That was the end.
"It is a great book," Anne told him solemnly. "It will be a great success."
He seemed to shrink and grow small in his chair. "It will come—too late."
She looked up and saw the mood that was uponhim. "Oh, you must not—not that," she said, hurriedly; "if you give up now it will be a losing fight."
"Don't you suppose that I would fight if I felt that I could win? But what can a man do with a thing like this that is dragging him down to darkness?"
"You mustn't be discouraged. Dr. Brooks says that it isn't—inevitable. You know that he said that, and that the specialist said it."
"I know. But something tells me that I am facing—darkness." He threw up his head. "Why should we talk of it? Let me tell you rather how much you have helped me with my book. If it had not been for you I could not have written it."
"I am glad if I have been of service." Her words sounded formal after the warmth of his own.
He laughed, with a touch of bitterness. "The Princess serves," he said, "always and always serves. She never grabs, as the rest of us do, at happiness."
"I shall grab when it comes," she said, smiling a little, "and I am happy now, because I am going to wear my pretty gown."
"Which reminds me," he said, quickly, and brought from his pocket a little box. "Your costume won't be complete without these. I bought them for you with the advance check which my publishers sent after they had read the first chapters of my book."
She opened the box. Within lay a little string of pearls. Not such pearls as Nancy had shown her, but milk-white none the less, with shining lovely lights.
"Oh," she gave a distressed cry, "you shouldn't have done it."
"Why not?"
"I can't accept them. Indeed I can't."
"I shall feel as if you had flung them in my face if you give them back to me," heatedly.
"You shouldn't take it that way. It isn't fair to take it that way."
"It isn't a question of fairness. It is a question of kindness on your part."
"I want to be kind."
"Then take them."
She thought for a moment with her eyes on the fire. When she raised them it was to say, "Would you—want your little sister, Mimi, to take jewels from any man?"
"Yes. If he loved her as I love you."
It was out, and they stood aghast. Then Geoffrey stammered, "Can't you see that my soul kneels at your feet? That to me these pearls aren't as white as your—whiteness?"
The rosy silk had slipped to the floor. She was like a very small goddess in a morning cloud. "I can't take them. Oh, I can't."
He made a quick gesture. But for her restraining hand he would have cast the pearls into the flames.
"Oh, don't," she said, the little hand tense on his arm. "Don't—hurt me—like that."
He dropped the pearls into his pocket. "If you won't wear them nobody shall. I suppose I seem to you like all sorts of a fool. I seem like all sorts of a fool to myself."
He turned and left her.
An hour later he came back and found her still sewing on the rosy silk. Her eyes were red, as if she had wept a little.
"I was a brute," he said, repentantly; "forgive me and smile. I am a tempestuous fellow, and I forgot myself."
"I was afraid we weren't ever going to be friends again."
"I shall always be your friend. Yet—who wants a Blind Beggar for a friend—tell me that, Mistress Anne?"
In my Own Little Room.
Uncle rod, I went to the party!
I came home an hour ago, and since then I have been sitting all shivery and shaky in my pink silk. It will be daylight in a few minutes, but I shan't go to bed. I couldn't sleep if I did. I feel as if I shouldn't ever sleep again.
Uncle Rod, Jimmie Ford was at the Crossroads ball!
I went early, because Mrs. Nancy had asked me to be there to help with her guests. Geoffrey Fox went with me. He was very picturesque in a ragged jerkin with a black bandage over his eyes and with old Mamie leading him at the end of a cord. She enjoyed it immensely, and they attracted a lot of attention, as he went tap-tapping along with his cane over the polished floor, or whined for alms, while she sat up on her haunches with a tin cup in her mouth.
Well, Dr. Richard met us at the door, looking the young squire to perfection in his grandfather's old dress coat of blue with brass buttons. The peoplefrom New York hadn't come, so Mrs. Nancy put the pearls in my hair, and they made me stand under the portrait in the library, to see if I were really like my grandmother. I can't believe that I looked as lovely as she, but they said I did, and I began to feel as happy and excited as Cinderella at her ball.
Then the New York crowd arrived in motors, and they were all masked. I knew Eve Chesley at once and Winifred Ames, but it was hard to be sure of any one else. Eve Chesley was a Rose, with a thousand fluttering flounces of pink chiffon. She was pursued by two men dressed as Butterflies, slim and shining in close caps with great silken wings—a Blue Butterfly and a Brown one. I was pretty sure that the Brown one was Philip Meade. It was quite wonderful to watch them with their wings waving. Eve carried a pocketful of rose petals and threw them into the air as she went. I had never imagined anything so lovely.
Well, I danced with Dr. Richard and I danced with Geoffrey Fox, and I danced with Dutton Ames, and with some men that I had never met before. It seemed sogoodto be doing things like the rest. Then all at once I began to feel that the Blue Butterfly was watching me. He drifted away from his pursuit of Evelyn Chesley, and whenever I raised my eyes, I could see him in corners staring at me.
It gave me a queer feeling. I couldn't be sure, and yet—there he was. And, Uncle Rod, suddenlyI knew him! Something in the way he carried himself. You know Jimmie's little swagger!
I think I lost my head after that. I flirted with Dr. Richard and with Geoffrey Fox. I think I even flirted a little with Dutton Ames. I wanted them to be nice to me. I wanted Jimmie to see that what he had scorned other men could value. I wanted him to know that I had forgotten him. I laughed and danced as if my heart was as light as my heels, and all the while I was just sick and faint with the thought of it—"Jimmie Ford is here, and he hasn't said a word to me. Jimmie Ford is here—and—he hasn't said a word——"
At last I couldn't stand it any longer, and when I was dancing with Geoffrey Fox I said, "Do you think we could go down to the Garden Room? I must get away."
He didn't ask any question. And presently we were down there in the quiet, and he had his bandage off, and was looking at me, anxiously. "What has happened, Mistress Anne?"
And then, oh, Uncle Rod, I told him. I don't know how I came to do it, but it seemed to me that he would understand, and he did.
When I had finished his face was white and set. "Do you mean to tell me that any man has tried to break your heart?"
I think I was crying a little. "Yes. But the worst of all is my—pride."
"My little Princess," he said softly, "that this should have come—to you."
