilah looked, bending over the ball.
There was a long silence. Then Delilah seemed to shake herself, as one shakes off a trance. She pushed the ball away from her with a sudden gesture. "There's nothing," she said, in a stifled voice; "there's really nothing to tell, Leila."
"I knew that you'd back out with all of us here to listen," Porter triumphed.
But Colin saw more than that.
"I think we want our tea," he said, "while it is hot," and he handed Delilah the cups, and busied himself to help her with the sugar and lemon, and to pass the little cakes, and all the time he talked in his pleasant half-cynical, half-earnest fashion, until their minds were carried on to other things.
When at last they had gone, he came back to her quickly.
"What was it?" he asked. "What did you see in the ball?"
She shivered. "It was Barry. Oh, Colin, I don't really believe in it—perhaps it was just my imagination because I am worried about Leila, but I saw Barry looking at me with such a white strange face out of the dark."
In Which a Little Lady in Black Comes to Washington to Witness the Swearing-in of a Gentleman and a Scholar.
It was in February that Roger wrote somewhat formally to ask if his Cousin Patty might have a room in Mary's big house during the coming inauguration.
"She is supremely happy over the Democratic victory, but in spite of her advanced ideas, she is a timid little thing, and she has no knowledge of big cities. I feel that many difficulties would be avoided if you could take her in. I want her, too, to know you. I had thought at first that I might come with her. But I think not. I am needed here."
He did not say why he was needed. He said little of himself and of his work. And Mary wondered. Had his enthusiasm waned? Was he, after all, swayed by impulse, easily discouraged? Was Porter right, and was Roger's failure in life due not to outside forces, but to weakness within himself?
She wrote him that she should be glad to have Cousin Patty, and it was on the first of March that Cousin Patty came.
Once in four years the capital city takes on a supreme holiday aspect. In other years there may be parades, in other years there may be pageants—it is an every-day affair, indeed, to hear up and down the Avenue the beat of music, and the tramp of many feet. There are funerals of great men, with gun carriages draped with the flag, and with the Marine Band playing the "Dead March." There are gay cavalcades rushing in from Fort Myer, to escort some celebrity; there are pathetic files of black folk, gorgeous in the insignia of some society which gives to its dead members the tribute of a conspicuousness which they have never known in life. There are circus parades, and suffrage parades, minstrel parades and parades of the boys from the high schools—all the display of military and motley by which men advertise their importance and their wares.
But the Inauguration is the one great and grand effort. All work stops for it; all traffic stops for it; all of the policemen in the town patrol it; half the detectives in the country are imported to protect it. All of fashion views it from the stands up-town; all of the underworld gazes at it from the south side of the street down-town. Packed trains bring the people. And the people are crowded into hotels and boarding-houses, and into houses where thresholds are never crossed at any other time by paying guests.
To the inauguration of 1913 was added another element of interest—the parade of the women, on the day preceding the changing of presidents. Hence the red and white and blue of former decorations were enlivened by the yellow and white and purple of the Suffrage colors.
Cousin Patty wore a little knot of yellow ribbon when Porter met her at the station.
Porter was not inclined to welcome any cousin of Roger Poole's with open arms. But he knew his duty to Mary's guests. He had offered his car, and had insisted that Mary should make use of it.
"For Heaven's sake, don't make me utterly miserable by refusing to let me do anything for you, Mary," he had said, when she had protested. "It is the only pleasure I have."
Cousin Patty, in spite of Porter's preconceived prejudices, made at once a place for herself. She gave him her little bag, and with a sigh of such infinite relief, her eyes like a confiding child's, that he laughed and bent down to her.
"Mary Ballard is in my car outside. I didn't want her to get into this crowd."
Cousin Patty shuddered. "Crowd! I've never seen anything like—the people. I didn't know there were so many in the world. You see, I've never been far away from home. And they kept pouring in from all the stations, and when I reached here and stood on the steps of the Pullman, and saw the masses streaming in ail directions, I felt faint—but the conductor pointed out the way to go, and then I saw your—lovely head."
