Honor was surprised and pleased to find how little she minded living abroad, after all. They had arrived, the boy and herself, in the months between their secret understanding and their separation, at the amazed conclusion that it was going to be easier to be apart until that bright day when they might be entirely and forever together. At the best, three interminable years stretched bleakly between them and marriage; they had to mark time as best they could. She liked Florence, she liked the mountainousSignorina, her stepfather's friend, and she liked her work. If it had not been for Jimsy King she would without doubt have loved it, but there was room in her simple and single-track consciousness for only one engrossing and absorbing affection. She wrote to him every day, bits of her daily living, and mailed a fat letter every week, and every week or oftener came his happy scrawl from Stanford. Things went with him there as they had gone at L. A. High,—something less, naturally, ofhero worship and sovereignty, but a steadily rising tide of triumph. He chronicled these happenings briefly and without emphasis. "Skipper dear," he would write in his crude and hybrid hand, "I've made the Freshman team all right and it's a pretty fair to middling bunch and I guess we'll stack up pretty well against the Berkeley babes from what I hear, and they made me captain. It seems kind of natural, and I have three fellows from the L. A. team,—Burke and Estrada and Finley."
He was madly rushed by the best fraternities and chose naturally the same one as Carter Van Meter,—one of the best and oldest and most powerful. He made the baseball team in the spring, and the second fall the San Francisco papers' sporting pages ran his picture often and hailed him as the Cardinal's big man. Honor read hungrily every scrap of print which came to her,—her stepfather taking care that every mention of Jimsy King reached her. It was in his Sophomore year that he played the lead in the college play and Honor read the newspapers limp and limber—"James King in the lead did a remarkable piece of work." "King, Stanford's football star, surprised his large following by his really brilliant performance." "Well-known college athlete demonstrates his ability to act." Honor knew the play andshe could shut her eyes and see him and hear him in the hero's part, and her love and pride warmed her like a fire.
She had not gone home that first summer. Mildred Lorimer and Carter's mother managed that, between them, in spite of Stephen's best efforts, and, that decided, Jimsy King went with his father to visit one of the uncles at his greathaciendain old Mexico. Mrs. Van Meter and her son spent his vacation on the Continent and had Honor with them the greater part of the time. She met their steamer at Naples and Carter could see the shining gladness of her face long before he could reach her and speak to her, and he glowed so that his mother's eyes were wet.
"Honor!" He had no words for that first moment, the fluent Carter. He could only hold both her hands and look at her.
But Honor had words. She gave back the grip of his hands and beamed on him. "Carter! Carter,dear! Oh, but it's wonderful to see you! It'snextbest to having Jimsy himself!"
Marcia Van Meter winced with sympathy, but her son managed himself very commendably. They went to Sorrento first, and stayed a week in a mellow old hotel above the pink cliffs, and the boy and girl satin the garden which looked like a Maxfield Parrish drawing and drove up to the old monastery at Deserto and wandered through the silk and coral shops and took the little steamer across to Capri for the day while Mrs. Van Meter rested from the crossing. She was happier that summer than she had been since Carter's little-boy days, for she was giving him, in so far as she might, what he wanted most in all the world, and she saw his courage and confidence growing daily. She was a little nervous about Roman fever, so they left Italy for Paris, and then went on to Switzerland, and for the first few days she was supremely content with her choice,—Carter gained color and vigor in the sun and snow, and Honor glowed and bloomed, but she presently saw her mistake. Switzerland was not the place to throw Honor and Carter together,—Switzerland filled to overflowing with knickerbockered, hard muscled, mountain climbing men and women; Honor who should have been climbing with the best of them; who would be, if Jimsy King were with them; and her son, in the smart incongruities of his sport clothes ... limping, his proud young head held high.
They found Miss Bruce-Drummond at Zermatt, brown as a berry and hard as nails with her season's work, and she was heartily glad to see Honor.
"Well, my dear,—fancy finding you here! Your stepfather wrote me you were studying in Florence and I've been meaning to write you. What luck, your turning up now! The friend who came on with me has been called home, and you shall do some climbs with me!"
"Shall I?" Honor wanted to know of her hostess, but it was Carter who answered.
"Of course! Don't bother about us,—we'll amuse ourselves well enough while you're hiking,—won't we, Mater?" He was charming about it and yet Honor felt his keen displeasure.
"Yes, do go, dear," said Mrs. Van Meter, quickly. "Make the most of it, for I think we'll be moving on in a very few days. I—I haven't said anything about it because you and Carter have been so happy here, but the altitude troubles me.... I've been really very wretched."
"Oh," said Honor penitently, "we'll go down right away, Mrs. Van Meter,—to-day! Why didn't you tell us?"
"It hasn't been serious," said Carter's mother, conscientiously, "it's just that I know I will be more comfortable at sea level." It was entirely true; she would be more comfortable at sea level or anywhere else, so long as she took Carter out of that picture andframed him suitably again. "But we needn't hurry so madly, dear. Suppose we go on Friday? That will give you a day with your friend." She sent Carter for her cloak and Honor and the Englishwoman strolled to the end of the veranda.
"I don't believe we ought to wait even a day, if she feels the altitude so," said Honor, troubled. "She's really very frail."
"I expect she can stick it a day," said Miss Bruce-Drummond, calmly. "She looks fit enough. But—I say—where's the other one? Where's your boy?"
The warm and happy color flooded the girl's face. "Jimsy is in Mexico with his father, visiting their relatives there on a big ranch."
