CHAPTER IIITWENTY-TWO"Please, Felicia. Look at me. Am I all right?"Mrs. Emory turned from her mirror before which she had been adjusting a last hairpin in her blond hair and smiled at the radiant vision which hovered on her threshold. But before she had time to render verdict the vision ceased to be stationary and became before her eyes a vivid, ecstatic flash and whirl of white chiffon and silver."Bless us, child!" laughed Felicia. "You are as bad as Marianna. How can I tell anything about you when you are spinning like a Dervish? You look as if you might float out the window any minute and join the moon sprites."Sylvia laughed, too, and came to a halt, though one silver slipper paused tip toe as if it scorned prosaic levels and held itself ready for further airy revolutions."And leave my birthday party! Not much! The moon sprites shan't get me to-night. Honest, Felicia, I just can't keep still. I'm too alive."The chiffons and silver began to shimmer and quiver again in testimony and Felicia smiled understandingly. But even as she smiled she felt a sharp little pang--the pang of chastened maturity for exuberant youth. A vagrant bit of verse flashed through her mind."Pity that ever the jubilant springs should fail at their flowAnd that youth so utterly knowing it not should one day know."Yes, that was the pity. Here was Sylvia Arden, glad, and young, and free, smiling into the future with fearless eyes, challenging experience. Must she too, one day know? At any rate, the hour of too much knowing was as yet afar off. At twenty-two Sylvia was still very close to the jubilant springs. But even as she reached this comforting conclusion Felicia saw the girl's eyes grow sober."Felicia, sometimes I think it's a dreadful thing to grow up. Life is so fearfully complex somehow. All sorts of questions jump out and 'Boo' at you from behind every tree.""What kind of questions?""Oh, all kinds!" Sylvia dropped down on the low window seat, like a bird suddenly alighting, and clasped her hands around her knees in reckless disregard of her billowing chiffons. "I'm a little afflicted with socialism and that is a sad disease for a person who has as much money as I have. But that isn't all. I am so at sea about so many things, and there are so many strings pulling in all directions. Suzanne thinks New York is the only place in the world to really live in and she wants me to come and live with her and study or do something. She doesn't think it matters much what, so long as I breathe New York, and Barb is nearly as bad. They are both full of up-to-date notions and they think I'm just going to slip behind if I stay here and maybe I shall. I can see pretty easily how I could. Everybody here expects me to do the regular coming out performance, teas and dinners and balls and the rest, with maybe a little discreet charity work thrown in, and possibly a paper on art or ethics for the literary club. You know what Greendale is. The Gordons want me to go to Japan with them and Hilda wants me to join her in Berlin, or did before the war. Goodness knows where she is now. I haven't heard since July. And--well, there are other things."Felicia quite understood that Jack Amidon might possibly be another string pulling the girl. It was no secret from the Hill, and certainly not from the wise-eyed "Big Sister," that that devoted, persistent and "magerful" young man had every intention of storming Sylvia's hill top and carrying off its princess if such a feat were humanly possible."And you don't want to do any of these things?"Sylvia smiled dubiously."Oh, yes, a little of me wants to do all those things. But the most of me wants to stay right here at Arden Hall and do nothing particular. I'd like a kind of year o' grace I think. I don't seem to have any especial ambitions nor desires except to learn to live as broad and deep and quick as I can." She shifted her position slightly and looked out into the night where her beloved rose garden lay in magical moonlight and shadow and a faint sigh escaped her, born of the very beauty, poignant almost as pain, so quick was her response to it. Suddenly she turned back and her eyes smiled at Felicia."Life's funny, isn't it?" she said, springing up. "Felicia, what ever in the world should I do without you?" She eyed a little sternly the bunch of violets Felicia was wearing, a fresh bunch which had arrived that day. "Felicia, Mr. Kinnard isn't--you aren't--?"Felicia laughed."Your observations lack a certain finished coherence but I assure you I am not, nor is he--at least, not seriously.""I'm so glad!" sighed Sylvia. "I know I'm a pig but I should simply hate Stephen Kinnard if I thought he were going to carry you off, and I should hate to hate him he is so exceedingly nice. I wish he could have stayed for the party to-night. Oh me! We ought to be downstairs this blessed minute.AmI all right, Felicia? You never did tell me." And Sylvia whirled around to the mirror for a last critical survey. Felicia, whose eyes also sought the reflected figure in the glass, thought she had never seen the girl lovelier than she was to-night in all her shimmering