She said it so sincerely that Porter laughed.
"Miss Carew," he said, "I believe you mean it."
"Mean what?"
"That it's a lovely head."
"It is." The dark eyes were shining. "You were so tall that I could see you above the people, and Roger had described how you would look. Mary Ballard had said you would surely be here to meet me, and now—oh, I'm really in Washington!"
If she had said, "I'm really in Paradise," it could not have expressed more supreme bliss.
"I never expected to be here," Cousin Patty went on to explain, as they crossed the concourse, and Porter guided her through the crowd. "I never expected it. And now Roger's beautiful Mary Ballard has promised to show me everything."
Roger's beautiful Mary Ballard, indeed!
"Miss Ballard," he said, stiffly, "is taking a week off from her work. And she is going to devote it to sightseeing with you."
"Yes, Roger told me. Is that Mary smiling from that big car? Oh, Mary Ballard, I knew you'd be just—like this."
Well, nobody could resist Cousin Patty. There was that in her charming voice, in her vivid personality which set her apart from other middle-aged and well-bred women of her type.
Porter made a wide sweep to take in the Capitol and the Library; then he flew up the Avenue, disfigured now by the stands from which people were to view the parade.
But Cousin Patty's eyes went beyond the stand to the tall straight shaft of the Monument in the distance, and when they passed the White House, she simply settled back in her seat and sighed.
"To think that, after all these years, there'll be a gentleman and a scholar to live there."
"There have been other scholars—and gentlemen," Mary reminded her.
"Of course, my dear. But this is different. You see, in our section of the country a Republican is just a—Republican. And a Democrat is a—gentleman."
Mary's eyes were dancing. "Cousin Patty," she said, "may I call you Cousin Patty? What will you do when women vote? Will the women who are Republicans be ladies?"
"Oh, now you are laughing at me," Cousin Patty said, helplessly.
Mary gave Cousin Patty the suite next to Aunt Isabelle's, and the two gentle ladies smiled and kissed in the fashion of their time, and became friends at once.
When Cousin Patty had unpacked her bag, and had put all of her nice little belongings away, she tripped across the threshold of the door between the two rooms, to talk to Aunt Isabelle.
"Mary said that we should be going to the theater to-night with Mr. Bigelow. You must tell me what to wear, please. You see I've been out of the world so long."
"But you are more of it than I," Aunt Isabelle reminded her.
Cousin Patty, in her pretty wrapper, sat down in a rocking-chair comfortably to discuss it. "What do you mean?"
"Mary has been telling me how far ahead of me your thoughts have flown. You're taking up all the new questions, and you're a successful woman of business. I have envied you ever since I heard about the wedding cake."
"It's a good business," said Cousin Patty, "and I can do it at home. I couldn't have gone out in the world to make my fight for a living. I can defy men in theory; but I'm really Southern and feminine—if you know what that means," she laughed happily. "Of course I never let them know it, not even Roger."
And now Mary came in, lovely in her white dinner gown.
"Oh," she accused them, "you aren't ready."
Cousin Patty rose. "I wanted to know what to wear, and we've talked an hour, and haven't said a word about it."
"Don't bother," Mary said; "there'll be just four of us."
"But I want to bother. Roger helped me to plan my things. He remembered every single dress you wore while he was here."
"Really?" The look which Roger had loved was creeping into Mary's clear eyes. "Really, Cousin Patty?"
"Yes. He drew a sketch of your velvet wrap with the fur, and I made mine like it, only I put a frill in place of the fur." She trotted into her room and brought it back for Mary's inspection. "Is it all right?" she asked, anxiously, as she slipped it on, and craned her neck in front of Aunt Isabelle's long mirror to see the sweep of the folds.
"It is perfect; and to think he should remember."
Cousin Patty gave her a swift glance. "That isn't all he has remembered," she said, succinctly.