"You haven't thrown him over, have you?"
"Thrown Jimsy over? Thrown—" she stopped and drew a long breath. "I could just as easily throwmyselfover. Why, we—belong! We're part of each other. I just—can't think of myself without thinking of Jimsy—or of Jimsy without thinking of me." She said it quite simply and steadily and smiled when she finished.
"I see," said the novelist. "Yes. I see. But you're both frightfully young, aren't you? I expect your people will make you wait a long time, won't they?"
"Well," said Honor, earnestly, "we're going to try our very best to wait three years,—three from the time when we found out we were in love with each other, you know,—two years longer now. Then we'll be twenty-one." She spoke as if every one should be satisfied then, if they dragged out separate existences until they had attained that hoary age, and Miss Bruce-Drummond, hard on forty-one, grinned with entire good nature.
"And I daresay they'll keep you over here all the while,—not let you go home for holidays, for fear you might lose your heads and bolt for Gretna Green?"
"Mercy, no!" Her eyes widened, startled. "I shall go home for all summer next year! I meant to go this year, but Muzzie thought I ought to stay, to be with Carter and Mrs. Van Meter, when they'd made such lovely plans for me,—and it was really all right, this time, because Jimsy ought to be with his father on the Mexican trip." Her smooth brow registered a fleeting worry over James King the elder. "But next summer it'll be home, and Catalina Island, and Jimsy!"
But it wasn't home for her next summer, after all. Mildred Lorimer decided that she wanted threemonths on the Continent with her husband and her daughter.
"Right," said Stephen Lorimer, amiably, "so long as we take the boy along."
"You mean Rodney?" she wanted to know, not looking at him. (Rodney was the youngest Lorimer.)
"I mean Jimsy King, naturally, as you quite well know, Sapphira," he answered, pulling her down beside him on the couch and making her face him.
"Stephen, I don't think Mr. King can afford to send him."
"Then we'll take him."
"Jimsy wouldn't let us. He is very proud,—I admire it in him."
"Do you, my dear? Then, can't you manage to admire some of his other nice young virtues and graces?"
"I do, Stephen. I give the boy credit for all he is, but——"
"But you don't intend to let him marry your daughter if by the hookiest hook and crookedest crook you can prevent it. I observed your Star Chamber sessions with Mrs. Van Meter last year; I saw you wave her and her son hopefully away; I observed, smiling with intense internal glee, that you welcomedthem back with deep if skillfully dissembled disappointment. Top Step, God love her, sat tight. Don't you know your own child yet, Mildred? Don't you know the well and favorably known chemical action of absence on young and juicy hearts? Don't you know"—he broke off to stare at her, flushed and a little breathless as she always was in discussions and unbelievably youthful and beautiful still, and finished in quite another key—"that you're getting positively lovelier with each ridiculous birthday—and your aged and infirm spouse more and more besottedly in love with you?"
She did not melt because she was tremendously in earnest. She was pledged in her deepest heart to break up what she felt was Honor's silly sentimentality—sentimentality with a dark and sinister background of mortgages and young widows and Wild Kings and shabby, down-at-the-heel houses and lawns.
"Woman," said Stephen Lorimer, "did you hear what I said? It was a rather neat speech, I thought. However, as you did not give it the rapt attention it merited I will now repeat it, with appropriate gestures." He caught her in his arms as youthfully as Jimsy might have done with Honor, and told her again, between kisses. "You lovely, silly, stubborn thing, kiss your wise husband once more in a mannerexpressive of your admiration for his unfailing sapience, and he will then, with surprising agility for one of his years, lope across the intervening lawn and tell James King that his son goes to Europe with us in June." He grinned back at her from the door. "You'll do your little worst to prevent it, my dear, that I know, but Jimsy King goes with us!"
Honor and Jimsy wrote each other rapturously on receipt of the news, but they were not fluent or expressive, either of them, and they could only underline and put in a reckless number of exclamation points. "Gee," wrote Jimsy King, "isn't it immense? Skipper, I can't tell you how I feel—but, by golly, I canshowyou when I get there!"
And Honor, reading that line, grew rosily pink to the roots of her honey-colored hair and flung herself into an hour of practice with such fire and fervor that theSignorinacame and beamed in the doorway.
"So," she nodded. "News? Good or bad?"
"Good," said Honor, swinging round on the piano stool. "The best in the world!"
"So? Well, it does not greatly matter which, my small one. It does not signify so much whether one feels joy or grief, so long as one feels. To feel ... that is to live, and to live is to sing!"
Honor sprang up and ran to her and put her armas far around her as it would go. She was a delicious person to hug, theSignorina, warm and soft and smelling faintly of rare and costly scents.
"So?" said the great singer again. "It is of some comfort, then, to embrace so much of fatness, when your arms ache to feel muscles and hard flesh? There, there, my good small one," she patted her with a puffy and jeweled hand, "I jest, but I rejoice. It is all good for the voice, this."
"Signorina," said Honor, honestly, "I've told you and told you, but you don't seem to believe me, that I'm only studying to fill up the time until they'll let me marry Jimsy. I love it, of course, and I'll always keep it up, as much as I can without neglecting more important things, but——"
"Mother of our Lord," said the Italian, lifting her hands to heaven, "'more important things' says this babe with the voice of gold, who, by the grace of God and my training might one day wake the world!"