bravery of white and silver. But there was always something more than mere prettiness about Sylvia, something which seemed to shine from within out. She was so exquisitely alive like the fire in the heart of an opal or a jet of pure flame."Aren't you coming, Syl?" Suzanne's voice called from the hall as she knocked and entered almost simultaneously, followed by Barbara."'The feast is set,The guests are met.May'st hear the merry din.'"she chanted gayly, looking more impishly charming even than usual in her beruffled corn yellow taffeta, which set off her sparkling brunette beauty to perfection. "Do come down quick and get the hand shaking over so we can begin to dance. It is a shame to waste a moment of that heavenly music. And here's Barb just dying to get to cracking the hearts of the Greendale swains. Look at her. Behold my handiwork. She even let me apply the faintest soupçon of Nature's sweet reënforcer. Madame Delphine's Parisian Bloom. Isn't she adorable? Barbie, my child, revolve for the ladies.""Oh, Suzanne!" The roses in Barb's cheeks needed no further reënforcement at the moment. "Do please rub it off. It's dreadful. Does it show, Sylvia? She would do it.""Nothing shows except that you're the cunningest mite I ever laid eyes on," approved Sylvia. "Felicia, do look at her. Doesn't she look precisely like one of Marianna's dolls? In that darling white baby dress and blue sash to match her eyes, would you ever suspect her of being a Summa cum Laude and a frightfully new woman?""You all look new enough when it comes to that," laughed Felicia. "You haven't a notion how young you really are. Now, shoo, every one of you. I'll follow as soon as I have rounded up Donald and Marianna."It was a rather heterogeneous assembly which met at the Hall that night, as Sylvia's parties were apt to be. The guests ranged from "Grandpa McIntosh," getting to be rather an old gentleman these days but still hale and a little crusty as became a good Scotchman, down to little Mary Lane, the youngest, shyest member of the "Hester house" family which continued to hold its hospitable doors open to those who needed a home "with some one to care" as Sylvia had stipulated from the beginning.Marianna, still fairy-like, in spite of her eleven-year-old dignity, flitted happily among the guests feeling delightfully grown up and important, but Donald, younger and shyer, boyishly conscious of his hands and feet, slipped into unobtrusive corners save for the rare moments when he could squeeze into an empty space beside his mother.Of course the Hill was all there, Miss Priscilla, and Miss Rosalie and Julietta feasted their eyes delightedly on Sylvia, telling every one who would listen what a very picture of her Aunt Eleanor Arden the child was, rapturously reminiscent of other days and other parties when they, too, like Arden Hall were younger than at present, and Doctor Tom and Lois were there also, rallying each other on being such old fogies that a party was an event and the new dances utterly beyond their ken."Hester house" was present too in full force, including Mrs. Lorrimer and all the family of girls who had the luck to be mothered by her skillful hands and warm heart. All kinds of girls they were, big and little, pretty and plain, stupid and clever, but all of the workaday world and all otherwise homeless, united by one common bond, a warm adoration for Sylvia through whom they felt themselves linked to the world of their rosiest dreams. Sylvia would no more have omitted them from her list of guests on this birthday celebration than she would have omitted the Byrds or Doctor Tom. To be of the Hill was open sesame to Sylvia's favor, and moreover these girls were every one of them her personal friends and she wanted them here for their own sakes.Hope and Martha, too, had come up from the Oriole Inn, the former still a little inarticulate and somber but happily having lost the old-young, pinched look about the mouth and the bitterness about the eyes which had been hers that night in Sylvia's garden when she had charged the owner so sternly with possessing "Hundreds of roses when Hope hasn't even one;" a charge which Sylvia had never since been able to forget for long. It was to her a symbol of the mesh of inequality and injustice of the world in which she herself was caught and struggled. For Sylvia wanted to share her roses. She always had wanted to, as Martha had long since learned. Hope was even sweeter and lovelier at twenty than she had been at fifteen, still a little frail in appearance though perfectly well. This summer there was an added grace about her, a sort of suppressed joyousness, a glow which transformed her rather ethereal charm into an even more appealing human guise. During the sunny summer days past when Stephen Kinnard had been using her as the incarnation of gardens, Hope herself had bloomed from a shy bud of a rose into a half-blown flower, though perhaps only Martha's keen, devoted eyes saw what had happened.Professor Lane and his wife, Sylvia's original "Christmas Mother," were unfortunately unable to be present, though they sent warm