It developed when they went down for dinner that Roger had ordered a box of flowers for them—purple violets for Aunt Isabelle and Cousin Patty, white violets for Mary.
"How lovely," Mary said, bending over the box of sweetness. "I am perfectly sure no one ever sent me white violets before."
There were other flowers—orchids from Porter.
"And now—which will you wear?" demanded sprightly Cousin Patty, an undercurrent of anxiety in her tone.
Mary wore the violets, and Porter gloomed all through the play.
"So my orchids weren't good enough," he said, as she sat beside him on their way to the hotel where they were to have supper.
"They were lovely, Porter."
"But you liked the violets better? Who sent them, Mary?"
"Don't ask in that tone."
"You don't want to tell me."
"It isn't that—it's your manner." She broke off to say pleadingly, "Don't let us quarrel over it. Let me forget for to-night that there's any discord in the world—any work—any worry. Let me be Contrary Mary—happy, care-free, until it all begins over again in the morning."
Very softly she said it, and there were tears in her voice. He glanced down at her in surprise. "Is that the way life looks to you—you poor little thing?"
"Yes, and when you are cross, you make it harder."
Thus, woman-like, she put him in the wrong, and the question of violets vs. orchids was shelved.
Presently, in the great red dining-room, Porter was ordering things for Cousin Patty's delectation of which she had never heard. Her enjoyment of the novelty of it all was refreshing. She tasted and ate and looked about her as frankly as a happy child, yet never, with it all, lost her little air of serene dignity, which set her apart from the flaming, flaring type of femininity which abounds in such places.
The great spectacle of the crowded rooms made a deep impression on Cousin Patty. To her this was no gathering of people who were eating too much and drinking too much, and who were taking from the night the hours which should have been given to sleep. To her it was—fairy-land; all of the women were lovely, all of the men celebrities—and the gold of the lights, the pink of the azaleas which were everywhere in pots, the murmur of voices, the sweet insistence of the music in the balcony, the trail of laughter over it all—these were magical things, which might disappear at any moment, and leave her among her boxes of wedding cake, after the clock struck twelve.
But it did not disappear, and she went home happy and too tired to talk.
At breakfast the next morning, Mary announced their programme for the day.
"Delilah has telephoned that she wants us to have lunch with her at the Capitol. Her father is in Congress, Cousin Patty, and they will show us everything worth seeing. Then we'll go for a ride and have tea somewhere, and the General and Leila have asked us for dinner. Shall you be too tired?"
"Tired?" Cousin Patty's laugh trilled like the song of a bird. "I feel as if I were on wings."
Cousin Patty trod the steps of the historic Capitol with awe. To her these halls of legislation were sacred to the memory of Henry Clay and of Daniel Webster. Every congressman was a Personage—and many a simple man, torn between his desire to serve his constituents, and his need to placate the big interests of his state, would have been touched by the faith of this little Southern lady in his integrity.
"A man couldn't walk through here, with the statues of great men confronting him, and the pictures of other great men looking down on him, and the shades of those who have gone before him haunting the shadows and whispering from the galleries, without feeling that he was uplifted by their influence," she whispered to Mary, as from the Member's Gallery she gazed down at the languid gentlemen who lounged in their seats and listened with blank faces to one of their number who was speaking against time.
Colin Quale, who lunched with them, was delighted with her.
"She is an example of what I've been trying to show you," he said to Delilah. "She is so well bred that she absolutely lacks self-consciousness, and she is so clear-minded that you can't muddy her thoughts with scandals of this naughty world. She is a type worthy of your study."
"Colin," Delilah questioned, with a funny little smile, "is this a 'back to grandma' movement that you are planning for me?"
The pale little man flickered his blond lashes, but his face was grave.
"No," he said, "but I want you to be abreast of the times. There's going to be a reaction from this reign of the bizarre. We've gone long enough to harems and odalisques for our styles and our manners and presently we are going to see the blossoming of old-fashioned beauty."