"More important tome," said Honor, firmly. "I know it must seem silly to you,Signorina, dear, but if you were in love——"
"Mothers of all the holy saints," said the fat woman, lifting her hands again, "when have I not been in love? Have I not had three husbands already, and another even now dawning on thehorizon, not to mention—but there, that is not for pink young ears. I will say this to you, small one. Every woman should marry. Every artistmustmarry. Run home, then, in another year, and wed the young savage, and have done with it. Stay a year with him—two if you like—until there is an infant savage. Then you shall come back and give yourself in earnest to the business of singing."
But Honor, scarlet-cheeked, shook her head. "I can't imagine coming back from—fromthat,Signorina!" Her eyes envisaged it and the happy color rose and rose in her face. "But I've got a good lesson for you to-day! Shall I begin?"
"Begin, then, my good small one," said her teacher indulgently, "and for the rest, we shall see what we shall see!"
Honor flung herself into her work as never before, and counted the weeks and days and hours until the time when Jimsy should come to her, and Jimsy, finishing up a sound, triumphant Sophomore year, saw everything through a hazy front drop of his Skipper on the pier at Naples.
But Jimsy King did not go abroad with Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer, after all, and Honor did not see him through the whole dragging summer. Stephen Lorimer, sick with disappointment for his stepdaughter,would have found relief in fixing the blame on his wife, for her lovely and complacent face mirrored her satisfaction at the turn of events, but he could hardly hold her responsible. James King was taken suddenly, alarmingly ill with pneumonia two days before they left Los Angeles to catch their steamer at New York, and it was manifestly impossible for his son to leave him. The doctors gave scant hope of his recovery.
Therefore, it was Carter Van Meter who took Jimsy's ticket off his hands and Jimsy's place in the party and the summer plans, leaving his happy mother to spend three flutteringly hopeful months alone.
James King, greatly to the surprise of his physicians, did not die, but he hovered on the brink of it for many thin weeks and his son gave up his entire vacation to be with him. The letters he sent Honor were brief bulletins of his father's condition, explosive regrets at having to give up his summer with her, but Jimsy was not a letter writer. In order properly to fill up more than a page it was necessary for him to be able to say, "Had a bully practice to-day," or, "Saw old Duffy last night and he told me all about—" He was not good at producing epistolary bulk out of empty and idle days. Stephen Lorimer, often beside Honor when she opened and read these messages in English Cathedral towns or beside Scotch lakes, ached with sympathy for these young lovers under his benevolent wing because of their inability to set themselves down on paper. He knew that his stepdaughter was very nearly as limited as the boy.
"Ethel," he said to Miss Bruce-Drummond whohad met up with them for a week-end at Stirling, "those poor children are so pitifully what Gelett Burgess calls 'the gagged and wordless folk'; it would be so much easier—and safer—for them if they belonged to his 'caste of the articulate.'"
She nodded. "Yes. It's rather frightful, really, to separate people who have no means of communication. Especially when—" she broke off, looking at Carter who was pointing out to Honor what he believed to be the Field of Bannockburn.
Stephen Lorimer shook his head. "No danger there," he said comfortably. "Top Step is sorry for him—a creature of another, paler world ... infinitely beneath her bright and beamish boy's. No, I feel a lot safer to have Carter with her than with Jimsy King."
The Englishwoman stared. "Really?"
"Yes. I daresay I exaggerate, but I've always seen something sinister about that youth."
Miss Bruce-Drummond looked at Carter Van Meter and observed the way in which he was looking at Honor. "He wants her frightfully, doesn't he, poor thing?"
"He wants her frightfully but he isn't a poor thing in the very least. He is an almost uncannily clever and subtle young person for his years, with a verylarge income and a fanatically devoted mother behind him, and he's had everything he ever wanted all his life except physical perfection,—and my good Top Step."
"Ah, yes, but what can he do, after all?"
Honor's stepfather shrugged. "He knows that she would not be allowed to marry the lad if he went the way of the other 'Wild Kings,'—that she is too sound and sane to insist on it. And I think—I thought even in their High School days—that he deliberately steers Jimsy into danger."
"My word!" said the novelist, hotly. "What are you going to do about it, Stephen?"
"Watch. Wait. Stand ready. I shall make it my business to drop in at the fraternity house once or twice next season, when I go north to San Francisco,—and into other fraternity houses, and put my ear to the ground. And if I find what I fear to find I'll take it up with both the lads, face to face, and then I'll send for Honor."
"Right!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond, her fine, fresh-colored face glowing. "And I'll run down to Florence at the Christmas holidays and take her to Rome with me, shall I?"
"It will be corking of you, Ethel."
"I shall love doing it."
He looked at her appreciatively. She would love doing it; she loved life and people, Ethel Bruce-Drummond, and she was able therefore to put life and people, warm and living, on to her pages. She was as fit and hardy as a splendid boy, her cheeks round and ruddy, her eyes bright, her fine bare hands brown and strong, her sturdy ankles sturdier than ever in her heavy knitted woolen hose and her stout Scotch brogues. He had known and counted on her for almost twenty years—and he had married Mildred Carmody. "Ethel," he said, suddenly, "in that book of mine I mean to have——"
"Ah, yes, that book of yours, Stephen! Slothful creature! You know quite well you'll never do it."
"Never do it! Why,"—he was indignant—"I've got tons of it done already, in my head! It only wants writing down."
"Yes, yes," said his friend, penitently, "I make no doubt. It only wants writing down. Well?"