greetings and hearty congratulations from the Western university to which the professor had recently been called. With them, too, was Elizabeth, also of the original famous family, who had come of late to be almost like a daughter in their childless home.Gus Nichols was here, however, a slim, dark youth, extremely quiet, though not in the least awkward; unobtrusive, grave, giving the impression somehow of banked fires behind those solemn dark eyes of his, which followed Sylvia Arden wherever she passed. Though Gus was thoroughly American in dress and manner and articulation, the trail of his Italian ancestry was upon him. Even after all these years he looked "different," an odd contrast to the grim conservative old man, Angus McIntosh, whose adopted son and idol he was. Gus had been studying abroad for several years, had indeed just returned to America, ready to start his career on the concert stage. If this profession elected by the boy were at all a bitter pill for the old Scotchman to swallow he made no protest about it and had even furthered the lad's ambition. Mr. McIntosh was not one to indulge in half-way measures and Sylvia had long since driven home her point that if he was to transform Gus Nichols, office boy, into Augustus Nichols, his adopted son, he had no right to change the currents of the boy's being in the process. He quite understood that if Gus "had to play the music that was in him," hehadto. That was the end of it. Angus McIntosh was enough of a predestinarian to perceive that. At any rate, Sylvia and her Christmas family had inoculated the fast hardening old man with a certain infusion of human tolerance and human understanding and he had all the reward for his kindness that he desired and more in the boy's usually silent but none the less deep gratitude and devotion.Other friends there were of Greendale and the near-by city, assembled to do honor to the young mistress of Arden Hall who had at last come home to take her place among them no longer a half-fledged school girl, but a poised and very lovely young woman."I suppose you will be marrying her off next," observed Mr. McIntosh curtly, with bent brows, to Mrs. Emory who chanced to be standing near by as Sylvia sped past in Jack Amidon's arms."Not I," smiled Felicia. "I should be sorry to have her marry for a year or so yet. One is young such a very short time in this world at best. I should like to keep her just as she is for awhile if I could.""You'll have some trouble doing it unless you muzzle that young man, I'm thinking." The speaker frowned thoughtfully at Jack Amidon's back. "I suppose that is what most people would call a suitable match, eh?" he wheeled on Felicia to ask."I suppose so," admitted Felicia."H-mp!" snorted her companion. "Most people are fools."Whether fools or not there were plenty of people to note with interest, pleasure or alarm, according to their several viewpoints, when as the music ceased Sylvia stepped through the French window into the balcony beyond, followed by Jack Amidon. Perhaps more than one guest would have echoed Suzanne's verdict that Sylvia was spoiled indeed if Jack Amidon were not good enough for her; handsome, debonair, thoroughly charming as he was. Health, wealth, good looks and good old family on both sides. What more could be desired? Who but a canny old Scotchman would have "H-mped" in the face of such a very obviously appropriate combination? Yet Sylvia herself was still to be reckoned with; Sylvia who wore her heart on her sleeve as little now as in the old St. Anne days, Sylvia, who wanted to learn to live as broad and deep and quick as she could.CHAPTER IVTHE WAYS OF A MAID"You look mighty sweet and cool and moonshiny!"Jack stooped to draw Sylvia's scarf about her bare shoulders with the protecting chivalrous touch which was characteristic of him. His ancestors had been cavaliers and none of them all knew better than he the art of little, tender, intimate, endearing ways which women--even new women--love. The ardently adoring expression in his eyes was also characteristic. Jack Amidon's eyes were accustomed to looking adoring. He could no more help making love to a pretty girl than he could have been rude to an ugly one. It was constitutional. To do him justice, however, this time the adoration came from rather deep. There had been girls and girls in his life but never but one Sylvia."Ah, but it's good to have you home for good and all." And he let his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders as he spoke and permitted the ardentness of his eyes to deepen.But Sylvia slipped away from his hands and his too eloquent gaze. She turned to rest her hands on the railing and look down at the fountain which flashed and gurgled pleasantly below in the moonlight. Perhaps she knew that all the summer day playing had been leading up to this night, that a serious question was likely to "Boo" at her at any minute unless she could keep it at a safe distance, which as Jack's eyes just now betrayed was not going to be so easy."I am not sure Iamhome--for good and all," she said, still with her eyes on the fountain. "I