Uncle Rod, I think that if I had ever had a brother, I should have wanted him to be like Geoffrey Fox. All his lightness and frivolity seemed to slip from him. "He has thrown away what I would give my life for," he said. "Oh, the young fool, not to know that Paradise was being handed to him on a platter."
I didn't tell him Jimmie's name. That is not to be spoken to any one but you. And of course he could not know, though perhaps he guessed it, after what happened later.
While we sat there, Dr. Richard came to hunt for us. "Everybody is going in to supper," he said. He seemed surprised to find us there together, and there was a sort of stiffness in his manner. "Mother has been asking for you."
We went at once to the dining-room. There were long tables set in the old-fashioned way for everybody. Mrs. Nancy wanted things to be as they had been in her own girlhood. On the table in the wide window were two birthday cakes, and at that table Dr. Richard sat with his mother on one side of him, and Eve Chesley on the other. Eve's cake had pink candles and his had white, and there were twenty-five candles on each cake.
Geoffrey Fox and I sat directly opposite; Dutton Ames was on my right, Mrs. Ames was on Geoffrey'sleft, and straight across the table, with his mask off, was Jimmie Ford, staring at me with all his eyes!
For a minute I didn't know what to do. I just sat and stared, and then suddenly I picked up the glass that stood by my plate, raised it in salute and drank smiling. His face cleared, he hesitated just a fraction of a second, then his glass went up, and he returned my greeting. I wonder if he thought that I would cut him dead, Uncle Rod?
And don't worry aboutwhatI drank. It was white grape juice. Mrs. Nancy won't have anything stronger.
Well, after that I ate, and didn't know what I ate, for everything seemed as dry as dust. I know my cheeks were red and that my eyes shone, and I smiled until my face ached. And all the while I watched Jimmie and Jimmie watched me, and pretty soon, Uncle Rod, I understood why Jimmie was there.
He was making love to Eve Chesley!
Making love is very different from being in love, isn't it? Perhaps love is something that Jimmie really doesn't understand. But he was using on Eve all of the charming tricks that he had tried on me. She is more sophisticated, and they mean less to her than to me, but I could see him bending toward her in that flattering worshipful way of his—and when he took one of her roses and touched it to his lips and then to her cheek, everything wasdark for a minute. That kind of kiss was the only kind that Jimmie Ford ever gave me, but to me it had meant that he—cared—and that I cared—and here he was doing it before the eyes of all the world—and for love of another woman!
After supper he came around the table and spoke to me. I suppose he thought he had to. I don't know what he said and I don't care. I only know that I wanted to get away. I think it was then that Geoffrey Fox guessed. For when Jimmie had gone he said, very gently, "Would you like to go home? You look like your own little ghost, Mistress Anne."
But I had promised one more dance to Dr. Richard, and I wanted to dance it. If you could have seen at the table how he towered above Jimmie Ford. And when he stood up to make a little speech in response to a toast from Dutton Ames, his voice rang out in such a—man's way. Do you remember Jimmie Ford's falsetto?
I had my dance with him, and then Geoffrey took me home, and all the way I kept remembering the things Dr. Richard had said to me, such pleasant friendly things, and when his mother told me "good-night" she took my face between her hands and kissed me. "You must come often, little Cynthia Warfield," she said. "Richard and I both want you."
But now that I am at home again, I can't think of anything but how Jimmie Ford has spoiled it all.When you have given something, you can't ever really take it back, can you? When you've given faith and constancy to one man, what have you left to give another?
The river is beginning to show like a silver streak, and a rooster is crowing. Oh, Uncle Rod, if you were only here. Write and tell me that you love me.
Your
Little Girl.
In the Telegraph Tower.
My very Dear:
It is after supper, and Beulah and I are out here with Eric. He likes to have her come, and I play propriety, for Mrs. Bower, in common with most women of her class, is very careful of her daughter. I know you don't like that word "class," but please don't think I am using it snobbishly. Indeed, I think Beulah is much better brought up than the daughters of folk who think themselves much finer, and Mrs. Bower in her simple way is doing some very effective chaperoning.
Eric is on night duty in the telegraph tower this week; the other operator has the day work. The evenings are long, so Beulah brings her sewing, and keeps Eric company. They really don't have much to say to each other, so that I am not interrupted when I write. They seem to like to sit andlook out on the river and the stars and the moon coming up behind the hills.
It is all settled now. Eric told me yesterday. "I am very happy," he said; "I have been a lonely man."
They are to be married in June, and the things that she is making are to go into the cedar chest which her father has given her. He found it one day when he was in Baltimore, and when he showed it to her, he shone with pleasure. He's a good old Peter, and he is so glad that Beulah is to marry Eric. Eric will rent a little house not far up the road. It is a dear of a cottage, and Peggy and I call it the Playhouse. We sit on the porch when we come home from school, and peep in at the windows and plan what we would put into it if we had the furnishing of it. I should like a house like that, Uncle Rod, for you and me and Diogenes. We'd live happy ever after, wouldn't we? Some day the world is going to build "teacherages" just as it now builds parsonages, and the little houses will help to dignify and uplift the profession.
Your dear letter came just in time, and it was just right. I should have gone to pieces if you had pitied me, for I was pitying myself dreadfully. But when I read "Little School-teacher, what would you tell your scholars?" I knew what you wanted me to answer. I carried your letter in my pocket to school, and when I rang the bell I kept saying over andover to myself, "Life is what we make it. Life is what we make it," and all at once the bells began to ring it:
"Life is—what we—make it—Life is—what we—make it."
"Life is—what we—make it—Life is—what we—make it."
When the children came in, before we began the day's work, I talked to them. I find it is always uplifting when we have failed in anything to try to tell others how not to fail! Perhaps it isn't preaching what we practice, but at least it supplies a working theory.
I made up a fairy-story for them, too, about a Princess who was so ill and unhappy that all the kingdom was searched far and wide for some one to cure her. And at last an old crone was found who swore that she had the right remedy. "What is it?" all the wise men asked; but the old woman said, "It is written in this scroll. To-morrow the Princess must start out alone upon a journey. Whatever difficulty she encounters she must open this scroll and read, and the scroll will tell her what to do."