"I'm going to have a chapter on friendship, and insert a really novel idea. Friendship has never been properly praised,—begging pardon in passing of Mr. Emerson and his ilk. I'm going to suggest that it be given dignity and weight by having licenses and ceremonies, just as marriage has. It has a better right, you know, really. It's a much saner and moreprobable vow—to remain friends all one's life, than in love. In genuine friendship there is indeed no variableness, neither shadow or turning. You and I, now, might quite safely have taken out our friendship license and plighted our troth,—twenty years, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Miss Bruce-Drummond, gently, "it's twenty years, Stephen, and that's a quite beautiful idea. You must surely put it in your book, old dear." Her keen eyes, looking away across the ancient battlefields were a little less keen than usual, but Stephen Lorimer did not notice that because he was looking at his watch.
"Do you know it's nearly five, woman, and Mildred waiting tea for us at the Stirling Arms?" So he called to the boy and girl and fell into step beside his friend and swung down the hill to his tea and his wife, a little thrilled still, as he always would be to the day of his death, at being with her again after even the least considerable absence.
It seemed to Honor Carmody that three solid summers had been welded together for her soul's discipline that year; there were assuredly ninety-three endless days in July. She was not quite sure whether having Carter with them made it harder for her oreasier. He was an accomplished traveler; things moved more smoothly for his presence, and—as she wrote Jimsy—he knew everything about everywhere. On the whole, it was pleasanter, more like home, more like the good days on South Figueroa Street, to have him about; she could sometimes almost cajole herself into thinking Jimsy must be there, too, in the next room, hurrying up the street, a little late for dinner, but there, near them. It was only when Carter talked to her of Jimsy that she grew anxious, even acutely unhappy. It wasn't, she would decide, thinking it over later, lying awake in the dark, so much what Carter had said—it was what he hadn't said in words. It was the thing that sounded in his voice, that was far back in his eyes.
"Yes," he would say, smiling in reminiscence, "that was a party! Nothing ever like it at Stanford before in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, they say. And old Jimsy—I wish you could have seen him! No, I don't really, for you wouldn't have approved and the poor old scout would have been in for a lecture, but it was——"
"Carter," Honor would interrupt, "do you mean, can you possibly mean that Jimsy—that he's—" She found she couldn't say it after all; she couldn't put it into the ugly definite words.
"Oh, nothing serious, Honor! Nothing for you to worry about! He has to do more or less as others do, a man of his prominence in college. It's unavoidable. Of course, it might be better if he could steer clear of that sort of thing altogether—" he would stop at a point like that and frown into space for a moment, as if remembering, weighing, considering, and Honor's heart would sink coldly. Then he would brighten again and lay a reassuring hand on her sleeve. "But you mustn't worry. Jimsy's got a level head on his shoulders, and he has too much at stake to go too far. He'll be all right in the end, Honor, I'm sure of that. And you know I'll always keep an eye on him!".
And Honor twisting on her finger the ring with the clasped hands and the hidden blue stone of constancy which she always wore except when her mother was with her, would manage a smile and say, "I know how devoted you are to him, Carter. You couldn't help it, could you?—Every one is. And you mean to help him; I know that. Iamgrateful. It's next best to being with him myself." Then, because she couldn't trust herself to talk very much about Jimsy, she would resolutely change the subject and Carter would write home to his hoping mother that Honor really seemed to be having a happysummer and to enjoy everything, and that she was not very keen to talk much about Jimsy.
He did not hear the talk she had with her stepfather the night before they were to sail for home. It came after her hour of fruitless pleading with her mother to be allowed to go back with them. Mildred Lorimer had stood firm, and Stephen had been silent and Carter had sided with Honor's mother.
"It really would be rather a shame, Honor,—much as we'd love having you with us on the trip home. You're coming on so wonderfully with your work, theSignorinasays. She intends to have you in concert this winter, and coming home would spoil that, wouldn't it?" He was very sensible about it.
Honor had managed to ask Stephen to see her alone, after the rest had gone to their rooms. They were sailing from Genoa because they had wanted to bring Honor back to Italy and theSignorinahad joined them at the port and would take the girl back to Florence with her. Honor went upstairs and came down again in fifteen minutes and found him waiting for her in the lounge.
He got up and came to meet her and took her hands into his solid and reassuring clasp. "This is pretty rough, Top Step. You don't have to tell me."
She did not, indeed. Her young face was drainedof all its color that night and her eyes looked strained. It was mildly warm and the windows were open, but she was shivering a little. "Stepper, dear, I don't want to be a goose——"
"You're not, Top Step."
"But I'm anxious. When Jimsy gave me this ring, and told me what he had told his father—that he was not going to be another 'Wild King' and asked me if I believed him, I told him I'd never stop believing him, and I won't, Skipper. I won't!"
"Right, T. S."
"But—things Carter says,—things he doesn't say—Stepper, I think Jimsy needs menow."
The man was silent for a long moment. He could, of course, assert his authority or at least his power, since the girl was Mildred's child and not his, break with his good friend, theSignorina, and take Honor home. But, after all, what would that accomplish, unless she went to Stanford? He began to think aloud. "Even if you came home with us, Top Step, you wouldn't be near him, would you, unless you went to college? And you'd hardly care to do that now—to enter your Freshman year two years behind the boys."
"No."
"And if you stayed in Los Angeles—you mightalmost as well be here. The number of miles doesn't matter."
"But—perhaps Jimsy wouldn't stay at Stanford then. Oh, Stepper, dear, haven't we waited long enough?"
"He's only twenty, T. S."
She sighed. "Being young is the cruelest thing in the world!"