"And do you think the old manners and morals will come?"
He shrugged. "Who knows? We can only hope."
It was to Colin that Cousin Patty spoke confidingly of her admiration of Delilah. "She's beautiful," she said. "Mary says that you plan her dresses. I never thought that a man could do such things until Roger took such an interest."
"Men of to-day take an interest," Colin said. "Woman's dress is one branch of art. It is worthy of a man's best powers because it adds to the beauty of the world."
"That's the funny part of it," Cousin Patty ventured; "women are taking up men's work, and men are taking up women's—it is all topsy turvy."
The little artist pondered. "Perhaps in the end they'll understand each other better."
"Do you think they will?"
"Yes. The woman who does a man's work learns to know what fighting means. The man who makes a study of feminine things begins to see back of what has seemed mere frivolity and love of admiration a desire for harmony and beauty, and self-expression. Some day women will come back to simplicity and to the home, because they will have learned things from men and will have taught things to men, and by mutual understanding each will choose the best."
Cousin Patty was inspired by the thought. "I never heard any one put it that way before."
"Perhaps not—but I have seen much of the world—and of men—and of women."
"Yet all women are not alike."
"No." His eyes swept the table. "You three—Miss Ballard, Miss Jeliffe—how far apart—yet you're all women—all, I may say, awakened women—refusing to follow the straight and narrow path of the old ideal. Isn't it so?"
"Yes. I'm in business—none of our women has ever been in business. Mary won't marry for a home—yet all of her women have, consciously or unconsciously, married for a home. And Miss Jeliffe I don't know well enough to judge. But I fancy she'll blaze a way for herself."
His eyes rested on Delilah. "She has blazed a way," he said, slowly; "she's a most remarkable woman."
Delilah, looking up, caught his glance and smiled.
"Are they in love with each other?" Cousin Patty asked Mary that night.
Mary laughed. "Delilah's a will-o'-the-wisp; who knows?"
With their days filled, there was little time for intimacy or confidential talks between Mary and Cousin Patty. And since Mary would not ask questions about Roger, and since Cousin Patty seemed to have certain reserves in his direction, it was only meager information which trickled out; and with this Mary was forced to be content.
Grace marched in the Suffrage Parade, and they applauded her from their seats on the Treasury stand. Aunt Frances, who sat with them, was filled with indignation.
"To think thatmydaughter——"
Cousin Patty threw down the gauntlet: "Why not your daughter, Mrs. Clendenning?"
"Because the women of our family have always been—different."
"So have the women of my family," calmly, "but that's no reason why we should expect to stand still. None of the women of my family ever made wedding cake for a living. But that isn't any reason why I should starve, is it?"
Aunt Frances shifted the argument. "But to march—on the street."
"That's their way of expressing themselves. Men march—and have marched since the beginning. Sometimes their marching doesn't mean anything, and sometimes it does. And I'm inclined," said Cousin Patty with an emphatic nod of her head, "to think that this marching means a great deal."
On and on they came, these women who marched for a Cause, heads up, eyes shining. There had been something to bear at the other end of the line where the crowd had pressed in upon them, and there had been no adequate police protection, but they were ready for martyrdom, if need be, perhaps, some of them would even welcome it.
But Grace was no fanatic. She met them afterward, and told of her experience gleefully.
"You should have been with me, Mary," she said.
Porter rose in his wrath. "What has bewitched you women?" he demanded. "Do you all believe in it?"
And now Leila piped, "I don't want to march. I don't want to do the things that men do. I want to have a nice little house, and cook and sew, and take care of somebody."
They all laughed. But Porter surveyed Leila with satisfaction.
"Barry's a lucky fellow," he said.
"Oh, Porter," Mary reproached him, as he helped her down from her high seat on the stand.
"Well, he is. Leila couldn't keep her nice little house any better than you, Mary. But the thing is that shewantsto keep it for Barry. And you—you want to march on the street—and laugh—at love."
