" 'Yes, half a beast is the great god, Pan,To laugh as he sits by the river,Making a poet out of a man.The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,For the reed that grows nevermore again,As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"
" 'Yes, half a beast is the great god, Pan,To laugh as he sits by the river,Making a poet out of a man.The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,For the reed that grows nevermore again,As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"
His voice died away into silence. "That is the price which the writer pays. He is separated, as it were, from his kind."
"Oh, no," Marie-Louise breathed, "oh, no. Notyou. Your writings bring you—close. Your book made me—cry."
She was such a child as she stood there, yet with something in her, too, of womanliness.
"When your three soldiers died," she said, "it made me believe something that I hadn't believed before—about souls marching toward a great—light."
Geoffrey found himself confiding in her. "I don't know whether you will understand. But ever since I wrote that book I have felt that I must live up to it. That I must be worthy of the thing I had written."
Richard, dancing in the music room with Anne, found himself saying, "How different it all is."
"From Bower's?"
"Yes."
"Do you like it?"
"Sometimes. And then sometimes it all seems so big—and useless."
The music stopped, and they made their way back to the little drawing-room.
"Won't you sit here and talk to me?" Richard said. "Somehow we never seem to find time to talk."
She smiled. "There is always so much to do."
But she knew that it was not the things to be done which had kept her from him. It was rather a sense that safety lay in seeing as little of him as possible.And so, throughout the winter she had built about herself barriers of reserve. Yet there had never been a moment when he had dined with them, or when he had danced, or when he had shared their box at the opera, that she had not been keenly conscious of his presence.
"And so you think it is all so big—and useless?" He picked up the conversation where they had dropped it when the dance stopped.
She nodded. "A house like this isn't a home. I told Marie-Louise the other day that a home was a place where there was a little fire, with somebody on each side of it, and where there was a little table with two people smiling across it, and with a pot boiling and a woman to stir it, and with a light in the window and a man coming home."
"And what did Marie-Louise say to that?"
"She wrote a poem about it. A nice healthy sane little poem—not one of those dreadful things about the ashes of dead women which I found her doing when I came."
"How did you cure her?"
"I am giving her real things to think of. When she gets in a morbid mood I whisk her off to the gardener's cottage, and we wash and dress the baby and take him for an airing."
Richard gave a big laugh. "With your head in the stars, you have your feet always firmly on the ground."
"I try to, but I like to know that there are always—stars."
"No one could be near you and not know that," he told her gravely.
It was a danger signal. She rose. "I have a feeling that you are neglecting somebody. You haven't danced yet with Miss Chesley."
"Oh, Eve's all right," easily; "sit down."
But she would not. She sent him from her. His place was by Eve's side. He was going to marry Eve.
It was late that night when Marie-Louise came into Anne's room. "Are you asleep?" she asked, with the door at a crack.
"No."
"Will you mind—if I talk?"
"No."
Anne was in front of her open fire, writing to Uncle Rod. The fire was another of the luxuries in which she revelled. It was such a wonder of a fireplace, with its twinkling brasses, and its purring logs. She remembered the little round stove in her room at Bower's.
Marie-Louise had come to talk of Geoffrey Fox.
"I adore his eye-glasses."
"Oh, Marie-Louise—his poor eyes."
"He isn't poor," the child said, passionately, "not even his eyes. Milton was blind—and—and there was his poetry."
"Dr. Dicky hopes his eyes are getting better."
"He says they are. That he sees things now through a sort of silver rain. He has to have some one write for him. His little sister Mimi has been doing it, but she is going to be married."
"Mimi?"
"Yes. He found out that she had a lover, and so he has insisted. And then he will be left alone."
She sat gazing into the fire, a small humped-up figure in a gorgeous dressing-gown. At last she said, "Why didn't you love him?"
"There was some one else, Marie-Louise."
Marie-Louise drew close and laid her red head on Anne's knee. "Some one that you are going to marry?"
Anne shook her head. "Some one whom I shall never marry. He loves—another girl, Marie-Louise."
"Oh!" There was a long silence, as the two of them gazed into the fire. Then Marie-Louise reached up a thin little hand to Anne's warm clasp. "That's always the way, isn't it? It is a sort of game, with Love always flitting away to—another girl."
Itwas in April that Geoffrey Fox wrote to Anne.
"When I told you that I was coming back to Bower's, I said that I wanted quiet to think out my new book, but I did not tell you that I fancied I might find your ghost flitting through the halls, or on the road to the schoolhouse. I felt that there might linger in the long front room the glowing spirit of the little girl who sat by the fire and talked to me of my soldiers and their souls.
"And what I thought has come true. You are everywhere, Mistress Anne, not as I last saw you at Rose Acres in silken attire, but fluttering before me in your frock of many flounces, carrying your star of a lantern through the twilight on your way to Diogenes, scolding me on the stairs——! What days, what hours! And always you were the little school-teacher, showing your wayward scholars what to do with life!
"Perhaps I have done with it less than you expected. But at least I have done more with it than I had hoped. I am lining my pockets with money, and Mimi has a chest of silver. That is the immediate material effect of the sale of 'Three Souls.' Butthere is more than the material effect. The letters which I get from the people who have read the book are like wine to my soul. To think that I, Geoffrey Fox, who have frittered and frivoled, should have put on paper things which have burned into men's consciousness and have made them better. I could never have done it except for you. Yet in all humility I can say that I have done it, and that never while life lasts shall I think again of my talent as a little thing.
"For it is a great thing, Mistress Anne, to have written a book. In all of my pot-boiling days I would never have believed it. A plot was a plot, and presto, the thing was done! The world read and forgot. But the world doesn't forget. Not when we give our best, and when we aim to get below the surface things and the shallow things and call up out of men's hearts that which, in these practical days, they try to hide.
"I suppose Brooks has told you about my eyes, and of how it may happen that I shall, for the rest of my life, be able to see through a glass darkly.