"You are blaspheming!" said her stepfather, sternly. "T. S., that's the only stupid and wicked thing you've ever said in the years I've known you! Don't ever dare to say it—or think it—again! Being young is the most golden and glorious thing in the world! Being young—" he ran a worried hand over his thinning hair and sighed. "Ah, well, you'll know, some day. Meanwhile, girl, it looks as if you'd have to stick. That's your part in 'playing the game!' But I promise you this. I shall keep an eye on things for you; keep in touch with the boy, see him, hear from him, hearofhim, and if the time comes when I believe that his need of you is instant and vital, I'll write—no, I'll cable you to come."
"Stepper!" The comfort in her eyes warmed him.
"It's a promise, Top Step"—he grinned,—"as you used to say when I first knew you—'cross-my-heart, hope-never-to-see-the-back-of-my-neck!' Now, hop along to bed,—and trust me!"
The lift in the little hotel put its head under its wing at ten-thirty and it was now almost eleven, so Honor set out on foot to do the three flights between her and her room. She ran lightly because she felt suddenly eased of a crushing burden; Stepper, good old Stepper, was on guard; Stepper was standing watch for her. There was a little writing-room and sun parlor on the second floor, dim now, with only one shaded light still burning, and as she crossed it a figure rose so startlingly from a deep chair that she smothered a small cry.
"It's I," said Carter. He stepped between her and the stairway.
"Cartie! You did make me jump!" Honor smiled at him; she was so cozily at peace for the moment that she had an increased tenderness for their frail friend. "It was so still in the hotel it might be the 'night before Christmas,'—'not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.' You'd better go to bed," she added, maternally. "You look pale and tired."
"I'm not tired," he said shortly. He continued to stand between her and the stairs.
"Well—I'msleepy," she said, moving to pass him. "Good——"
But Carter was quicker. He caught hold of her by her arms and held her in a tense grip. "Honor, Honor,Honor!" he said, choking.
"Why,—Cartie! You—please—" She tried to free herself.
"Honor, I can't help it. I've got to speak. I've got to know. Don't you—couldn't you—care at all for me, Honor?"
"Carter! Not—not the way you mean! Of course I'm fond of you, but——"
"I don't want that!" He shook her, roughly, and his voice was harsh. "I want you to care the way I care. And I'm going to make you!"
"Carter," she was not angry with him, only unhappy, "do you think this is fair? Do you think you're being square with Jimsy?"
"No," he said, hotly, "and I don't care. I don't care for anything but you. Honor, you don't love Jimsy King. I know it. It's just a silly, boy-and-girl thing—you must realize that, now you're away from him! Your mother doesn't want you to marry him. What can he give you or do for you? And he'll go the way of his father and all his family—I've tried to lie to you, but I'm telling you the truth now, Honor. He's drinking already, and he'll grow worse and worse. Give him up, Honor! Give himup before he spoils your life, and let me—" with all his strength, far more than she would have thought it possible for him to have, he tried to pull her into his arms, to reach her lips.
But Jimsy's Skipper, for all her two soft years in Europe, had not lost her swimming, hiking, driving, out-of-door vigor, and her muscles were better than his.
"I'm going to kiss you," said Carter, huskily. "I've wanted to kiss you for years ... always ... and I'm going to kiss you now!"
"No, you're not, Carter," said Honor. She got her arms out of his grasp and caught his wrists in her hands. She was very white and her eyes were cold. "You see? You're weak. You're weak in your arms, Carter, just as you're weak in your—in your character, in your friendship! And I despise weakness." She dropped his wrists and saw him sit down, limply, in the nearest chair and cover his face with his hands. Then she walked to the stairs and went up without a backward glance.
He was pallid and silent at breakfast next morning and Honor was careful not to look at him. It was beginning to seem, in the eight o'clock sunlight, as if the happening of the night before must have been a horrid dream, and her sense of anger andscorn gradually gave way to pity. After all ... poor old Carter, who had so little ... Jimsy, who had so much! What Carter had said in his tirade about Jimsy's drinking she did not believe; it was simply temper; angry exaggeration. Mildred Lorimer, looking at Carter's white face and the gray shadows under his eyes and observing Honor's manner toward him, sighed audibly and was a little distant when she bade her daughter farewell. She loved her eldest born devotedly, but there were moments when she couldn't help but feel that Honor was not very much of a comfort to her....
Stephen held the girl's hands hard and looked deep into her eyes. "Remember what I said, Top Step, 'Cross-my-heart!'"
"I'll remember, Stepper, dear!Thanks!" She turned to Carter and held out a steady hand. "My love to your mother, Carter, and I do hope you'll have a jolly crossing."
"Will you read this, please?" He lifted his heavy eyes to her face and slipped a note into her hand. She nodded and tucked it into her blouse. Then she stood with theSignorina, on the pier, waving, and with misty eyes watching the steamer melting away and away into the blue water. When she was alone she read the little letter.
"Dear Honor—" Carter had written in a ragged scrawl unlike his usual firm hand—"Will you try to forgive me? You are the kindest and least bitter person in the world; I know you can forgive me. But—and this will be harder—can you forget last night? I promise to deserve it, if you will. Will you pretend to yourself that it never happened, and just remember the good days we've had this summer, and that—in spite of my losing my head—I'm your friend, and Jimsy's friend? Will you, Honor?"
"Dear Honor—" Carter had written in a ragged scrawl unlike his usual firm hand—"Will you try to forgive me? You are the kindest and least bitter person in the world; I know you can forgive me. But—and this will be harder—can you forget last night? I promise to deserve it, if you will. Will you pretend to yourself that it never happened, and just remember the good days we've had this summer, and that—in spite of my losing my head—I'm your friend, and Jimsy's friend? Will you, Honor?"