She surveyed him coldly. "That shows just how much you understand me," she said, and turned her back on him and accepted an invitation to ride home in the Jeliffes' car.
On the day of the Inauguration, the same party had seats on the stand opposite the one in front of the White House from which the President reviewed the troops.
And it was upon the President that Cousin Patty riveted her attention. To be sure her little feet beat time to the music, and she flushed and glowed as the soldiers swept by, and the horses danced, and the people cheered. But above and beyond all these things was the sight of the man, who in her eyes represented the resurrection of the South—the man who should sway it back to its old level in the affairs of the nation.
"I couldn't have dreamed," she emphasized, as she talked it over that night with Mary, "of anything so satisfying as his smile. I shall always think of him as smiling out in that quiet way of his at the people."
Mary had a vision of another Inauguration and of another President who had smiled—a President who had captured the hearts of his countrymen as perhaps this scholar never would. It was at the shrine of that strenuous and smiling President that Mary still worshiped. But they were both great men—it was for the future to tell which would live longest in the hearts of the people.
The two women were in Cousin Patty's room. They were too excited to sleep, for the events of the day had been stimulating. Cousin Patty had suggested that Mary should get into something comfortable, and come back and talk. And Mary had come, in a flowing blue gown with her fair hair in shining braids. They were alone together for the first time since Cousin Patty's arrival. It was a moment for which Mary had waited eagerly, yet now that it had come to her, she hardly knew how to begin.
But when she spoke, it was with an impulsive reaching out of her hands to the older woman.
"Cousin Patty, tell me about Roger Poole."
Cousin Patty hesitated, then asked a question, almost sharply, "My dear, why did you fail him?"
The color flooded Mary's face. "Fail him?" she faltered.
"Yes. When he first came to me, there were your letters. He used to read bits of them aloud, and I could see inspiration in them for him. Then he stopped reading them to me, and they seemed to bring heaviness with them—I can't tell you how unhappy he was until he began to make his work fill his life. Do you mind telling me what made the change in you, my dear?"
Mary gazed into the fire, the blood still in her face.
"Cousin Patty, did you know his wife?"
"Yes. Is it because of her, Mary?"
"Yes. After Roger went away, I saw her picture. Colin had painted it. And, Cousin Patty, it seemed the face of such a little—saint."
"Yet Roger told you his story?"
"Yes."
"And you didn't believe him?"
"Oh, I don't know what to believe."
"I see," but Cousin Patty's manner was remote.
Mary slipped down to the stool at Cousin Patty's feet, and brought her clear eyes to the level of the little lady's. "Dear Cousin Patty," she implored, "if you only know how Iwantto believe in Roger Poole."
Cousin Patty melted. "My dear," she said with decision, "I'm going to tell you everything."
And now woman's heart spoke to woman's heart. "I visited them in the first year of their marriage. I wanted to love his wife, and at first she seemed charming. But I hadn't been there a week before I was puzzling over her. She was made of different clay from Roger. In the intimacy of that home I discovered that she wasn't—a lady—not in our nice old-fashioned sense of good manners, and good morals. She said things that you and I couldn't say, and she did things. I felt the catastrophe in the air long before it came. But I couldn't warn Roger. I just had to let him find out. I wasn't there when the blow fell; but I'll tell you this, that Roger may have been a quixotic idiot in the eyes of the world, but if he failed it was because he was a dreamer, and an idealist, not a coward and a shirk." Her eyes were blazing. "Oh, if you could hear what some people said of him, Mary."
Mary could fancy what they had said.
"Oh, Cousin Patty, Cousin Patty," she cried, "Do you think he will ever forgive me? I have let such people talk to me, and I have listened!"
In Which the Garden Begins to Bloom; and in Which Roger Dreams.
March, which brings to the North sharp winds and gray days, brings to the sand-hill country its season of greatest beauty.