"That is something to be thankful for, isn't it? It is a rather weird experience when, having adjusted one's self in anticipation of a catastrophe, the catastrophe hangs fire. Like old Pepys, I had resigned myself to the inevitable—indeed in those awful waiting days I read, more than once, the last paragraph of his diary.
"'And so I betake myself to that course which it is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!'
"Yet Pepys kept his sight all the rest of his life, and regretted, I fancy, more than once, that he did not finish his diary. And, perhaps, I, too, shall be granted this dim vision until the end.
"It seems to me that there are many things which I ought to tell you—I know there are a thousand things which are forbidden. But at least I can speak of Diogenes. I saw him at Crossroads the other day, much puffed up with pride of family. And I can speak of Mrs. Nancy, who is a white shadow of herself. Why doesn't Brooks see it? He was down here for a week recently, and he didn't seem to realize that anything was wrong. Perhaps she is always so radiant when he comes that she dazzles his eyes.
"She and Miss Sulie are a pathetic pair. I meet them on the road on their errands of mercy. They are like two sisters of charity in their long capes and little bonnets. Evidently Mrs. Brooks feels that if her son cannot doctor the community she can at least nurse it. The country folks adore her, and go to her for advice, so that Crossroads still opens wide its doors to the people, as it did in the days of old Dr. Brooks.
"And now, does the Princess still serve? I cansee you with your blue bowl on your way to Peggy, and stopping on the stairs to light for me the torch of inspiration. And now all of this service and inspiration is being spilled at the feet of—Marie-Louise! Will you give her greetings, and ask her how soon I may come and worship at the shrine of her grinning old god?"
Anne, carrying his letter to Marie-Louise, asked, "Shall I tell him to come?"
"Yes. I didn't want him to go away, but he said he must—that he couldn't write here. But I knew why he went, and you knew."
"You needn't look at me so reproachfully, Marie-Louise. It isn't my fault."
"It is your fault," Marie-Louise accused her, "for being like a flame. Father says that people hold out their hands to you as they do to a fire."
"And what," Anne demanded, "has all this to do with Geoffrey Fox?"
"You know," Marie-Louise told her bluntly, "he loves you and looks up to you—and I—sit at his feet."
There was something of tenseness in the small face framed by the red hair. Anne touched Marie-Louise's cheek with a tender finger. "Dear heart," she said, "he is just a man."
For a moment the child stood very still, then she said, "Is he? Or is he a god, like my Pan in the garden?"
Later she decided that Geoffrey should come in May. "When there are roses. And I'll have some people out."
It was in May that Rose Acres justified its name. The marble Pan piping on his reeds faced a garden abloom with beauty. At the right, a grass walk led down to a sunken fountain approached by wide stone steps.
It was on these steps that Marie-Louise sat one morning, weaving a garland.
"I am going to tie it with gold ribbon," she said. "Tibbs got the laurel for me."
"Who is it for?"
"It may be for—Pan," Marie-Louise wore an air of mystery, "and it may not."
She stuck it later on Pan's head, but the effect did not please her. "You are nothing but a grinning old marble doll," she told him, and Anne laughed at her.
"I hoped some day you'd find that out."
Richard, arriving late that afternoon, found Mrs. Austin on the terrace. "The young people are in the garden," she said; "will you hunt them up?"
"I want to talk to Dr. Austin, if I may."
"He's in the house. He was called to the telephone."
Austin, coming out, found his young assistant on the portico.
"Can you give me a second, sir? I've a letter from mother. There's a lot of sickness at Crossroads. And I feel responsible."
"Why should you feel responsible?"
"It's the water supply. Typhoid. If I had been there I should have had it looked into. I had started an investigation but there was no one to push it. And now there are a dozen cases. Eric Brand's little wife, Beulah, and old Peter Bower, and the mother of little François."
"And you are thinking that you ought to go down?"
"Yes."
"I don't see how I can let you go. It doesn't make much difference where people are sick, Brooks, there's always so much for us doctors to do."
"But if I could be spared——"
"You can't, Brooks. I am sorry. But I've learned to depend on you."
The older man laid his hand affectionately on the shoulder of the younger. If for the moment Richard felt beneath the softness of that touch the iron glove of one who expected obedience from a subordinate, he did not show it by word or glance.
They talked of other things after that, and presently Richard wandered off to find Eve. He passed beyond the terraces to the garden. He felt tired and depressed. The fragrance of the roses was heavy and almost overpowering. There was a stone benchset in the midst of a tangle of bloom. He sank down on it, asking nothing better than to sit there alone and think it out.
He felt at this moment, strongly, what had come to him many times during the winter—that he was not in any sense his own master. Austin directed, controlled, commanded. For the opportunity which he had given young Brooks he expected the return of acquiescence. Thus it happened that Richard found less of big things and more of little ones in his life than he had anticipated. There had been times when the moral side of a case had appealed to him more than the medical, when he had been moved by generosities such as had moved his grandfather, when he had wanted to be human rather than professional, and always he had found Austin blocking his idealistic impulses, scoffing at the things he had valued, imposing upon him a somewhat hard philosophy in the place of a living faith. It seemed to Richard that in his profession, as well as in his love affair, he was no longer meeting life with a direct glance.
He rose and went on. He must find Eve. He had promised and yet in that moment he knew that he did not want to see her. He wanted his mother's touch, her understanding, her love. He wanted Crossroads and big Ben—and the people who, because of his grandfather, had called him—"friend."
He found Anne and Geoffrey and Marie-Louise by the fountain at the end of the grass walk. Marie-Louise perched on the rim was, in her pale green gown, like some nymph freshly risen. Her hat was off, and her red hair caught the sunlight.
Anne was reading the first chapter of Geoffrey's new book. He sat just above her on the steps of the fountain. His glasses were off, and as he looked down at her his eyes showed a brilliancy which seemed to contradict his failing sight.
Marie-Louise held up a warning finger. "Sit down," she said, "and listen. It is such a wonder-book, Dr. Dicky."
So Richard sat down and Anne went on reading. She read well; her voice had a thrilling quality, and once it broke.
"Oh, why did you make it so sad?" she said.