Well, the Princess started out, and when she had traveled a little way she found that she was hungry and tired, and she cried: "Oh, I haven't anything to eat." Then the scroll said, "Read me," and she opened the scroll and read: "There is corn in the fields. You must shell it and grind it on a stoneand mix it with water, and bake it into the best bread that you can." So the Princess shelled the corn and ground it and mixed it with water, and baked it, and it tasted as sweet as honey and as crisp as apples. And the Princess ate with an appetite, and then she lay down to rest. And in the night a storm came up and there was no shelter, and the Princess cried out, "Oh, what shall I do?" and the scroll said, "Read me." So she opened the scroll and read: "There is wood on the ground. You must gather it and stack it and build the best little house that you can." So the Princess worked all that day and the next and the next, and when the hut was finished it was strong and dry and no storms could destroy it. So the Princess stayed there in the little hut that she had made, and ate the sweet loaves that she had baked, and one day a great black bear came down the road, and the Princess cried out, "Oh, I have no weapon; what shall I do?" And the scroll said, "Read me." So she opened the scroll and read, "Walk straight up to the bear, and make the best fight that you can." So the Princess, trembling, walked straight up to the big black bear, and behold! when he saw her coming, he ran away!
Now the year was up, and the king sent his wise men to bring the Princess home, and one day they came to her little hut and carried her back to the palace, and she was so rosy and well that everybodywondered. Then the king called the people together, and said, "Oh, Princess, speak to us, and let us know how you were cured." So the Princess told them of how she had baked the bread, and built the hut, and conquered the bear; and of how she had found health and happiness. For the bread that you make with your own hands is the sweetest, and the shelter that you build for yourself is the snuggest, and the fear that you face is no fear at all.
The children liked my story, and I felt very brave when I had finished it. You see, I have been forgetting our sunsets, and I have been shivery and shaky when I should have faced my Big Black Bear!
Beulah is ready to go—and so—good-night. The moon is high up and round, and as pure gold as your own loving heart.
Ever your own
Anne.
Andnow spring was coming to the countryside. The snow melted, and the soft rains fell, and on sunny days Diogenes, splashing in the little puddles, picked and pulled at his feathers as he preened himself in the shelter of the south bank which overlooked the river.
Some of the feathers were tipped with shining green and some with brown. Some of them fell by the way, some floated out on blue tides, and one of them was wafted by the wind to the feet of Geoffrey Fox, as, on a certain morning, he, too, stood on the south bank.
He picked it up and stuck it in his hat. "I'll wear it for my lady," he said to the old drake, "and much good may it do me!"
The old drake lifted his head toward the sky, and gave a long cry. But it was not for Anne that he called. She still gave him food and drink. He still met her at the gate. If her mind was less upon him than in the past, it mattered little. The things that held meaning for him this morning were the glory of the sunshine, and the softness of the breeze.Stirring within him was a need above and beyond anything that Geoffrey could give, or Anne. He listened not for the step of the little school-teacher, but for the whirring wings of some comrade of his own kind. Again and again he sent forth his cry to the empty air.
Geoffrey's heart echoed the cry. His book was finished, and it was time for him to go. Yet he was held by a tie stronger than any which had hitherto bound him. Here in the big old house at Bower's was the one thing that his heart wanted.
"I could make her happy," he whispered to that inner self which warned him. "With her as my wife and with my book a success, I could defy fate."
The day was Saturday, and all the eager old fishermen had arrived the night before. Brinsley Tyson coming out with his rod in his hand and a broad-brimmed hat on his head invited Geoffrey to join him. "I've a motor boat that will take us out to the island after we have done a morning's fishing, and Mrs. Bower has put up a lunch."
"The glare is bad for my eyes."
"Been working them too hard?"
"Yes."
"There's an awning and smoked glasses if you'll wear them. And I don't want to go alone. David went back on me; he's got a new book. It's a puzzle to me why any man should want to read when he can have a day's fishing."
"If people didn't read what would become of my books?"
"Let 'em read. But not on days like this." Brinsley's fat face was upturned to the sun. With a vine-wreath instead of his broad hat and tunic in place of his khaki he might have posed for any of the plump old gods who loved the good things of life.
Geoffrey, because he had nothing else to do, went with him. Anne was invisible. On Saturday mornings she did all of the things she had left undone during the week. She mended and sewed and washed her brushes, and washed her hair, and gave all of her little belongings a special rub and scrub, and showed herself altogether exquisite and housewifely.
She saw Geoffrey start out, and she waved to him. He waved back, his hand shading his eyes. When he had gone, she cleaned all of her toilet silver, and ran ribbons into nicely embroidered nainsook things, and put her pillows in the sun and tied up her head and swept and dusted, and when she had made everything shining, she had a bit of lunch on a tray, and then she washed her hair.
Geoffrey ate lunch on the island with Brinsley Tyson. He liked the old man immensely. There was a flavor about his worldliness which had nothing to do with stale frivolities; it was rather a thing of fastidious taste and of tempered wit. He was keenin his judgments of men, and charitable in his estimates of women.
Brinsley Tyson had known Baltimore before the days of modern cities. He had known it before it had cut its hotels after the palace pattern, and when Rennert's in more primitive quarters had been the Mecca for epicureans. He had known its theaters when the footlight favorites were Lotta and Jo Emmet, and when the incomparable Booth and Jefferson had held audiences spellbound at Ford's and at Albaugh's. He had known Charles Street before it was extended, and he had known its Sunday parade. He had known the Bay Line Boats, the harbor and the noisy streets that led to the wharves. He had known Lexington Market on Saturday afternoons; the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the heyday of its importance, and more than all he had known the beauties and belles of old Baltimore, and it added piquancy to many of his anecdotes when he spoke of his single estate as a tragedy resulting from his devotion to too many charmers, with no possibility of making a choice.
It was of these things that he spoke while Geoffrey, lying in the grass with his arm across his eyes, listened and enjoyed.
"And you never married, sir?"
"I've told you there were too many of them. If I could have had any one of those girls on this island with 'tother dear charmers away, there wouldn'thave been any trouble. But a choice with them all about me was—impossible." His old eyes twinkled.