have to find something to do. Just being 'out' isn't going to satisfy me. I have to be in something or rather. I am looking for a Cause," she turned back to him with a smile to add.Jack dropped on the railing by her side and bent his handsome head until it was very near the girl's."Won't I do--for a Cause?" he asked, unconsciously echoing Suzanne.Sylvia smiled."Scarcely. I am afraid you are more like an effect.""An effect!""You are a fearful example of what I don't want to be and what I am bound to be if I don't watch out.""What?"Sylvia paused for a word, then, "A derelict," she pronounced.Jack's head went up quickly, his self-complacency shattered for the moment. Sylvia's word had stung."Do I honestly remind you of anything so--dilapidated, not to say rotten?" he asked.Sylvia caught the hurt sound in his voice and looked up, taking in at a glance his wholesome, young vigor, his essential cleanness and fineness. Excellent things these in themselves as the girl knew, though she asked for more."No," she admitted. "It wasn't a good figure after all. You are more like a freshly rigged, beautifully appointed yacht, without a rudder or a pilot, going nowhere--anywhere."Jack settled back on the railing with a shrug."Same old Sylvia! You always did hit straight from the shoulder. What do you want me to do? There is more money in the family now than is good for us. What's the infernal use of my scrapping and scrambling for more? I'm a nincompoop at the business anyway.""Then for goodness' sake find one you aren't a nincompoop at," retorted Sylvia."Easier said than done, young woman.""Oh, I know," relented his mentor. "I haven't any right to preach till I find my own job.""You! Girls don't need a job. Their job is to look pretty and get married."Sylvia frowned at that."Heretic! That's not twentieth-century lingo. You are positively mediæval. I shall set Barb on you."Jack smiled."Barb knows it's true just as well as I do for all her theories. She would marry the right man in a minute if he turned up and forget the suffrage stuff. She's by all odds the most domestic of the three of you."Sylvia looked thoughtful. She remembered Barb's opinion about the "loveliness" of having babies and wondered. For all his inconsequence Jack had a somewhat startling habit at times of getting beneath the surface of things. She suspected he had hit upon a truth now but would not give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the fact. Therefore she said nothing, and her silence gave her companion the opening he had been waiting for. He had not brought Sylvia out in the moonlight to talk "twentieth-century lingo.""You didn't wear my orchids," he observed irrelevantly, at least irrelevantly to everything except his ardent eyes. From the beginning his eyes had been talking a language older than that of feminism."I didn't wear anybody's flowers. I had too many.""And I am not different from just anybody?" There was a caressing, proprietary note in his voice. "Sylvia, sweetheart, youknowI am."Sylvia faced him and the issue then, aware that she could fend no longer."Of course you are different, Jack. I've known you so much longer than the rest, but--I am afraid you are not different in the way you want me to say it. Please, Jack, don't spoil what we have by asking too much." Impulsively she put out her hand and let it rest on his. "Can't we keep on being--just friends?" She pleaded after the immemorial fashion of woman."I'm afraid not. You see, I don't want to be just friends. I want a whole lot more as it happens. I know I'm not much good, but I could be with you at the helm. You could do anything with me. You always could. Oh, Sylvia, wouldn't you try it? Couldn't you?" He stooped and lifted her hand to his lips. "Sylvia, isn't there any hope?" he implored, all his boy's heart in his eyes.Sylvia couldn't help being stirred deeply. When one is loved it is not so hard to believe one loves in return and the call of youth and life is strong. But for both their sakes she steadied herself knowing the time was not ripe for yielding, if, indeed, it ever would be. This was one of the things among others that she was at sea about. She was not yet sure she knew herself, as she had told her friends."I am afraid there isn't--much," she said gently, apropos of his wordhope.His hand clinched."Sylvia, is there any one else?"She shook her head hastily, but her eyes fell beneath his penetrating gaze."It isn't--Sylvia, it isn't Phil?"Sylvia's head went up and there was a flash in her brown eyes, a deeper flush on her cheeks."It is nobody. Jack, you haven't any right to ask that," she rebuked him hotly."Sorry," he apologized. "Consider it unasked." "So it is old Phil," he thought."I don't want to marry anybody--not for a long, long time," Sylvia went on swiftly. "Anyway, I couldn't marry anybody who was just a boy. I've got to marry aman." In her confusion Sylvia hit hard again; harder perhaps than she really meant.Jack rose and made one or two quick turns tip and down the balcony. Then he came to a halt before Sylvia."Maybe I deserve that," he said soberly. "No doubt I do. See here, Sylvia, if I can show you I am a man, will it help any?"Sylvia hesitated. It would help a great deal and she knew it. And yet could she promise anything while she was still so uncertain of herself? Had she any right to hold out any hope?"Sweetheart, wouldn't there be any chance for me?" he pleaded."I don't know," said Sylvia honestly. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm all in a muddle myself. I do care a lot. How could I help it? You are always so dear and nice to me, and you are so twisted up with so many of the happiest times I've ever had I couldn't help caring. But it isn't enough at present, and I am not at all sure it ever could be enough of the right kind. We are awfully good playmates, but there is more ahead for both of us than play. At least I hope there is. Anyway, I don't want to belong to anybody but myself for awhile.""I'll wait. I'll work like the devil. I'll do anything if you'll only say there is the slightest shadow of a chance."Sylvia couldn't help smiling at the boyishness of his protestations, earnest as they were and touching in their unwonted humility. She shook her head."That is all there is--just a shadow of a chance. I'm sorry it isn't more. Truly I am. And don't--please, don't--hope too much," she begged."I'll hope all there is," he retorted grimly."Well, here you are! My word! Your partners are tearing their hair and rushing round like mad dogs. Pretty way for a hostess to behave, vanishing like the original Cheshire puss! Amidon, your life isn't worth a nickle if you go in there." Thus challenged a blond young medical student from the near-by University suddenly appearing in the window, blithely unconscious that he had interrupted anything more than a moonlight interlude."Then I'll stay out," announced Jack coolly as Sylvia rose with apologies and followed her captor.Left alone, Jack lit a cigarette and strode to and fro in the little balcony thinking as hard as perhaps he had ever thought in his twenty-six rather heedless happy-go-lucky years. If ever a man takes square account of himself it is at the moment when he desires with all his heart and soul to win a woman. As young men go, Jack Amidon was as clean and fine as most, considerably more so than might have been expected, in fact, considering his easy-going temperament and unlimited income. But being merely negatively decent was not enough to offer Sylvia Arden. Not even shrewd old Angus McIntosh knew that better than Jack himself."Man indeed!" he muttered in the course of his march. "I suppose if I had studied like sin and turned into a saw bones like old Phil she would have had some use for me." The thought of Phil Lorrimer sent his thoughts on a different tangent. For with that uncanny perceptive power which Sylvia herself granted him he knew far better than Sylvia knew that if it had been Phil instead of himself who had been besieging the Princess of the hill top that evening for the boon of her hand and heart a different answer might have been forthcoming. Phil, at least, fulfilled the initial requirement. He was a man, every inch of him. Jack vouchsafed him that just as he had admitted the other lad deserved Sylvia's favor even at his own expense back in the days of the Christmas family.It was odd how history repeated itself. Just as in that old time, Sylvia had set himself a task to "mend his fences" as she had whimsically expressed it, so she was again bidding him gird on his armor if he would win her respect without which her love was an impossibility. As if it were yesterday Jack remembered that night among the snow-laden pines, out under the stars, when Sylvia had gravely and simply without any preaching, Sylvia fashion, turned him aside from paths already beginning to be dangerous to safer, cleaner ways. Come to think of it, it had always been Sylvia who had pointed him starward, Sylvia only who believed in him enough to swear him into knighthood. Now that they were no longer boy and girl it was the prize of her love which would send him into the fray. Already he had experienced his accolade."Poor old Lorry!" he thought. "Why didn't he cut his blooming operations and come down here and speak for himself to-night? Thank the Lord he didn't though or yours truly would be ditched and done for. I never had a show with Lorry in the foreground. Well, here's to the breach. Sylvia will never forgive me if I omit to dance with one of her precious orphans."So it happened that a few moments later shy little Mary Lane watching the dancers with longing eyes from a corner caught her breath with astonishment and delight as Jack Amidon stood before her, his eyes smiling encouragement and friendliness, his lips begging the boon of a dance quite as earnestly as if she had been one of the belles of the ball. So it happened also that Sylvia, being whirled past the two, smiled happy gratitude at Jack over her partner's shoulder, and he knew that his careless kindness to her little guest had scored him a high mark in her favor."Jack is such a dear," thought Sylvia. "He is a real knight. I wonder if I am all wrong to try to turn him into a plain