"Could I make it glad?" he asked, and to Richard, watching, there came the jealous certainty that between the two of them there was some subtle understanding.
When at last Anne had read all that he had written Marie-Louise said, importantly, "Anne is the heroine, the Princess who serves. Will you ever make me the heroine of a book, Geoffrey Fox?"
"Perhaps. Give me a plot?"
"Have a girl who loves a marble god—then some day she meets a man—and the god is afraid he will lose her, so he wakes to life and says, 'If you lovethis man, you will have to accept the common lot of women, you will have to work for him and obey him—and some day he will die and your soul will be rent with sorrow. But if you love me, I shall be here when you are forgotten, and while you live my love will demand nothing but the verses that you read to me and the roses that lay at my feet.'"
Geoffrey gave her an eager glance. "Jove, there's more in that than a joke. Some day I shall get you to amplify your idea."
"I'll give it to you if you promise to write the book here. There's a balcony room that overlooks the river—and nobody would ever interrupt you but me, and I'd only come when you wanted me."
Marie-Louise's breath was short as she finished. To cover her emotion she caught up the wreath which she had made in the morning, and which lay beside her.
"I made it for you," she told Geoffrey, "and now that I've done it, I don't know what to do with it."
She was blushing and glowing, less of an imp and more of a girl than Richard had ever seen her.
Geoffrey rose to the occasion. "It shall be a mascot for my new book. I'll hang it on the wall over my desk, and every time I look up at it, it shall say to me, 'These are the laurels you are to win.'"
"You have won them," Marie-Louise flashed.
"No artist ever feels himself worthy of laurel. His achievement always falls short of his ambition."
"But 'Three Souls,'" Marie-Louise said; "surely you were satisfied?"
"I did not write it—the credit belongs to Mistress Anne. Your wreath should be hers."
But Marie-Louise's mind was made up. Before Geoffrey could grasp what she was about to do, she fluttered up the steps, and dropped the garland lightly on his dark locks.
It became him well.
"Do you like it?" he asked Anne.
"To the Victor—the spoils," she told him, smiling.
Richard felt out of it. He wanted to get away, and he knew that he must find Eve. Eve, who when he met her would laugh her light laugh, and call him "Dicky Boy," and refuse to listen when he spoke of Crossroads.
The path that he took led to a little tea house built on the bank, which gave a wide view of the river and the Jersey hills. He found Winifred and Tony side by side and silent.
"Better late than never," was Tony's greeting.
"I am hunting for Eve."
"She and Meade were here a moment ago," Winifred informed him. "Sit down and give an account of yourself. We haven't seen you in a million years."
"Just a week, dear lady. I have been horribly busy."
"You say that as if you meant the 'horribly.'"
"I do. It has been a 'bluggy' business, and I am tired." He laughed with a certain amount of constraint. "If I were a boy, I should say 'I want to go home.'"
Winifred gave him a quick glance. "What has happened?"
"Oh, everybody is ill at Crossroads. Beastly conditions. And they ought to have been corrected. Beulah's ill."
"The little bride?"
"Yes. And Eric is frantic. He has written me, asking me to come down. But Austin can't see it."
"Could you go for the day?"
"If I went for a day I should stay longer. There's everything to be done."
He switched away from the subject. "Crowd seems to have separated. Fox and Anne Warfield by the fountain. You and Tony here, and Eve and Pip as yet undiscovered."
"It is the day," Winifred decided, "all romance and roses. Even Tony and I were a-lovering when Eve found us."
Richard rose. "Tony, she wants to hold your hand. I'll get out."
Winifred laughed. "You'd better go and hold Eve's."
As he went away, Richard wondered if there was anything significant in her way of saying it.
Eve and Pip were in the enclosed space where Pan gleamed white against the dark cedars. Eve was seated on the sun-dial. Pip had lifted her there, and he stood leaning against it. Her lap was full of roses, and there were roses on her hat. The high note of color was repeated in the pink sunshade which lay open where the wind had wafted it to the feet of the piping Pan.
Pip straightened up as he saw Richard approaching. "There comes your eager lover, Eve. Give me a rose before he gets here."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I'm afraid."
"Of me?"
"No. But if I give you anything you'll take more. And I want to give everything to—Dicky."
He laughed a triumphant laugh. "I take allIcan get. Give me a rose, Eve."
She yielded to his masterfulness. Out of the mass of bloom she chose a pink bud. "I shall give a red one to Dicky, so don't feel puffed up."
"I told you I should take what I could get, and Brooks isn't thinking of roses. Look at his face."
"I am sorry to be so late, Eve," Richard said, as he came up. "I am always apologizing, it seems to me."
"Little Boy Blue——! Dicky, what's the matter?"
"I want to go home." He tried to speak lightly—to follow her mood.
"Home—to Crossroads?"
"Yes."
"But why?"
"There's typhoid, and they don't know how to cope with it."
"Aren't there other doctors?"
"Yes, but not enough."
"Nonsense; what did they do before you came to the county? You must get rid of the feeling that you are so—important." She was angry. Little sparks were in her eyes.
"Don't worry, Eve. Austin doesn't want me to go. I can't get away. But it is on my mind."
"Put it off and come and help me with my roses. I gave Pip a bud. Are you jealous, Dicky?"
Still trying to follow her mood, he said, "You and the rest of the roses belong to me. Why should I care for one poor bud?"
She stuck a red rose in his coat, and when she had made her flowers into a nosegay, he lifted her down from the sun-dial. For a moment she clung to him. Meade had gone to rescue the sunshade which was blowing down the slope, and for the moment they were alone. "Dicky," she whispered, "I was horrid, but you mustn't go."
"I told you I couldn't, Eve."
Then Pip came back, and the three of them madetheir way to the fountain, picking up Winifred and Tony as they passed. Tea was served on the terrace, and a lot of other people motored out. There was much laughter and lightness—as if there were no trouble in the whole wide world.