Straight up from the unpromising soil springs the green—the pines bud and blossom, everywhere there is the delicate tracery of pale leafage, there is the white of dogwood, the pink of peach trees and of apple bloom, and again the white of cherry trees and of bridal bush. There are amethystine vistas, and emerald vistas, and vistas of rose and saffron—the cardinals burn with a red flame in the magnolias, the mocking-birds sing in the moonlight.
It was through the awakened world that Roger drove one Sunday to preach to his people.
He did not call it preaching. As yet his humility gave it no such important name. He simply went into the sand-hills and talked to those who were eager to hear. Beginning with the boy, he had found that these thirsty souls drank at any spring. The boys listened breathless to his tales of chivalry, the men to his tales of what other men had achieved, the women were reached by stories of what their children might be, and the children rose to his bait of fairy books and of colored pictures.
Gradually he had gone beyond the tales of chivalry and the achievements of men. Gradually he had brought them up and up. Other men had preached to them, but their preaching had not been linked with lessons of living. Others had cried, "Repent," but not one of them had laid emphasis on the fact that repentance was evidenced by the life which followed.
But Roger stood among them, his young face grave, his wonderful voice persuasive, and told them what it meant to be—saved. Planting hope first in their hearts, he led them toward the Christ-ideal. Manhood, he said, at its best was godlike; one must have purity, energy, education, growth.
And they, who listened, began to see that it was a spiritual as well as practical thing to set their houses in order, to plant and to till and to make the soil produce. They saw in the future a community which was orderly and law-abiding, they saw their children brought out of the bondage of ignorance and into the freedom of knowledge. And they saw more than that—they saw the Vision, faintly at first, but with ever-increasing clearness.
It was a wonderful task which Roger had set for himself, and he threw himself into his work with flaming energy. He hired a buggy and a little fat horse, and spent some of his nightsen routein the houses of his friends along the way; other nights—and these were the ones he liked best—he slept under the pines. With John Ballard's old Bible under his arm, and his prayer-book in his pocket, he went forth each week, and always he found a congregation ready and waiting.
Over the stretches of that barren country they came to hear him, sailing in their schooner-wagons toward the harbor of the hope which he brought to them.
When he had preached from his pulpit, he had talked to men and women of culture and he had spent much of his time in polishing a phrase, or in rounding out a sentence. But now he spent his time in search of the clear words which would carry his—message.
For Mary had said that every man who preached must have a message.
Mary!
How far she had receded from him. When he thought of her now it was with a sense of overwhelming loss. She had chosen to withdraw herself from him. In every letter he had seen signs of it—and he could not protest. No man in his position could say to a woman, "I will not let you go." He had nothing to offer her but his life in the pines, a life that could not mean much to such a woman.
But it meant much to himself. Gradually he had come to see that love alone could never have brought to him what his work was bringing. He had a sense of freedom such as one must have whose shackles have been struck off. He began to know now what Mary had meant when she had said, "I feel as if I were flying through the world on strong wings." He, too, felt as if he were flying, and as it his wings were carrying him up and up beyond any heights to which he had hitherto soared.
He slept that night in one of the rare groves of old pines. He made a couch of the brown needles and threw a rug over them. The air was soft and heavy with resinous perfume. As he lay there in the stillness, the pines stretched above him like the arches of some great cathedral. His text came to him, "Come thou south wind and blow upon my garden." It was a simple people to whom he would talk on the morrow, but these things they could understand—the winds of heaven, and the stars, and the little foxes that could spoil the grapes.
When he woke there was a mocking-bird singing. He had gone to sleep obsessed by his sermon, uplifted. He woke with a sense of loneliness—a great longing for human help and understanding—a longing to look once more into Mary Ballard's clear eyes and to draw strength from the source which had once inspired him.
John Ballard's Bible lay on the rug beside him. He opened it, and the leaves fell apart at a page where a rose had once been pressed. The rose was dead now, and had been laid away carefully, lest it should be lost. But the impress was still there, as the memory of Mary's frank friendliness was still in his mind.