"Suppose you had made a choice, and she hadn't cared for you?" said the voice of the man on the grass.
"Any woman will care if you go at it the right way."
"What is the right way?"
"There's only one way to win a woman. If she says she won't marry you, carry her off by force to a clergyman, and when you get her there make her say 'Yes.'"
Geoffrey sat up. "You don't mean that literally?"
Brinsley nodded. "Indeed I do. Take the attitude with them of Man the Conqueror. They all like it. Man the Suppliant never gets what he wants."
"But in these days primitive methods aren't possible."
Brinsley skipped a chicken bone expertly across the surface of the water. "Primitive methods are always possible. The trouble is that man has lost his nerve. The cult of chivalry has spoiled him. It has taught him to kneel at his lady's feet, where pre-historically he kept his foot on her neck!"
Geoffrey laughed. "You'd be mobbed in a suffrage meeting."
"Suffrage, my dear fellow, is the green carnation in the garden of femininity. Every woman bloomsfor her lover. It is the lack of lovers that produces the artificial—hence votes for women. What does the woman being carried off under the arm of conquering man care for yellow banners or speeches from the tops of busses? She is too busy trying to please him."
"It would be a great experiment. I'd like to try it."
Brinsley, uncorking a hot and cold bottle, boldly surmised, "It is the little school-teacher?"
Geoffrey, again flat on the grass, murmured, "Yes."
"And it is neck and neck between you and that young cousin of mine?"
"I am afraid he is a neck ahead."
"It all depends upon which runs away with her first."
Again Geoffrey murmured, "I'd like to try it."
"Why not?" said Brinsley and beamed over his coffee cup like a benevolent spider at an unsuspecting fly. He had no idea that his fooling might be taken seriously. It was not given to his cynicism to comprehend the mood of the seemingly composed young person who lay on the grass with his hat over his eyes—torn by contending emotions, maddened by despair and the dread of darkness, awakened to new impulses in which youth and hot blood fought against an almost reverent tenderness for the object of his adoration. Since the night of the Crossroadsball Geoffrey had permitted himself to hope. She had turned to him then. For the first time he had felt that the barriers were down between them.
"Now Richard," Brinsley was saying, as he smoked luxuriously after the feast, "ought to marry Eve. She'll get her Aunt Maude's money, and be the making of him."
Richard, who at that very moment was riding through the country on his old white horse, had no thought of Eve.
The rhythm of old Ben's even trot formed an accompaniment to the song that his heart was singing—
"I think she was the most beautiful lady,That ever was in the West Country——"
"I think she was the most beautiful lady,That ever was in the West Country——"
As he passed along the road, he was aware of the world's awakening. His ears caught the faint flat bleating of lambs, the call of the cocks, the high note of the hens, the squeal of little pigs, and above all, the clamor of blackbirds and of marauding crows.
The trees, too, were beginning to show the pale tints of spring, and an amethyst haze enveloped the hills. The river was silver in the shadow and gold in the sun; the little streams that ran down to it seemed to sing as they went.
Coming at last to an old white farmhouse, Richard dismounted and went in. The old man bent with rheumatism welcomed him, and the old wife said,"He is always better when he knows that you are coming, doctor."
The old man nodded. "Your gran'dad used to come. I was a little boy an' croupy, and he seemed big as a house when he came in at the door. He was taller than you, and thin."
"Now, father," the old woman protested, "the young doctor ain't fat."
"He's fatter'n his gran'dad. But I ain't saying that I don't like it. I like meat on a man's bones."
Richard laughed. "Just so that I don't go the way of Cousin Brin. You know Brinsley Tyson, don't you?"
"He's the fat twin. Yes, I know him and David. David comes and reads to me, but Brinsley went to Baltimore, and now he don't seem to remember that we were boys together, and went to the Crossroads school."
After that they spoke of the little new teacher, and Richard revelled in the praise they gave her. She was worshipped, they said, by the people roundabout. There had never been another like her.
"I think she was the most beautiful lady,That ever was in the West Country——"
"I think she was the most beautiful lady,That ever was in the West Country——"
was Richard's enlargement of their theme. In the weeks just past he had seen much of her, and it had seemed to him that life began and ended with his thought of her.
When he rose to go the old woman went to the door with him. "I guess we owe you a lot by this time," she remarked; "you've made so many calls. It cheers him up to have you, but you'd better stop now that he don't need you. It's so far, and we ain't good pay like some of them."
Richard squared his shoulders—a characteristic gesture. "Don't bother about the bill. I have a sort of sentiment about my grandfather's old patients. It is a pleasure to know them and serve them."
"If you didn't mind taking your pay in chickens," she stated as he mounted his horse, "we could let you have some broilers."
"You will need all you can raise." Then as his eyes swept the green hill which sloped down to the river, he perceived an orderly line of waddling fowls making their way toward the house.
"I'd like a white duck," he said, "if you could let me take her now."
He chose a meek and gentle creature who submitted to the separation from the rest of her kind without rebellion. Tucked under Richard's arm, she surveyed the world with some alarm, but presently, as he rode on with her, she seemed to acquiesce in her abduction and faced the adventure with serene eyes, murmuring now and then some note of demure interrogation as she nestled quite confidently against the big man who rode so easily his great white horse.
And thus they came to Bower's, to find Anne on the south bank, like a very modern siren, drying her hair, with Diogenes nipping the new young grass near her.
She saw them coming. Richard wore a short rough coat and an old alpine hat of green. His leggings were splashed with mud, and the white horse was splashed, but there was about the pair of them an air of gallant achievement.
She rose to greet them. She was blushing a little and with her dark hair blowing she was "the most beautiful," like the lady in the song.
"I thought no one would be coming," was her apology, "and out here I get the wind and sun."
"All the old fishermen will be wrecked on the rocks if they get a glimpse of you," he told her gravely; "you mustn't turn their poor old heads."
And now the white duck murmured.
"The lovely dear, where did you get her?" Anne asked.
"In the hills, to cheer up Diogenes."
He set the white duck down. She shook her feathers and again spoke interrogatively. And now Diogenes lifted his head and answered. For a few moments he rent the air with his song of triumph. Then he turned and led the way to the river. There was a quiet pool in the bend of the bank. The old drake breasted its shining waters, and presently the white duck followed. With a sort of restrainedcoquetry she turned her head from side to side. All her questions were answered, all her murmurs stilled.