Richard felt separated from it all by his mood, and when he went to the house to send a message for Austin to the hospital, he did not at once return to the terrace. He sought the great library. It was dim and quiet and he lay back in one of the big chairs and shut his eyes. The vision was before him of Pip leaning on the sun-dial against a rose-splashed background, with Eve smiling down at him. It had come to him then that Pip should have married Eve. Pip would make her happy. The thing was all wrong in some way, but he could not see clearly how to make it right.
There was a sound in the room and he opened his eyes to find Marie-Louise on the ladder which gave access to the shelves of the great bookcases which lined the walls. She had not seen him, and she was singing softly to herself. In the dimness the color of her hair and gown gave a stained-glass effect against a background of high square east window.
Richard sat up. What was she singing?
"I think she was the most beautiful ladyThat ever was in the West Country,But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,However rare, rare it be.And when I am gone, who shall rememberThat lady of the West Country?"
"I think she was the most beautiful ladyThat ever was in the West Country,But beauty vanishes, beauty passes,However rare, rare it be.And when I am gone, who shall rememberThat lady of the West Country?"
"Marie-Louise," he asked so suddenly that she nearly fell off of the shelves, "where did you learn that song?"
"From Mistress Anne."
"When you sing it do you think of—her?"
"Yes. Do you?"
"Yes."
Marie-Louise sat down on the top step of the ladder. "Dr. Dicky, may I ask a question?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you fall in love with Anne?"
"I did."
"Oh! Then why didn't you marry her?"
"She is going to marry Geoffrey Fox."
Dead silence. Then, "Did she tell you?"
"No. He told me. Last spring."
"Before you came here?"
"Yes. That was the reason I came. I wanted to get away from everything that—spoke of her."
Marie-Louise slipped down from the ladder and came and stood beside him. "He told you," she said in a sharp whisper, "but there must be some mistake. She doesn't love him. She said that she didn't. I wonder why he lied."
There was nothing cold about her now. She was a fiery spark. "Only a—cadcould do such a thing—and I thought—oh, Dr. Dicky, I thought he was aman——"
She flung herself at his feet like a stricken child. He went down to her. "Marie-Louise, stop. Sit up and tell me what's the matter."
She sat up. "I shall ask Anne. I shall go and get her and ask her."
He found himself calling after her, "Marie-Louise," but she was gone.
She came back presently, dragging the protesting Anne. "But Marie-Louise, what do you want of me?"
Richard, rising, said, "Please don't think I permitted this. I tried to stop her."
"I didn't want to be stopped," Marie-Louise told them. "I want to know whether you and Geoffrey Fox are going to be married."
Anne's cheeks were stained red. "Of course not. But it isn't anything to get so excited about, is it, Marie-Louise?"
"Yes, it is. He told Dr. Dicky that you were, and helied. And I thought, oh, you know the wonderful things I thought about him, Mistress Anne."
Anne's arm went around the sad little nymph in green. "You must still think wonderful things of him. He was very unhappy, and desperate about his eyes. And it seemed to him that to assert a thing might make it come true."
"But you didn't love him?"
"Never, Marie-Louise."
And now Richard, ignoring the presence of Marie-Louise, ignoring everything but the question which beat against his heart, demanded:
"If you knew that he had told me this, why didn't you make things clear?"
"When I might have made things clear—you were engaged to Eve."
She turned abruptly from him to Marie-Louise. "Run back to your poet, dear heart. He is waiting for the book that you were going to bring him. And remember that you are not to sit in judgment. You are to be eyes for him, and light."
It was a sober little nymph in green who marched away with her book. Geoffrey sat on the stone bench a little withdrawn from the others. His lean face, straining toward the house, relaxed as she came within his line of vision.
"You were a long time away," he said, and made a place for her beside him, and she sat down and opened her book.
And now, back in the dim library, Anne and Richard!
"I stayed," she said, "because they were speaking out there of Crossroads. I have had a letter, too, from Sulie. She says that the situation is desperate."
"Yes. They need me. And I ought to go. They are my people. I feel that in a sense I belong to them—as my grandfather belonged."
"Do you mean that if you go now you will stay?"
"I am not sure. The future must take care of itself."
"Your mother would be glad if your decision finally came to that."
"Yes. And I should be glad. But this time I shall not go for my mother's sake alone. Something deeper is drawing me. I can't quite analyze it. It is a call"—he laughed a little—"such as men describe who enter the ministry,—an irresistible impulse, as if I were to find something there that I had lost in the city."
She held out her hand to him. "Do you know the name I had for you when you were at Crossroads?"
"No."
"I called you St. Michael—because it always seemed to me that you carried a sword."
He tightened his grip on the little hand. "Some day I shall hope to justify the name; I don't deserve it now."
Her eyes came up to him. "You'll fight to win," she said, softly.
He did not want to let her go. But there was no other way. But when she had joined the others on the terrace he made a wide detour of the garden, and wandered down to the river.
It was not a singing river, but to-day it seemed tohave a song, "Go back, go back," it said; "you have seen the world, you have seen the world."
And when he had listened for a little while he climbed the hill to tell Austin and to tell—Eve.
"Richard!"
"Yes, mother, I'm here. Austin thinks I am crazy, and Eve won't speak to me. But—I came. And to think you have turned the house into a hospital!"
"It seemed the only thing to do. François' mother had no one to take care of her—and there were others, and the house is big."
"You are the biggest thing in it. Mother, if I ever pray to a saint, it will be one with gray hair in a nurse's cap and apron, and with shining eyes."
"They are shining because you are here, Richard."
Cousin Sulie, in the door, broke down and cried, "Oh, we've prayed for it."
They clung to him, the two little growing-old women, who had wanted him, and who had worked without him.
He had no words for them, for he could not speak with steadiness. But in that moment he knew that he should never go back to Austin. That he should live and die in the home of his fathers. And that his work was here.
He tried, a little later, to make a joke of their devotion. "Mother, you and Cousin Sulie mustn't. I shall need a body-guard to protect me. You'll spoil me with softness and ease."
"I shall buckle on your armor soon enough," she told him. "Did Eric meet you at the station?"