workaday person. He is so thoroughly delightful as he is. When men get too much absorbed in their work you can't count on them for the little things, and, after all, the little things mean a whole lot."Possibly this sage conclusion had some vague connection with the fact that a certain very much "absorbed in work" young doctor way off in a distant city had permitted Sylvia's birthday to come and almost go with no word or sign. If so certainly Sylvia would have been the last to admit the connection even to herself."Please, Miss Sylvia, there's some one downstairs in the hall asking for you," whispered a maid in Sylvia's ears as her partner brought her to a chair. "He didn't give any name."Sylvia excused herself and slipped away wondering as to the identity of her late arriving guest. At the foot of the stairs was an extraordinarily tall, blond young man, with the bluest and friendliest of eyes and the biggest, most crushing hand grip in the world."Why, Phil!" gasped Sylvia. "I had no idea you could come." This as soon as she was able to regain her wits and the possession of her hands."Nor I. As a matter of fact, I couldn't. I just did," grinned Phil Lorrimer, cheerfully. "Here I am, B. and O. grime and all. May I come to the party just as I am without one plea?""You surely may. I'm so glad." And Sylvia's face corroborated her words."Here's a nosegay for you," and Phil's fingers fumbled with the string on the box he had deposited in a convenient chair while he had used both hands greeting Sylvia. In a moment a charming bouquet of cream yellow roses, shell pink at the heart, was disclosed."How lovely!" Sylvia buried her face in the nosegay. "I just have to wear them. Oh, dear, I haven't a pin.""Here you are!" And the young doctor solemnly produced the needful article."Trust you!" laughed Sylvia. "There, aren't they perfect? Come on, quick. Let's not waste the music.""Ditto my sentiments. Is this my dance?""It's Doctor Tom's, but he won't care. Hurry."And in a moment the onlookers had something new to think of as Sylvia's white and silverness flashed back into the ballroom with a tall figure in plain traveling clothes by her side."Another country heard from," grunted Angus McIntosh as he watched the two swing into step.Perhaps in the whole room there was no one who had more cause for a sudden reaction of feeling than Jack Amidon, whose quick eye took in even at the length of the hall that Sylvia was at last wearing somebody's flowers. But it was with apparent nonchalance and entire good will that he came to offer Phil Lorrimer a cordial greeting a few moments later, though even as he chatted with the other young man it did not escape him that there was an added radiance to Sylvia's "moonshininess," as if she had tasted some magic draught of youth and joy during those few moments in which she had been out of the room. As has been observed, Jack Amidon was a rather unexpectedly perspicuous person at times.CHAPTER VSEPTEMBER AFTERNOON"Oh, me! Just think! By to-morrow afternoon at this time we'll all be scattered to the four winds," sighed Barbara. "Don't you hate to have things get different?""Can't say I do. The differenter the better so far as I am concerned as I have hitherto remarked," put in Suzanne. "I hate staying still, physically, mentally, or morally. I'm ready for new pricks every minute. I feel like saying to life every morning 'Come on. Do your worst. I'm ready. Give me anything--everything--except stagnation.'""You don't look as if you were going to stagnate just this minute," laughed Sylvia, surveying her friend, who, indeed, from the tip of her impatiently tapping shoe to the crown of her rebellious blue-black, wavy hair, appeared sufficiently dynamic for any purpose."I don't intend to. That is why I am transferring my spiritual and bodily allegiance from Norton, Pa., to New York City. I'd rather live on a crust in that blessed city of enchantment than fare on nectar and ambrosia elsewhere. I wish you would change your mind and come along, Sylvia. I know you are going to be discontented here or even contented, which is worse. Arden Hall is a perfect dream of a place, and I've loved every minute of this week with you, but it would swamp me with its placidity if I settled down in it, and that's the truth.""Oh, Suzanne!" Thus Barb, always sensitive to the possibility that some one's feelings might be going to be hurt."Don't mind her, Barb. I know what she means precisely, and it is all more or less true. Arden Hall is placid and remote. I have to find a way to link it somehow with big moving things outside--below--or the very thing Suzanne threatens me with will happen.""You'll find a way," prophesied Barb earnestly."Of course she'll find it," seconded Suzanne. "If there is anybody on this green earth capable of squeezing the traditional camel through the needle's eye it is the young person I see before me. Isn't it time our cavaliers arrived? I begin to pine for action already.""Jack said he would be here at four sharp. We are going to take you to the most heavenly spot, right over the river with the whole Ridge for a background. Some