Richard and Anne smiled at each other. "What made you think of it?" she asked.
"I thought you'd like it."
"I do." She began to twist up her hair.
"Please don't. I like to see it down."
"But people will be coming in."
"Why should we be here when they come? I'll put Ben in the stable—and we'll go for a walk. Do you know there are violets in the wood?"
From under the red-striped awning of Brinsley's boat Geoffrey Fox saw Anne's hair blowing like a sable banner in the breeze. He saw Richard's square figure peaked up to the alpine hat. He saw them enter the wood.
He shut his eyes from the glare of the sun and lay quietly on the cushions of the little launch. But though his eyes were shut, he could still see those two figures walking together in the dreamy dimness of the spring forest.
"What were the ethics of the primitive man?" he asked Brinsley suddenly. "Did he run away with a woman who belonged to somebody else?"
"Why not?" Brinsley's reel was whirring. "And now if you don't mind, Fox, you might be ready with the net. If this fish is as big as he pulls, he will weigh a ton."
Geoffrey, coming in, found Peggy disconsolate on the pier.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"I can't find Anne. She said that after her hair dried she'd go for a walk to Beulah's playhouse, and we were to have tea. Beulah was to bring it."
"She has gone for a walk with some one else."
"Who?"
"Dr. Brooks. Let's go and look for her, Peggy, and when we find her we will tell her what we think of her for running away."
The green stillness of the grove was very grateful after the glare of the river. Geoffrey walked quickly, with the child's hand in his. He had a feeling that if he did not walk quickly he would be too late.
He was not too late; he saw that at a glance. Richard had dallied in his wooing. It had been so wonderful to be with her. Once when he had knelt beside her to pick violets, the wind had blown across his face a soft sweet strand of her hair. It was then that she had braided it, sitting on a fallen log under a blossoming dogwood.
"It is so long," she had said with a touch of pride, "that it is a great trouble to care for it. Cynthia Warfield had hair like mine."
"I don't believe that any one ever had hair like yours. It seems to me as if every strand must have been made specially in some celestial shop, and then the pattern destroyed."
How lovely she was when she blushed like that! How little and lovely and wise and good. He liked little women. His mother was small, and he was glad that both she and Anne had delicate hands and feet. He was aware that this preference was old-fashioned, but it was, none the less, the way he felt about it.
And now there broke upon the silence of the wood the sound of murmuring voices. Peggy and Geoffrey Fox had invaded their Paradise!
"We thought," Peggy complained, "that we had lost you. Anne, you promised about the tea."
"Oh, Peggy, I forgot."
"Beulah's gone with the basket and Eric, and we can't be late because there are hot biscuits."
Hurrying toward the biscuits and their hotness, Anne ran ahead with Peggy.
"How about the eyes?" Richard asked as he and Geoffrey followed.
"I've been on the water, and it is bad for them. But I'm not going to worry. I am getting out of life more than I hoped—more than I dared hope."
His voice had a high note of excitement. Richard glanced at him. For a moment he wondered if Fox had been drinking.
But Geoffrey was intoxicated with the wine of his dreams. With a quick gesture in which he seemed to throw from him all the fears which had oppressed him, he told his triumphant lie.
"I am going to marry Anne Warfield; she has promised to be eyes for me, and light—the sun and the moon."
Richard's face grew gray. He spoke with difficulty. "She has promised?"
Then again Geoffrey lied, meaning indeed before the night had passed to make his words come true. "She is going to marry me—and I am the happiest man alive!"
The light went out of Richard's world. How blind he had been. He had taken her smiles and blushes to himself when she had glowed with a happiness which had nothing to do with him.
He steadied himself to speak. "You are a lucky fellow, Fox; you must let me congratulate you."
"The world doesn't know," Geoffrey said, "not yet. But I had to tell it to some one, and a doctor is a sort of secular father confessor."
Richard's laugh was without mirth. "If you mean that it's not to be told, you may rely on my discretion."
"Of course. I told you she was to play Beatrice to my Dante, but she shall be more than that."
It was a rather silent party which had tea on the porch of the Playhouse. But Beulah and Eric were not aware of any lack in their guests. Eric had been to Baltimore the day before, and Beulah wore her new ring. She accepted Richard's congratulations shyly.
"I like my little new house," she said; "have you been over it?"
He said that he had not, and she took him. Eric went with them, and as they stood in the door of an upper room, he put his arm quite frankly about Beulah's shoulders as she explained their plans to Richard. "This is to be in pink and the other one in white, and all the furniture is to be pink and white."
She was as pink and white and pretty as the rooms she was planning, and to see her standing there within the circle of her lover's arm was heart-warming.
"You must get some roses from my mother, Beulah, for your little garden," the young doctor told her; "all pink and white like the rest of it."
He let them go down ahead of him, and so it happened that he stood for a moment alone in a little upper porch at the back of the house which overlooked the wood. The shadows were gathering in its dim aisles, shutting out the daylight, shutting out the dreams which he had lost that day in the fragrant depths.
When later he came with the rest of them to Bower's, the river was stained with the sunset. Diogenes and the white duck breasted serenely the crimson surface. Certain old fishermen trailed belatedly up the bank. Others sat spick and span and ready for supper on the porch.
Brinsley Tyson over the top of his newspaper hailed Richard.
"There's a telephone call for you. They've been trying to get you for an hour."
He went in at once, and coming out told Anne good-night. "Thank you for a happy afternoon," he said.
But she missed something in his voice, something that had been there when they had walked in the wood.
She watched him as he went away, square-shouldered and strong on his big white horse. She had a troubled sense that things had in some fateful and tragic way gone wrong with her afternoon, but it was not yet given to her to know that young Richard on his big white horse was riding out of her life.
It was after supper that Geoffrey asked her to go out on the river with him.
"Not to-night. I'm tired."
"Just a little minute, Mistress Anne. To see the moon come up over the island. Please." So she consented.
Helping her into the boat, Geoffrey's hands were shaking. The boat swept out from the pier in a wide curve, and he drew a long breath. He had her now—it would be a great adventure—like a book—better than any book.