"Yes, I shall go straight to Beulah's. I stopped in to see old Peter before I came up. I can pull him through, but I shall have to have some nurses."
And now big Ben, at an even trot, carried Richard to the Playhouse. Toby, mad with gladness at the return of his master, raced ahead.
Up in the pretty pink and white room lay Beulah. No longer plump and blooming, but wasted and wan with dry lips and hollow eyes.
Eric had said to Richard, "If she dies I shall die, too."
"She is not going to die."
And now he said it again, cheerfully, to the wasted figure in the bed. "I have come to make you well, Beulah."
But Beulah was not at all sure that she wanted to be—well. She was too tired. She was tired of Eric, tired of her mother, tired of taking medicine, tired of having to breathe.
So she shut her eyes and turned away.
Eric sat by the bed. "Dear heart," he said, "it is Dr. Dicky."
But she did not open her eyes.
In the days that followed Richard fought to make his words come true. He felt that if Beulah died it would, in some way, be his fault. He was aware that this was a morbid state of mind, but he could not help the way he felt. Beulah's life would be the price of his self-respect.
But it was not only for Beulah's life that he fought, but for the lives of others. He had nurses up from Baltimore and down from New York. He had experts to examine wells and springs and other sources of water supply. He had a motor car that he might cover the miles quickly, using old Ben only for short distances. Toby, adapting himself to the car, sat on the front seat with the wind in his face, drunk with the excitement of it.
When Nancy spoke of the expense to which Richard was putting himself, he said, "I have saved something, mother, and Eric and the rest can pay."
Surely in those days St. Michael needed his sword, for the fight was to the finish. Night and day the battle waged. Richard went from bedside to bedside, coming always last to Beulah in the shadowed pink and white room at the Playhouse.
There were nurses now, but Eric Brand would not be turned out. "Every minute that I am away from her," he told Richard, "I'm afraid. It seems as if when I am in sight of her I can hold her—back."
So, night after night, Richard found him in the chair by Beulah's bed, his face shaded by hishand, rousing only when Beulah stirred, to smile at her.
But Beulah did not smile back. She moaned a little now and then, and sometimes talked of things that never were on sea or land. There was a flowered chintz screen in the corner of the room and she peopled it with strange creatures, and murmured of them now and then, until the nurse covered the screen with a white sheet, which seemed to blot it out of Beulah's mind forever.
There was always a pot of coffee boiling in the kitchen for the young doctor, and Eric would go down with him and they would drink and talk, and all that Eric said led back to Beulah.
"If there was only something that I could do for her," he said; "if I could go out and work until I dropped, I should feel as if I were helping. But just to sit there and see her—fade."
Again he said, "I had always thought of our living—never of dying. There can be no future for me without her."
So it was for Eric's future as well as for Beulah's life that Richard strove. He grew worn and weary, but he never gave up.
Night after night, day after day, from house to house he went, along the two roads and up into the hills. Everywhere he met an anxious welcome. Where the conditions were unfavorable, he transferred the patient to Crossroads, where Nancy andSulie and Milly and a trio of nurses formed an enthusiastic hospital staff.
The mother of little François was the first patient that Richard lost. She was tired and overworked, and she felt that it was good to fall asleep. Afterward Richard, with the little boy in his arms, went out and sat where they could look over the river and talk together.
"I told her that you were to stay with me, François."
"And she was glad?"
"Yes. I need a little lad in my office, and when I take the car you can ride with me."
And thus it came about that little François, a sober little François, with a band of black about his arm, became one of the Crossroads household, and was made much of by the women, even by black Milly, who baked cookies for him and tarts whenever he cried for his mother.
Cousin Sulie rose nobly to meet the new demands upon her. "It is a feeling I never had before," she said to Richard, as she helped him pack his bag before going on his rounds, "that what I am doing is worth while. I know I should have felt it when I was darning stockings, but I didn't."
She gloried in the professional aspect which she gave to everything. She installed little François at a small table in the Garden Room. He answered the telephone and wrote the messages on slips ofpaper which he laid on the doctor's desk. Cousin Sulie at another table saw the people who came in Richard's absence.
"Nancy can read to the patients up-stairs and cut flowers for them and cook nice things for them," she confided, "but I like to be down here when the children come in to ask for medicine, and when the mothers come to find out what they shall feed the convalescents. Richard, I never heard anything like their—hungriness—when they are getting well."
Beulah, emerging slowly from among the shadows, began to think of things to eat. She didn't care about anything else. She didn't care for Eric's love, or her mother's gladness, or Richard's cheerfulness, or the nurses' sympathy. She cared only to think of every kind of food that she had ever liked in her whole life, and to ask if she might have it.
"But, dear heart, the doctor doesn't think that you should," Eric would protest.
She would cry, weakly, "You don't love me, or you would let me."
She begged and begged, and at last he couldn't stand it.
"You are starving her," he told the nurses fiercely.
They referred him to the doctor.
Eric telephoned Richard.
"My dear fellow," was the response, "her appetite is a sign that she is getting well."
"But she is so hungry."
"So are they all. I have to steel my heart against them, especially the children. And half of the convalescents are reading cook books."
"Cook books!"
"Yes. In that way they get a meal by proxy. I tell them to pick out the things they are going to have when they are well enough to eat all they want. Their choice ranges from Welsh rarebits to plum puddings."
He laughed, but Eric saw nothing funny in the matter. "I can't bear to see her—suffer."
Richard was sobered at once. "Don't think that I am not sympathetic. But—Brand, I don't dare-feel. If I did, I should go to pieces."
Slowly the weeks passed. Besides François' mother, two of Richard's patients died. Slowly the pendulum of time swung the rest of the sick ones toward recovery. Nancy and Sulie and Milly changed the rooms at Crossroads back to their original uses. The nurses, no longer needed, packed their competent bags, and departed. Beulah at the Playhouse had her first square meal, and smiled back at Eric.