And Honor Carmody, looking with blurred eyes at the sea, wished she might wave again and reassuringly to the boy on the steamer, facing the long voyage so drearily. Then she realized that she still could, in a sense, wave to him. The steamer stopped at Naples and she could send a telegram to him there, and he would not have to cross the wide ocean under that guilty weight. She put on her hat and sped to the telegraph office, and there, because his note had ended with a question—had been indeed all a question—and because she was the briefest of feminine creatures, and because theSignorinawas waiting luncheon for her and did not enjoy waiting, she wired the one word, "Yes," and signed her name.
"Carter got a telegram," said Mildred Lorimer toher husband. "I wonder what it could have been. Did he say?"
"He didn't mention it," said Stephen. "About those silk shirts which weren't finished, I daresay. Certainly not bad news, by the look of him."
When Carter Van Meter reached Los Angeles and his tearfully happy mother he drew her into the library and closed the door. "Mater," he said with an odd air of intense repressed excitement, "I'm going to show you something, but you must promise me on your honor not to breathe it to a living soul, least of all, Mrs. Lorimer."
"Oh, dearest," gasped his mother, "I promise faithfully——"
He took Honor's telegram out of his wallet and unfolded it and smoothed it out for her to read the single word it contained. Then, at her glad cry, "Sh ... Mater! It isn't—exactly—what you think. I can't explain now. But it's a hope; it may—I believe it will, one day—lead to the thing we both want!" He folded it again carefully into its creases and put it back into his wallet and he was breathing hard.
Ethel Bruce-Drummond was better than her word. She did not wait for the Christmas holidays but went down to Florence early in December for Honor's first concert, and she wrote many pages to Stephen Lorimer.
Of course you know by this time that the concert was a success—you'll have had Honor's modest cable and the explosive and expensive one from the fat lark! They are sending you translations from the Italian papers, and clippings in English, and copies of some of the notes she's had from the more important musical people, and I really can't add anything to that side of it. You know, my dear Stephen, when it comes to music I'm confessedly ignorant,—not quite, perhaps, like that fabled countryman of mine who said he could not tell whether the band were playing "God Save the Weasel" or "Pop Goes the Queen," but bad enough in all truth. Therefore, I keep cannily out of all discussion of Honor's voice. I gather, however, that it has surprised every one, even theSignorina, and that there is no doubt at allabout her making a genuine success if she wants to hew to the line. She has had, I hear, several rather unusual offers already. But of course she hasn't the faintest intention of doing anything in the world but the thing her heart is set upon. It's rather pathetic, really. There's something a little like Trilby about her; she does seem to be singing under enchantment. What she really is like, though, is a lantern-jawed young Botticelli Madonna. She's lost a goodish bit of flesh, I should say, and her color's not so high, and she might easily have walked out of one of the canvases in the Pitti or the Ufizzi, or the Belli Arti. Her hair is Botticelli hair, and that "reticence of the flesh" of which one of your American novelists speaks—Harrison, isn't it?—and that faint austerity.She sang quantities ofariasand groups of songs of all nations, and at the end she did some American Indian things,—the native melodies themselves arranged in modern fashion. I expect you know them. The words are very simple and touching and the Italian translations are sufficiently funny. Well, the very last of all was something about a captive Indian maid, and a young chap here who clearly adores her and whom she hasn't even taken in upon her retina played a wailing, haunting accompaniment on the flute. As nearly as I can remember it went something like:From the Land of the Sky Blue WaterThey brought a captive maid.Her eyes were deep as the—(I can't remember what, Stephen)But she was not afraid.I go to her tent in the eveningAnd woo her with my flute,But she dreams of the Sky Blue Water,And the captive maid is mute.My dear Stephen, I give you my word that I very nearly put my nose in the air and howled. Sheisa captive maid—captive to her talent and the fat song-bird and her mother's ambition and yours, and her mother's determination not to let her marry her lad, and to that Carter chap, and the boy playing the flute—the whole network of you,—but she's dreaming of the Sky Blue Water, and dreaming is doing with that child. You'd best make up your minds to it, and settle some money on them and marry them off. My word, Stephen, is there so much of it lying about in the world that you can afford to be reckless with it? I arrived too late to see her before the concert, and I went behind—together with the bulk of the American and English colonies—directly it was over. She was tremendously glad to see me; I was a sort of link, you know. When I started in to tell her how splendidly she'd sung and how every one was rejoicing she said, "Yes,—thanks—isn't every one sweet? But did Stepper write you that Jimsy was 'Varsity Captain this year, and that they beat Berkeley twelve to five? Andthat Jimsy madebothtouchdowns? Do you remember that game you saw with us—and how Jimsy ran down the field and shook hands with the boy who'd scored on us? And how that gave every one confidence again, and we won? Wealwayswon!"—and standing there with her arms full of flowers and all sorts of really important people waiting to pat her on the head, she hummed that old battle song:You can't beat L. A. High!You can't beat L. A. High!and her eyes filled up with tears and she gave me her jolly little grin and said, "Oh, Miss Bruce-Drummond, I can hardly wait to get back to real living again!"