Primitive man in prehistoric days carried his woman off captive under his arm. Geoffrey, pursuing modern methods, had borrowed Brinsley's boat. A rug was folded innocently on the cushions; in a snug little cupboard under the stern seat were certain supplies—a great adventure, surely!
And now the boat was under the bridge; the signal lights showed red and green. Then as they slipped around the first island there was only the silver of the moonshine spread out over the waters.
Geoffrey stopped the motor. "We'll drift and talk."
"You talk," she told him, "and I'll listen, and we mustn't be too late."
"What is too late?"
"I told you I would stay just a little minute."
"There is no real reason why we shouldn't stay as long as we wish. You are surely not so prim that you are doing it for propriety."
"You know I am not prim."
"Yes you are. You are prim and Puritan and sometimes you are a prig. But I like you that way, Mistress Anne. Only to-night I shall do as I please."
"Don't be silly."
"Is it silly to love you—why?"
He argued it with her brilliantly—so that it was only when the red and green lights of a second bridge showed ahead of them that she said, sharply, "We are miles away from Bower's; we must go back."
"It won't take us long," he said, easily, and presently they were purring up-stream.
Then all at once the motor stopped. Geoffrey, inspecting it with a flashlight, said, succinctly, "Engine's on the blink."
"You mean that we can't go on?"
"Oh, I'll tinker it up. Only you'll have to let me get into that box under the stern seat for the tools. You can hold the light while I work."
As he worked they drifted. They passed the second bridge. Anne, steering, grew cold and shivered. But she did not complain. She was glad, however, when Geoffrey said, "You'd better curl down among the cushions, and let me wrap you in this rug."
"Can you manage without me?"
"Yes. I've patched it up partially. And you'll freeze in this bitter air."
The wind had changed and there was now no moon. She was glad of the warmth of the rug and the comfort of the cushioned space. She shut her eyes, after a time, and, worn out by the emotions of the day, she dropped into fitful slumber.
Then Geoffrey, his hair blown back by the wind, stood at the wheel and steered his boat not up-stream toward the bridge at Bower's, but straight down toward the wider waters, where the river stretches out into the Bay.
Aunt maude chesleybelonged to the various patriotic societies which are dependent on Revolutionary fighting blood, on Dutch forbears, or on the ancestral holding of Colonial office. The last stood highest in her esteem. It was the hardest to get into, hence there was about it the sanctity of exclusiveness. Any man might spill his blood for his country, and among those early Hollanders were many whose blood was red instead of blue, but it was only a choice few who in the early days of the country's history had been appointed by the Crown or elected by the people to positions of influence and of authority.
When Aunt Maude went to the meeting of her favorite organization, she wore always black velvet which showed the rounds of her shoulders, point lace in a deep bertha, the family diamonds, and all of her badges. The badges had bars and jewels, and the effect was imposing.
Evelyn laughed at her. "Nobody cares for ancestors any more. Not since people began to huntthem up. You can find anything if you look for it, Aunt Maude. And most of the crests are bought or borrowed so that if one really belongs to you, you don't like to speak of it, any more than to tell that you are a lady or take a daily bath."
"Our ancestors," said Aunt Maude solemnly, "are our heritage from the past—but you have reverence for nothing."
"They were a jolly old lot," Eve agreed, "and I am proud of them. But some of their descendants are a scream. If men had their minds on being ancestors instead of bragging of them there'd be some hope for the future of old families."
Aunt Maude, having been swathed by her maid in a silk scarf, so that her head was stiff with it, batted her eyes. "If you would go with me," she said, "and hear some of the speeches, you might look at it differently. Now there was a Van Tromp——"
"And in New England there were Codcapers, and in Virginia there were Pantops. I take off my hat to them, but not to their descendants, indiscriminately."
And now Aunt Maude, more than ever mummified in a gold and black brocade wrap trimmed with black fur, steered her uncertain way toward the motor at the door.
"People in my time——" floated over her shoulder and then as the door closed behind her, her eloquence was lost.
Eve, alone, faced a radiant prospect. Richard was coming. He had telephoned. She had not told Aunt Maude. She wanted him to herself.
When at last he arrived she positively crowed over him. "Oh, Dicky, this is darling of you."
A shadow fell across her face, however, when he told her why he had come.
"Austin wanted me with him in an operation. He telegraphed me and I took the first train. I have been here for two days without a minute's time in which to call you up."
"I thought that perhaps you had come to see me."
"Seeing you is a pleasant part of it, Eve."
He was really glad to see her; to be drawn away by it all from the somberness of his thoughts. The night before he had left the train on the Jersey side and had ferried over so that he might view once more the sky-line of the great city. There had been a stiff breeze blowing and it had seemed to him that he drew the first full breath since the moment when he had walked with Geoffrey in the wood. What had followed had been like a dream; the knowledge that the great surgeon wanted him, his mother's quick service in helping him pack his bag, the walk to Bower's in the fragrant dark to catch the ten o'clock train; the moment on the porch at Bower's when he had learned from a word dropped by Beulah that Anne was on the river with Geoffrey.
And now it all seemed so far away—the river withthe moon's broad path, Bower's low house and its yellow-lighted panes, the silence, the darkness.
Since morning he had done a thousand things. He had been to the hospital and had yielded once more to the spell of its splendid machinery; he had talked with Austin and the talk had been like wine to a thirsty soul. In such an atmosphere a man would have little time to—think. He craved the action, the excitement, the uplift.
He came back to Eve's prattle. "I told Winifred Ames we would come to her little supper after the play. I was to have gone with her and Pip and Jimmie Ford. Tony is away. But when you 'phoned, I called the first part of it off. I wanted to have a little time just with you, Richard."
He smiled at her. "Who is Jimmie Ford?"
"A lovely youth who is in love with me—or with my money—he was at your birthday party, Dicky Boy; don't you remember?"
"The Blue Butterfly? Yes. Is he another victim, Eve?"
She shrugged. "Who knows? If he is in love with me, he'll get hurt; if he is in love with Aunt Maude's money, he won't get it. Oh, how can a woman know?" The lightness left her voice. "Sometimes I think that I'll go off somewhere and see if somebody won't love me for what I am, and not for what he thinks Aunt Maude is going to leave me."