The strain had told fearfully on Richard. Yet he persisted in his efforts long after it seemed that the countryside was safe. He tried to pack into twelve short weeks what he would normally have done in twelve long months. He spurred his fellow physicians to increased activities, he urged authorities to unprecedented exertions. He did the work of two men and sometimes of three. And he was so exhausted that he felt that if ever his work was finished he would sleep for a million years.
It was in September that he began to wonder how he would square things up with Eve. At first she had written to him blaming him for his desertion. But not for a moment did she take it seriously. "You'll be coming back, Dicky," was the burden of her song. He wrote hurried pleasant letters which were to some extent bulletins of the day's work. If Eve was not satisfied she consoled herself with the thought that he was tearingly busy and terribly tired.
In her last letter she had said, "Austin doesn't know what to do without you. He told Pip that you were his right hand."
Austin had said more than that to Anne. He had found her one hot day by the fountain. Nancy had written to her of the death of François' mother. The letter was in her hand.
Austin had also had a letter. "Brooks is a fool. He writes that he is going to stay."
Anne shook her head. "He is not a fool," she said; "he is doing what hehadto do. You would know if you had ever lived at Crossroads. Why, the Brooks family belongs there, and the Brooks doctors."
"So you have encouraged him?" Austin said.
"I have had nothing to do with it. I haven't heard from him since he left, and I haven't written."
"And you think he is—right to—bury—himself?"
Anne sat very still, her hands folded quietly. Her calm eyes were on the golden fish which swam in the waters at the base of the fountain.
"I am not sure," she said; "it all has so much to do with—old traditions—and inherited feelings—and ideals. He could be just as useful here, but he would never be happy. You can't imagine how they look up to him down there. And here he looked up to you."
"Then you think I didn't give him a free hand?"
"No. But there he is a Brooks of Crossroads. And it isn't because he wants the honor of it that he has gone back, but because the responsibility rests upon him to make the community all that it ought to be. And he can't shirk it."
"Eve Chesley says that he is tied to his mother's apron strings."
"She doesn't understand, I do. I sometimes feel that way about the Crossroads school—as if I had shirked something to have—a good time."
"But you have had a good time."
"Yes, you have all been wonderful to me," her smile warmed him, "but you won't think that I am ungrateful when I say that there was something inmy life in the little school which carried me—higher—than this."
"Higher? What do you mean?"
"I was a leader down there. And a force. The children looked to me for something that I could give and which the teacher they have isn't giving. She just teaches books, and I tried to teach them something of life, and love of country, and love of God."
"But here you have Marie-Louise, and you know how grateful we are for what you have done for her."
"I have only developed what was in her. What a flaming little genius she is!"
"With a poem accepted by an important magazine, and Fox believing that she can write more of them."
Anne spoke quietly: "And now I am really not needed. Marie-Louise can go on alone."
He stopped her. "We want you to stay—my wife wants you—Marie-Louise can't do without you. And I want you to get Brooks back."
She looked her amazement. "Get him back?"
"He will come if you ask it. I am not blind. Eve Chesley is. The things she says make him stubborn. But you could call him back. You could call to life anything in any man if you willed it. You are inspirational—a star to light the way."
His voice was shaken. After a pause he went on: "Will you help me to get Brooks back?"
She shook her head. "I shall not try. He is among his own people. He has found his place."
Yet now that Richard was gone, Anne found herself missing him more than she dared admit. She was, for the first time, aware that the knowledge that she should see him now and then had kept her from loneliness which might otherwise have assailed her. The thought that she might meet him had added zest to her engagements. His week-ends at Rose Acres had been the goal toward which her thoughts had raced.
And now the great house was empty because of his absence. The city was empty—because he had left it—forever. She had no hope that he would come back. Crossroads had claimed him. He had, indeed, come into his own.
When the rest of his friends spoke of him, praised or blamed, she was silent. Geoffrey Fox, who came often, complained, "You are always sitting off in a corner somewhere with your work, putting in a million stitches, when I want you to talk."
"You can talk to Marie-Louise. She is your ardent disciple. She burns candles at your altar."
"She is a charming—child."
"She is more than that. When her poem was accepted she cried over the letter. She thinks that she couldn't have done it except for your help and criticism."
"She will do more than she has done."
When Marie-Louise joined them, Anne was glad to see Geoffrey's protective manner, as if he wanted to be nice to the child who had cried.
She had to listen to much criticism of Richard. When Eve and the Dutton-Ames dined one night in the early fall at Rose Acres, Richard's quixotic action formed the theme of their discourse.
Eve was very frank. "Somebody ought to tie Dicky down. His head is in the clouds."
Marie-Louise flashed: "I like people whose heads are in the clouds. He is doing a wonderful thing and a wise thing—and we are all acting as if it were silly."
Anne wanted to hug Marie-Louise, and with heightened color she listened to Winifred's defense.
"I think we should all like to feel that we are equal to it—to give up money and fame—for the thing that—called."
"There is no better or bigger work for him there than here," Austin proclaimed.
"No," Winifred agreed, and her eyes were bright, "but it is because he is giving up something which the rest of us value that I like him. Renunciation isn't fashionable, but it is stimulating."
"The usual process is to 'grab and git,'" her husband sustained her. "We always like to see some one who isn't bitten by the modern bacillus."
After dinner Anne left them and made her way down in the darkness to the river. The eveningboat was coming up, starred with lights, its big search-light sweeping the shores. When it passed, the darkness seemed deeper. The night was cool, and Anne, wrapped in a white cloak, was like a ghost among the shadows. Far up on the terrace she could see the big house, and hear the laughter. She felt much alone. Those people were not her people. Her people were of Nancy's kind, well-born and well bred, but not smart in the modern sense. They were quiet folk, liking their homes, their friends, their neighbors. They were not so rich that they were separated by their money from those about them. They had time to read and to think. They were perhaps no better than the people in the big house on top of the terrace, but they lived at a more leisurely pace, and it seemed to her at this moment that they got more out of life.