Of course you know by this time that the concert was a success—you'll have had Honor's modest cable and the explosive and expensive one from the fat lark! They are sending you translations from the Italian papers, and clippings in English, and copies of some of the notes she's had from the more important musical people, and I really can't add anything to that side of it. You know, my dear Stephen, when it comes to music I'm confessedly ignorant,—not quite, perhaps, like that fabled countryman of mine who said he could not tell whether the band were playing "God Save the Weasel" or "Pop Goes the Queen," but bad enough in all truth. Therefore, I keep cannily out of all discussion of Honor's voice. I gather, however, that it has surprised every one, even theSignorina, and that there is no doubt at allabout her making a genuine success if she wants to hew to the line. She has had, I hear, several rather unusual offers already. But of course she hasn't the faintest intention of doing anything in the world but the thing her heart is set upon. It's rather pathetic, really. There's something a little like Trilby about her; she does seem to be singing under enchantment. What she really is like, though, is a lantern-jawed young Botticelli Madonna. She's lost a goodish bit of flesh, I should say, and her color's not so high, and she might easily have walked out of one of the canvases in the Pitti or the Ufizzi, or the Belli Arti. Her hair is Botticelli hair, and that "reticence of the flesh" of which one of your American novelists speaks—Harrison, isn't it?—and that faint austerity.
She sang quantities ofariasand groups of songs of all nations, and at the end she did some American Indian things,—the native melodies themselves arranged in modern fashion. I expect you know them. The words are very simple and touching and the Italian translations are sufficiently funny. Well, the very last of all was something about a captive Indian maid, and a young chap here who clearly adores her and whom she hasn't even taken in upon her retina played a wailing, haunting accompaniment on the flute. As nearly as I can remember it went something like:
From the Land of the Sky Blue WaterThey brought a captive maid.Her eyes were deep as the—(I can't remember what, Stephen)But she was not afraid.I go to her tent in the eveningAnd woo her with my flute,But she dreams of the Sky Blue Water,And the captive maid is mute.
From the Land of the Sky Blue WaterThey brought a captive maid.Her eyes were deep as the—(I can't remember what, Stephen)But she was not afraid.I go to her tent in the eveningAnd woo her with my flute,But she dreams of the Sky Blue Water,And the captive maid is mute.
From the Land of the Sky Blue Water
They brought a captive maid.
Her eyes were deep as the—(I can't remember what, Stephen)
But she was not afraid.
I go to her tent in the evening
And woo her with my flute,
But she dreams of the Sky Blue Water,
And the captive maid is mute.
My dear Stephen, I give you my word that I very nearly put my nose in the air and howled. Sheisa captive maid—captive to her talent and the fat song-bird and her mother's ambition and yours, and her mother's determination not to let her marry her lad, and to that Carter chap, and the boy playing the flute—the whole network of you,—but she's dreaming of the Sky Blue Water, and dreaming is doing with that child. You'd best make up your minds to it, and settle some money on them and marry them off. My word, Stephen, is there so much of it lying about in the world that you can afford to be reckless with it? I arrived too late to see her before the concert, and I went behind—together with the bulk of the American and English colonies—directly it was over. She was tremendously glad to see me; I was a sort of link, you know. When I started in to tell her how splendidly she'd sung and how every one was rejoicing she said, "Yes,—thanks—isn't every one sweet? But did Stepper write you that Jimsy was 'Varsity Captain this year, and that they beat Berkeley twelve to five? Andthat Jimsy madebothtouchdowns? Do you remember that game you saw with us—and how Jimsy ran down the field and shook hands with the boy who'd scored on us? And how that gave every one confidence again, and we won? Wealwayswon!"—and standing there with her arms full of flowers and all sorts of really important people waiting to pat her on the head, she hummed that old battle song:
You can't beat L. A. High!You can't beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!You can't beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!
and her eyes filled up with tears and she gave me her jolly little grin and said, "Oh, Miss Bruce-Drummond, I can hardly wait to get back to real living again!"
Honor was honestly happy over her success. It was good to satisfy—and more than satisfy—the kindSignorinaand all the genial and interested people she had come to know there; to send her program and her clippings home to her mother; it was jolly to be asked out to luncheon and dinner and tea and to be made much of; it was best of all to have something tangible to give up for Jimsy. If she had failed, going back to him and settling quietly down with him would have seemed like running to sanctuary;now—with definite promises and hard figures offered her—it was more than a gesture of renunciation. She could understand adoring a life of that sort if she hadn't Jimsy; as it was she listened sedately to theSignorina'shappy burblings and said at intervals:
"But you know,Signorinadear, that I'm going to give it up and be married next year?"
"You cannot give it up, my poor small one. It will not give you up. It has you, one may truly say, by the throat!"
There was no use in arguing with her. The interim had to be filled until summer and home. She would do, docilely, whatever theSignorinawished.
Jimsy was happy and congratulatory about her concert but he took it no more seriously than Honor herself. His letters were full, in those days, of the unrest at Stanford. Certain professors had taken a determined stand against drinking; there was much agitation and bitterness on both sides. Jimsy was all for freedom; he resented dictation; he could hoe his own row and so could other fellows; the faculty had no right to treat them like a kindergarten. Honor answered calmly and soothingly; she managed to convey without actually setting it down on the page that Jimsy King of all people in the worldshould take care not to ally himself with the "wets," and he wrote back that he was keeping out of the whole mess.
It came, therefore, as a fearful shock, the letters and newspapers' account of the expelling of James King of Los Angeles, 'Varsity Captain and prominent in college theatricals, from Stanford University for marching in a parade of protest against the curtailing of drinking! She was alone in her room when she opened her mail and she sat very still for minutes with her eyes shut, her fingers gripping the tiny clasped hands on her ring. At last, "I'll never stop believing in you," she said, almost aloud.