It was a long time before he closed the book. But at last he sighed and rose from his couch. It was inevitable, this drifting apart. Fate would hold for Mary some brilliant future. As for him, he must go on with his work alone.
Yet he realized, even in that moment of renunciation, that it was a wonderful thing that he could at last go on alone. A year ago he had needed all of Mary's strength to spur him to the effort, all of her belief in him. Now with his heart still crying out for her, needing her, he could still go on alone!
He drew a long breath, and looked up through the singing tree-tops to the bit of sky above. He stood there for a long time, silent, looking up into the shining sky.
At ten o'clock when he entered the circle of young pines, his congregation was ready for him, sitting on the rough seats which the men had fashioned, their eager faces welcoming him, their eyes lighted.
The children whom he had taught led in the singing of the simple old hymns, and Roger read a prayer.
Then he talked. He withheld nothing of the poetry of his subject; and they rose to his eloquence. And when light began to fill a man's eyes or tears to fill a woman's—Roger knew that the work of the soul was well begun.
Afterward he went among them, becoming one of them in friendliness and sympathy, but set apart and consecrated by the wisdom which made him their leader.
Among a group of men he spoke of politics. "There's the new President," he said; "it has been a great week in Washington. His administration ought to mean great things for you people down here."
Thus he roused their interest; thus he led them to ask questions; thus he drew them into eager controversy; thus he waked their minds into activity; thus he roused their sluggish souls.
But he found his keenest delight in the children's gardens.
They were such lovely little gardens now—with violets blooming in their borders, with daffodils and jonquils and hyacinths. Every bit of bloom spoke to him of Mary. Not for one moment had she lost her interest in the children's gardens, although she had ceased, it seemed, to have interest in any other of his affairs.
Before he went, the children had to have their fairy tale. But to-night he would not tell them Cinderella or Red Riding Hood. The day seemed to demand something more than that, so he told them the story of the ninety and nine, and of the sheep that was lost.
He made much of the story of the sheep, showing to these children, who knew little of shepherds and little of mountains, a picture which held them breathless. For far back, perhaps, the ancestors of these sand-hill folk had herded sheep on the hills of Scotland.
Then he sang the song, and so well did he tell the story and so well did he sing the song that they rejoiced with him over the sheep that was found—for he had made it a little lamb—helpless and bleating, and wanting very much its mother.
The song, borne on the wings of the wind, reached the ears of a man with a worn face, who slouched in the shadow of the pines.
Later he spoke to Roger Poole. "I reckon I'm that lost sheep," he said, soberly, "an' nobody ain't gone out to find me—yit."
"Find yourself," said Roger.
The man stared.
"Find yourself," Roger said; "look at those little gardens over there that the children have made. Can you match them?"
"I reckon I've got somethin' else to do beside make gardens," drawled the man.
"What have you got to do that's better?" Roger demanded.
The man hesitated and Roger pressed his point. "Flowers for the children—crops for men—I'll wager you've a lot of land and don't know what to do with it. Let's try to make things grow."
"Us? You mean you and me, parson?"
"Yes. And while we plant and sow, we'll talk about the state of your soul." Roger reached out his hand to the lean and lank sinner.
And the lean and lank sinner took it, with something beginning to glow in the back of his eyes.
"I reckon I ain't got on to your scheme of salvation," he remarked shrewdly, "but somehow I have a feelin' that I ain't goin' to git through those days of plantin' crops with you without your plantin' somethin' in me that's bound to grow."
In such ways did Roger meet men, women and children, reaching out from his loneliness to their need, giving much and receiving more.
It was on Tuesday morning that he came back finally to the house which seemed empty because of Cousin Patty's absence. The little lady was still in Washington, whence she had written hurried notes, promising more when the rush was over.
At the gate he met the rural carrier, who gave him the letters. There was one on top from Mary Ballard.
Roger tore it open and read it, as he walked toward the house. It contained only a scribbled line—but it set his pulses bounding.