She wanted more than anything in the world to be to-night with that little group at Crossroads, to meet Cousin Sulie's sparkling glance, to sit at Nancy's knee, to hear Richard's big laugh, as he came in and found the women waiting for the news of the outside world that he would bring.
She knew that she could have the little school if she asked for it. But a sense of dignity restrained her. She could not go back now. It would seem to the world that she had followed Richard. Well, her heart followed him, but the world did not know that.
She heard voices. Geoffrey and Marie-Louise were at the river's edge.
"It is as if there were just the two of us in the whole wide world," Marie-Louise was saying. "That's what I like about the darkness. It seems to shut everybody out."
"But suppose the darkness followed you into the day," Geoffrey said, "suppose that for you there were no light?"
A rim of gold showed above the blackness of the Jersey hills.
"Oh," Marie-Louise exulted, "look at the moon. In a moment there will be light, and you thought you were in the dark."
"You mean that it is an omen?"
"Yes."
"What a small and comfortable person you are," Geoffrey said, and now Anne could see the two of them silhouetted against the brightening sky, one tall and slim, the other slim and short. They walked on, and she heard their voices faintly.
"Do I really make you comfortable, Geoffrey Fox?"
"You make me more than that, Marie-Louise."
"Eve."
"Yes, Pip."
"Can't you see that if he cared Richard would do the thing that pleased you—that New York would be Paradise if you were in it?"
"Why shouldn't Crossroads be Paradise to me—with him?"
"It couldn't be."
"I am going to make it. I talked it over last night with Aunt Maude. She's an old dear. And I shall be the Lady of the Manor. If Dicky won't come to New York, I'll bring New York down to him."
"It can't be done. And it's going to fail."
"What is going to fail?"
"Your marriage. If you are mad enough to marry Brooks."
She mused. "Pip, do you remember the fat Armenian?"
"At Coney? Yes."
"He said that—I had reached for something beyond my grasp. That my fingers would touch it, but that it would soar always above me."
"Sounds as if Brooks were some fat sort of a bird. I can't think of him as soaring. I should call him the cock that crowed at Crossroads. Oh, it's all rot, Eve, this idea that love makes things equal. I went to the Hippodrome not long ago and saw 'Pinafore.' Our fathers and mothers raved over it. But that was a sentimental age, and Gilbert poked fun at them. He made the simple sailor a captain in the end, so that Josephine shouldn't wash dishes and cook smelly things in pots and hang out the family wash. But your hero balks and won't be turned into a millionaire. If you were writing a book you might make it work out to your satisfaction, but you can't twist life to the happy ending."
"I shall try, Pip."
"In Heaven's name, Eve! It is sheer obstinacy. If everybody wanted you to marry Brooks, you'd want to marry me. But because Aunt Maude and Winifred and I, and a lot of others know that you shouldn't, you have set your heart on it."
She flashed her eyes at him. "Is it obstinacy, Pip, I wonder? Do you know I rather think I am going to like it."
Her letters said something of the sort to Richard. "I shall love it down there. But you must let me have my own way with the house and garden. Don't you think I shall make a charming chatelaine, Dicky, dear?"
He had a sense of relief in her unexpected acquiescence in his decision. If she had objected, he would have felt as if he had turned his back not only on the work that he hated but on the woman he had promised to marry. It would have looked that way to others. Yet no matter how it had looked, he could not have done differently. The call had been insistent, and the deeps of his nature been stirred.
He was thinking of it all as one morning in October he rode to the Playhouse on big Ben to see Beulah.
Dismounting at the gate, he followed the path which led to the kitchen. Beulah was not there, and, searching, he saw her under an old apple tree at the end of the garden. She wore a checked blue apron, stiffly starched, and she was holding it up by the corners. A black cat and three sable kittens frisked at her feet.
Some one was dropping red apples carefully into the apron, some one who laughed as he swung himself down and tipped Beulah's chin up with his hand and kissed her. Richard felt a lump in his throat. It was such a homely little scene, but it held a meaning that love had never held for himself and Eve.
Eric untied Beulah's apron string, and carrying the apples in this improvised bag, with his arm about her waist sustaining her, they came down the walk.
"This is Beulah's pet tree. When she was sick she asked for apples and apples and apples."
Beulah, sinking her little white teeth into a red one, nodded. "It is perfectly wonderful," she said when she was able to speak, "how good everything tastes, and I can't get enough."
Eric pinched her cheek. "Pretty good color, doctor. We'll have them matching the apples yet."
Richard wanted to ask Eric about the dogs. "Some of my friends are coming down to-morrow for the Middlefield hunt."
"If they start old Pete there'll be some sport," Eric said.
"I shall be half sorry if they do," Richard told him. "I am always afraid I shall lose him out of my garden. He is a part of the place, like the box hedge and the cedars."
He said it lightly, but he meant it. He had hunting blood in his veins, and he loved the horses and the dogs. He loved the cold crisp air, and the excitement of the chase. But what he did not love was the hunted animal, doubling on its tracks, pursued, panting, torn to pieces by the hounds.
"Old Pete deserved to live and die among the hills," Beulah said. "Is Miss Chesley coming down?"
"Yes, and a lot of others. They will put up at the club. Mother and Sulie aren't up to entertaining a crowd."
He wanted Eric's dogs for ducks. Dutton-Ames and one or two others did not ride to hounds, and would come to Bower's in the morning.
As he rode away, he was conscious that as soon as his back was turned Eric's arm would again be about Beulah, and Beulah's head would be on Eric's shoulder. And that he would lift her over the threshold as they went in.
That afternoon Richard motored over to the Country Club to welcome Eve. She laughed at his little car. "I'd rather see you on big Ben than in that."
"Ben can't carry me fast enough."
"Don't expect me to ride in it, Dicky."
"Why not?"
"Oh, Dicky, can youask?"
Meade's great limousine which had brought them seemed to stare the little car out of countenance. But Richard refused to be embarrassed by the contrast. "She's a snug little craft, and she has carried me miles. What would Meade's car do on these roads and in the hills?"