"And you with a string of scalps at your belt, and Pip ready at any moment to die for you."
She nodded. "Pip is pure gold. Nobody can question his motives. And anyhow he has more money than I can ever hope to have. But I am not in love with him, Dicky."
"You are not in love with anybody. You are a cold-blooded little thing, Eve. A man would need much fire to melt your ice."
"Would he?"
"You know he would."
He swept away from her petulances to the thing which was for the moment uppermost in his mind. "I have had an offer, Eve, from Austin. He wants an assistant, a younger man who can work into his practice. It is a wonderful working opportunity."
"It would be wicked to throw it away," she told him, breathlessly, "wicked, Richard."
"It looks that way. But there's mother to think of, and Crossroads has come to mean a lot to me, Eve."
"Oh, but New York, Dicky! Think of the good times we'd have, and of your getting into Austin's line of work and his patients. You would be rolling in your own limousine before you'd know it."
Rolling in his own limousine! And missing the rhythm of big Ben's measured trot——!
"I think—she was the—most beautiful——"
As they motored to Winifred's, Eve spoke of his quiet mood. "Why don't you talk, Dicky?"
"It has been a busy day—I'll wake up presently and realize that I am here."
It was before he went down-stairs at the Dutton-Ames that he had a moment alone with Jimmie Ford.
Jimmie was not in the best of moods. Winifred had asked him a week ago to join a choice quartette which included Pip and Eve. Of course Meade made a troublesome fourth, but Jimmie's conceit saved him from realizing the real fact of the importance of the plain and heavy Pip to that group. And now, things had been shifted, so that Eve had stayed to talk to a country doctor, and he had been left to the callow company of an indefinite debutante whom Winifred had invited to fill the vacancy.
"When did you come down, Brooks?" he asked coldly.
"This morning."
"Nice old place of yours in Harford."
"Yes."
"Owned it long?"
"Several generations."
"Oh, ancestral halls, and all that——?"
"Yes."
"I saw Cynthia Warfield's picture on the wall—used to know the family down in Carroll—our old estates joined—Anne Warfield and I were brought up together."
They had reached the head of the stairway. Richard stopped and stood looking down. "Anne Warfield?"
"Yes. Surprised to find her teaching. I fancy they've been pretty hard up—grandfather drank, and all that, you know."
"I didn't know." It was now Richard's turn to speak coldly.
"Oh, yes, ran through with all their money. Years ago. Anne's a little queen. Engaged to her once myself, you know. Boy and girl affair, broken off——"
Below them in the hall, Richard could see the women with whom he was to sup. Shining, shimmering figures in silk and satin and tulle. For these, softness and ease of living. And that other one! Oh, the cheap little gown, the braided hair! Before he had known her she had been Jimmie's and now she was Geoffrey's. And he had fatuously thought himself the first.
He threw himself uproariously into the fun which followed. After all, it was good to be with them again, good to hear the familiar talk of people and of things, good to eat and drink and be merry in the fashion of the town, good to have this taste of the old tumultuous life.
He and Eve went home together. Philip's honest face clouded as he saw them off. "Don't run away with her, Brooks," he said, as he leaned in to have a last look at her. "Good-night, little lady."
"Good-night."
It was when they were motoring through the park that Eve said, "I am troubled about Pip."
"Why?"
"Oh, I sometimes have a feeling that he has a string tied to me—and that he is pulling me—his way. And I don't want to go. But I shall, if something doesn't save me from him, Richard."
"You can save yourself."
"That's all you know about it. Women take what they can get in this world, not what they want. Every morning Pip sends me flowers, sweetheart roses to-day, and lilies yesterday, and before that gardenias and orchids, and when I open the boxes every flower seems to be shouting, 'Come and marry me, come and marry me.'"
"No woman need marry a man she doesn't care for, Eve."
"Lots of them do."
"You won't. You are too sensible."
"Am I?"
"Of course."
She sighed a little. "I am not half as sensible as you think."
When they reached home, they found Aunt Maude before them. She had been unswathed from her veil and her cloak, released from her black velvet, and was comfortable before her sitting-room fire in a padded wisteria robe and a boudoir cap with satin bow.Underneath the cap there were no flat gray curls. These were whisked mysteriously away each night by Hannah, the maid, to be returned in the morning, fresh from their pins with no hurt to Aunt Maude's old head.
She greeted Richard cordially. "I sent Hannah down when I heard you. Eve didn't let me know you were here; she never lets me know. And now tell me about your poor mother."
"Why poor, dear lady? You know she loves Crossroads."
"How anybody can—— I'd die of loneliness. Now to-night—so many people of my own kind——"
"Everybody in black velvet or brocade, everybody with badges, everybody with blue blood," Eve interrupted flippantly; "nobody with ideas, nobody with enthusiasms, nobody with an ounce of originality—ugh!"
"My dear——!"
"Dicky, Aunt Maude's idea of Heaven is a place where everybody wears coronets instead of halos, and where the angel chorus is a Dutch version of 'God save the King.'"
"My idea of Heaven," Aunt Maude retorted, "is a place where young girls have ladylike manners."
Richard roared. It had been long since he had tasted this atmosphere of salt and spice. Aunt Maude and her sprightly niece were as good as a play.
"How long shall you be in town, Richard?"
"Three or four days. It depends on the condition of our patient. It may be necessary to operate again, and Austin wants me to be here."
"Aunt Maude, Dicky may come back to New York to live."
"He should never have left. What does your mother think of it?"
"I haven't told her of Austin's offer. I shall write to-night."
"If she has a grain of sense, she'll make you take it."
Eve was restless. "Come on down, Dicky. It is time that Aunt Maude was in bed."
"I never go until you do, Eve, and in my day young men went home before morning."
"Dearest, Dicky shall leave in ten minutes. I'll send him."
But when they were once more in the great drawing-room, she forgot the time limit. "Don't let your mother settle things for you, Dicky. Think of yourself and your future. Of your—manhood, Dicky—please."
She was very lovely as she stood before him, with her hands on his shoulders. "I want you to be the biggest of them—all," she said, and her laugh was tremulous.
"I know. Eve, I want to stay."