Then she read Jimsy's own version of it. She always kept his letter for the last, childishly, on the nursery theorem of "First the worst, second the same, last the best of all the game."
"Skipper dearest," he wrote, in a hasty and stumbling scrawl, "I'm so mad I can hardly see to write. I'd have killed that prof if it hadn't been for Carter. This is how it happened. I'd been keeping out of the whole mess as I told you I would. That night I was digging out something at the Library and on my way back to the House I saw a gang of fellows in a sort of parade, and some one at the end caught hold of me and dragged me in. I asked him whatthe big idea was and he said he didn't know, and I was sleepy and when we came to the House I dropped out and went in. I wasn't in it ten minutes and I didn't even know what it was about. But when they called for every one who was in the parade next day I had to show up, of course. Well, they asked me about it and I told them just how it happened, and they said all right, then, I could go. I was surprised and thankful, I can tell you, because they'd been chopping off heads right and left, some of the best men in college. Well, just as I was going out through the door the old prof called me back and said he had one more thing to ask me. Did I consider that his committee was absolutely right and justified in everything they'd done? Well, Skipper, what could I say? I said just what you'd have said and what you'd have wanted me to say—that I did think they had been too severe and in some cases unjust and they canned me for it."
"Skipper dearest," he wrote, in a hasty and stumbling scrawl, "I'm so mad I can hardly see to write. I'd have killed that prof if it hadn't been for Carter. This is how it happened. I'd been keeping out of the whole mess as I told you I would. That night I was digging out something at the Library and on my way back to the House I saw a gang of fellows in a sort of parade, and some one at the end caught hold of me and dragged me in. I asked him whatthe big idea was and he said he didn't know, and I was sleepy and when we came to the House I dropped out and went in. I wasn't in it ten minutes and I didn't even know what it was about. But when they called for every one who was in the parade next day I had to show up, of course. Well, they asked me about it and I told them just how it happened, and they said all right, then, I could go. I was surprised and thankful, I can tell you, because they'd been chopping off heads right and left, some of the best men in college. Well, just as I was going out through the door the old prof called me back and said he had one more thing to ask me. Did I consider that his committee was absolutely right and justified in everything they'd done? Well, Skipper, what could I say? I said just what you'd have said and what you'd have wanted me to say—that I did think they had been too severe and in some cases unjust and they canned me for it."
There was a letter from Stephen Lorimer, grave and distressed, substantiating everything that Jimsy had written. (He had taken the first train north and gone into the matter thoroughly with the men at the fraternity house, simmering with red rage, and the committee, regretful but adamant.) The college career, the gay, brilliant, adored college career of Jimsy King was at an end. Honor's stepfather had taken great care to have the real facts in Jimsy'scase printed—he sent the clipping from the Los Angeles paper—and he had spent an evening with James King, setting forth the truth of the case. But the fact remained for the majority of people, gaining in sinister weight with every repetition, that the last of the "Wild Kings" had been expelled from Stanford University for drinking.
"Top Step," her stepfather wrote, "I'm sick with rage and indignation. Your mother is taking it very hard—as is most every one else. 'Expelled' is not a pretty word. I'm doing my level best to put the truth before the public, to show that your boy is really something of a hero in this matter, in that he might be snugly safe at this moment if he had been willing to tell a politic lie. You'll be unhappy over this, T. S., that's inevitable, but—I give you my word—you need not hang your head. Jimsy played the game."
"Top Step," her stepfather wrote, "I'm sick with rage and indignation. Your mother is taking it very hard—as is most every one else. 'Expelled' is not a pretty word. I'm doing my level best to put the truth before the public, to show that your boy is really something of a hero in this matter, in that he might be snugly safe at this moment if he had been willing to tell a politic lie. You'll be unhappy over this, T. S., that's inevitable, but—I give you my word—you need not hang your head. Jimsy played the game."
Carter, who had written seldom since the happening of the summer in spite of her kind and casual replies to his letters, sent her now six reassuring pages. She was not to worry. Jimsy was really doing very well, as far as the drinking went, and he—Carter—would not let him do anything foolish or desperate in his indignation. Three times he repeated that she must not be anxious. A dozen timesin the letter he showed her where she might well be anxious. The word beat itself in upon her brain until she could endure it no longer, and she went out through the pretty streets of Florence to the cable office and sent Stephen Lorimer one of her brief and urgent messages, "Anxious." Two days later she had his answer and it was as short as her own had been, "Come."
There was a stormy scene with theSignorina. The waves of her fury rolled up and up and broke, crashing, over Honor's rocklike calm. At last, breathless, her fat face mottled with temper, "Go, then," said the singer, and went out of the room with heavy speed and slammed the door resoundingly. But she went with Honor to her steamer at Naples and embraced her forgivingly. "Go with God," she wept. "Live a little; it is best, perhaps. Then, my good small one, come back to me."
Like all simple and direct persons Honor found relief in action. The packing of her trunks and bags, the securing of tickets, cabling, had all given her a sense of comfort. They were tangible evidences of her progress toward Jimsy. The ocean trip was difficult; there was nothing todo. Nevertheless the sea's large calm communicated itself to her; for the greater portion of the voyage she was at peace. Thesituation with Jimsy must have been grave for her stepfather to think it necessary to send for her, but nothing could be so bad that she could not right it when she was actually with Jimsy. She would never leave him again, she told herself.