Pip had come up and as the two men stood together Eve's quick eye contrasted them. There was no doubt of Richard's shabbiness. His old riding coat was much the worse for wear. He had on the wrong kind of hat and the wrong kind of shoes, and he seemed most aggravatingly not to care. He was to ride to-morrow one of the horses which had been sent down from Pip's stables. He hadn't even a proper mount!
Pip, on the other hand, was perfectly groomed. He was shining and immaculate from the top of hissmooth head to the heel of his boots. And he wore an air of gay inconsequence. It seemed to Eve that Richard's shoulders positively sagged with responsibility.
There was a dance at the club that night. Richard, coming in, saw Eve in Pip's arms. They were a graceful pair, and their steps matched perfectly. Eve was all in white, wide-skirted, and her shoulders and arms were bare. She had on gold slippers, and her hair was gold. Richard had a sense of discomfort as he watched them. He was going to marry her, yet she was letting Pip look at her like that. His cheeks burned. What was Pip saying? Was he making love to Eve?
He had tried to meet the situation with dignity. Yet there was no dignity in Eve's willingness to let Pip follow her. To speak of it would, however, seem to crystallize his feeling into a complaint.
Hence when he danced with her later, he tried to respond to the lightness and brightness of her mood. He tried to measure up to all the requirements of his position as an engaged man and as a lover. But he did not find it easy.
When he reached home that night, he found little François awake, and ready to ask questions about the hunt.
"Do you think they will get him?" he challenged Richard, coming in small pink pajamas to the door of the young doctor's room.
"Get who?"
"Old Pete."
"He is too cunning."
"Will he come through here?"
"Perhaps."
"I shall stick my fingers in my ears and shut my eyes. Are you going to ride with them?"
"Yes."
"You won't let them kill old Pete, will you?"
"Not if I can help it."
After that, the child was more content. But when Richard was at last in bed, François came again across the hall, and stood on the threshold in the moonlight. "It would be dreadful if it was his last night."
"Whose last night, François?" sleepily.
"Old Pete's."
"Don't worry. And you must go to bed, François."
Richard waked to a glorious morning and to the hunt. Pink coats dotted the countryside. It seemed as if half the world was on its way to the club. Richard, as he mounted one of Pip's hunters, a powerful bay, felt the thrill of it all, and when he joined Eve and her party he found them in an uproarious mood.
Presently over hills streamed a picturesque procession—the hounds in the lead, the horses following with riders whose pink blazed against the green ofthe pines, against the blue of the river, against the fainter blue of the skies above.
And oh, the music of it, the sound of the horn, the bell-like baying, the thud of flying feet!
Then, ahead of them all, as the hounds broke into full cry, a silent, swift shadow—the old fox, Pete!
At first he ran easily. He had done it so often. He had thrown them off after a chase which had stirred his blood. He would throw them off again.
In leisurely fashion he led them. As the morning advanced, however, he found himself hard pushed. He was driven from one stronghold to another. Tireless, the hounds followed and followed, until at last he knew himself weary, seeking sanctuary.
He came with confidence to Crossroads. Beyond the garden was his den. Once within and the thing would end.
Across the lawn he loped, and little François, anxious at the window, spied him. "Will he get to it, will he get to it?" he said to Nancy, his small face white with the fear of what might happen, "and when he gets there will he be safe?"
"Yes," she assured him; "and when they have run him aground, they will ride away."
But they did not ride away. It happened that those who were in the lead were unaware of the tradition of the country, and so they began to dig him out, this old king of foxes, who had felt himself secure in his castle!
They set the dogs at one end, and fetched mattocks and spades from the stable.
Pip and Eve were among them. Pip directing, Eve mad with the excitement of it all.
Little François, watching, clung to Nancy. "Oh, they can't, they mustn't!"
She soothed him, and at last sent Milly out, but they would not listen.
Nancy and Sulie were as white now as little François. "Oh, where is Richard?" Nancy said. "It is like murder to do a thing like that. It is bad enough in the open—but like a rat—in a trap."
The big bay was charging down the hill with Richard yelling at the top of his voice. The bay had proved troublesome and had bolted in the wrong direction, but Richard had brought him back to Crossroads just in time!
François screamed. "It is Dr. Dicky. He'll make them stop. He'll make them."
He did make them. His voice rang sharply. "Get the dogs away, Meade, and stop digging."
They were too eager at first to heed him. Eve hung on his arm, but he shook her off. "We don't like things like that down here. Our foxes are too rare."
It was a motley group which gathered later at the club for the hunt breakfast. There were fox-hunting farmers born on the land, of sturdy yeoman stock, and careless of form. There were the lords of newlyacquired acres, who rode carefully on little saddles with short stirrups in the English style.
There were the descendants of the great old planters, daring, immensely picturesque. There was Eve's crowd, trained for the sport, and at their ease.
A big fire burned on the hearth. A copper-covered table held steaming dishes. Another table groaned under its load of cold meats and cheese. On an ancient mahogany sideboard were various bottles and bowls of punch.
Old songs were sung and old stories told. Brinsley beamed on everybody with his face like a round full moon. There were other round and red-faced gentlemen who, warmed by the fire and the punch, twinkled like unsteady old stars.
Eve was the pivotal center of all the hilarity. She sat on the table and served the punch. Her coat was off, and in her silk blouse and riding breeches she was like a lovely boy. The men crowded around her. Pip, always at her elbow, delivered an admiring opinion. "No one can hold a candle to you, Eve."
Richard was out of it. He sat quietly in a corner with David, old Jo at their feet, and watched the others. Eve had been angry with him for his interference at Crossroads. "I didn't know you were a molly-coddle, Dicky," she had said, "and I wanted the brush."
She was punishing him now by paying absolutely no attention to him. She was punishing him, too,by making herself conspicuous, which she knew he hated. The scene was not to his liking. The women of his household, Nancy, Sulie and Anne, had had a fastidious sense of what belonged to them as ladies. Eve had not that sense. As he sat there, it occurred to him that things were moving to some stupendous climax. He and Eve couldn't go on like this.