"Oh, Dicky—really?"
"Really, Eve."
Their hands came together in a warm clasp.
She let him go after that. There had been nothing more than brotherly warmth in his manner, but it was enough that in the days to come she was to have him near her.
Richard, writing to his mother, told her something of his state of mind. "I'll admit that it tempts me. It is a big thing, a very big thing, to work with a man like that. Yet knowing how you feel about it, I dare not decide. We shall have to face one thing, however. The Crossroads practice will never be a money-making practice. I know how little money means to you, but the lack of it will mean that I shall be tied to rather small things as the years go on. I should like to be one of the Big Men, mother. You see I am being very frank. I'll admit that I dreamed with you—of bringing all my talents to the uplift of a small community, of reviving at Crossroads the dignity of other days. But—perhaps we have dreamed too much—the world doesn't wait for the dreamers—the only way is to join the procession."
In the day which intervened between his letter and his mother's answer, he had breakfast with Eve in the room with the flame-colored fishes and the parrot and the green-eyed cat. He motored with Eve out to Westchester, and they had lunch at an inn on the side of a hill which overlooked the Hudson; later they went to a matinée, to tea in a special littlecorner of a down-town hotel for the sake of old days, then back again to dress for dinner at Eve's, with Aunt Maude at the head of the table, and Tony and Winifred and Pip completing the party. Then another play, another supper, another ride home with Eve, and in the morning in quiet contrast to all this, his mother's letter.
"Dear Boy," she said, "I am glad you spoke to me frankly of what you feel. I want no secrets between us, no reservations, no sacrifices which in the end may mean a barrier between us.
"Our sojourn at Crossroads has been an experiment. And it has failed. I had hoped that as the days went on, you might find happiness. Indeed, I had been deceiving myself with the thought that you were happy. But now I know that you are not, and I know, too, what it must mean to you to feel that from among all the others you have been chosen to help a great man like Dr. Austin, who was the friend of my father, and my friend through everything.
"But Richard, I can't go back. I literally crawled to Crossroads, after my years in New York, as a wounded animal seeks its lair. And I have a morbid shrinking from it all, unworthy of me, perhaps, but none the less impossible to overcome. I feel that the very stones of the streets would speak of the tragedy and dishonor of the past: houses would stare at me, the crowds would shun me.
"And now I have this to propose. That I stayhere at Crossroads, keeping the old house open for you. David is near me, and any one of Cousin Mary Tyson's daughters would be glad to come to me. And you shall run down at week-ends, and tell me all about it, and I shall live in your letters and in the things which you have to tell. We can be one in spirit, even though there are miles between us. This is the only solution which seems possible to me at this moment. I cannot hold you back from what may be your destiny. I can only pray here in my old home for the happiness and success that must come to you—my boy—my little—boy——"
The letter broke off there. Richard, high up in the room of the big hotel, found himself pacing the floor. Back of the carefully penned lines of his mother's letter he could see her slender tense figure, the whiteness of her face, the shadow in her eyes. How often he had seen it when a boy, how often he had sworn that when he was the master of the house he would make her happy.
The telephone rang. It was Eve. "I was afraid you might have left for the hospital."
"I am leaving in a few minutes."
"Can you go for a ride with me?"
"In the afternoon. There's to be another operation—it may be very late before I am through."
"Not too late for dinner out of town somewhere and a ride under the May moon." Her voice rang high and happy.
For the rest of the morning he had no time to think of his own affairs. The operation was extremely rare and interesting, and Austin's skill was superb. Richard felt as if he were taking part in a play, in which the actors were the white clad and competent doctors and nurses, and the stage was the surgical room.
Eve coming for him, found him tired and taciturn. She respected his mood, and said little, and they rode out and out from the town and up and up into the Westchester hills, dotted with dogwood, pink and white like huge nosegays. As the night came on there was the fragrance of the gardens, the lights of the little towns; then once more the shadows as they swept again into the country.
"We will go as far as we dare," Eve said. "I know an adorable place to dine."
She tried more than once to bring him to speak of Austin, but he put her off. "I am dead tired, dear girl; you talk until we have something to eat."
"Oh," Eve surveyed him scornfully, "oh, men and their appetites!"
But she had a thousand things to tell him, and her light chatter carried him away from somber thoughts, so that when they reached at last the quaint hostelry toward which their trip had tended, he was ready to meet Eve's mood half-way, and enter with some zest upon their gay adventure. She chose a little table on a side porch, where they were screened from observation, and which overlooked the river, and there took off her hat and powdered her nose, and gave her attention to the selection of the dinner.
"A clear soup, Dicky Boy, and Maryland chicken, hot asparagus, a Russian dressing for our lettuce, and at the end red raspberries with little cakes. They are sponge cakes, Dicky, filled with cream, and they are food for the gods."
He was hungry and tired and he wanted to eat. He was glad when the food came on.
When he finished he leaned back and talked shop. "If you don't like it," he told Eve, "I'll stop. Some women hate it."
"I love it," Eve said. "Dicky, when I dream of your future you are always at the top of things, with smaller men running after you and taking your orders."
He smiled. "Don't dream. It doesn't pay. I've stopped."
She glanced at him. His face was stern.
"What's up, Dicky Boy?"
He laughed without mirth. "Oh, I'm beginning to think we are puppets pulled by strings; that things happen as Fate wills and not as we want them."
"Men haven't any right to talk that way. It's their world. If you were a woman you might complain. Look at me! Everything that I have comes from Aunt Maude. She could leave me without acent if she chose, and she knows it. She owns me, and unless I marry she'll own me until I die."
"You'll marry, Eve. Old Pip will see to that."
"Pip," passionately. "Dicky, why do you always fling Pip in my face?"
"Eve——!"
"You do. Everybody does. And I don't want him."
"Then don't have him. There are others. And you needn't lose your temper over a little thing like that."
"It isn't a little thing."
"Oh, well——" The conversation lapsed into silence until Eve said, "I was horrid—and I think we had better be getting back, Dicky."
Again in the big limousine, with the stolid chauffeur separated from them by the glass screen, she said, softly, "Oh, Dicky, it seems too good to be true that we shall have other nights like this—other rides. When will you come up for good?"