day when you are being compressed to a wafer in the Subway in your precious old city you will remember it and be willing to give your second-most-becoming hat for a magic carpet to take you back.""I shouldn't wonder," murmured Barb. "I believe Suzanne would rather hear the roar of the El than the wind in the pines though. She is the most urban person I ever knew."Suzanne laughed at this arraignment."It isn't the music of the El,per sethat I delight in. That's nearer like the thing it rhymes with. But it's a symbol. It means hurrying human beings, the rush and stir of things. I love crowds.""And I detest them," groaned Barb. "I'm afraid of New York in spite of all its wonderfulness. It is so big and hard and impersonal. If it weren't for being with Aunt Jo I know it would scare me to bits to live there.""You poor babe!" Sylvia smiled sympathetically at the speaker. "It is unthinkable that a little shrinking infant like you should be dedicated to a great screaming cause. You ought to live in a cozy cottage, in a friendly little village, where everybody knows everybody and grow pansies.""And babies," added Suzanne, an addition which brought a quick flush to Barb's cheeks and made her put out her hand with a deprecating gesture. "You'll never be able to stand the pace. Better wire your Aunt Josephine you have decided to bury the mantle.""For mercy's sake, what do you two think I am? I guess I don't have to be packed away in rose petals and pink cotton." There was a strain of indignation in Barb's voice. "I don't belong in the sheltered woman class, and I wouldn't stay in it if I did. How long do you suppose I'd have any peace in my cozy cottage, in my friendly little village, remembering all the other women who don't live in cozy friendly places but have to work in horrid, noisy, sweaty factories or worse? What pleasure would I get out of my pansies--and babies--so long as I knew there was a child in the world who wasn't free to chase butterflies in the sunshine? You two think I am just playing at this woman game. I'm not. Sylvia can act Lady Bountiful from the top of her Hill and you can write about woman, Suzanne, but I'm going to fight for her, so there!""Bravo! I stand reproved and beg a thousand pardons. You're a trump, Barbie. You are right, too. Sylvia and I are likely to play with this thing called Feminism, but you'll fight for it to the last trench like the wee bit heroine you are. Oh, there's Mr. Amidon's car. There is Mr. Amidon and Dr. Lorrimer and--Sylvia,whois the third man?""If my eyes do not deceive me the third man is Roger Minot. Did you know he was imminent?""I did not. Moreover, I am extremely displeased with him for appearing," frowned Suzanne. "I told him distinctly I didn't want to see him again unless I sent for him.""Well, you will have to look the other way then," observed Sylvia. "He is in plain sight."So indeed it proved, for three minutes later, Roger Minot, a tall young man with hazel eyes and a firm chin, was shaking hands with the assembled group and explaining with considerable explicitness that he had happened to be in Baltimore on business and had also happened to call up Jack Amidon by telephone, who, in turn, had happened to be taking Sylvia and her guests on an excursion and had been kind enough to include himself in the invitation.At all of which elaborate eloquence Suzanne had shrugged her displeasure and pointedly turned her back on the young barrister and devoted herself to the doctor. So much "happening" in the face of her expressed command deserved punishment and Suzanne was a firm disciplinarian where her lovers were concerned, especially the unfortunate Roger."Sylvia, you will have to sit with me to show me the way," ordered Jack in his usual "magerful" way, taking things into his own hands. "All aboard, everybody? Sure Madame Felicia won't go?" He turned to Sylvia to inquire."No, she said not. Felicia is not exceedingly devoted to picnics, and I suspect she has had more than enough of them this summer. Ready?" Sylvia turned back to her guests to ask and in a moment they were off down the hill.The rich, vivid-hued Maryland fields and meadows lay indeed, "fair as the garden of the Lord" as the car sped out of Greendale beyond to the open country, along the smooth, hard, white pike. The afternoon shadows fell cool and long, and already there was a faint autumnal hint of crispness in the air and a mellow, misty gold to the sunshine. The mountains were outlined, palely blue, against the deeper azure of the cloudless September skies. Here and there a buzzard sailed and dipped above some wooded slope or a blue jay screamed and flashed out of an oak thicket.Amidst the chatter of the rest Barbara fell silent and gave herself blissfully to the serene beauty of the outdoor world so utterly remote from that other world of din and traffic, of strenuous toil and keen competition in which she was to merge her own existence on the morrow. She was profoundly grateful for this last opportunity to feel the benign presence of Nature in field and sky and mountain. Her quick eye took in every patch of purple aster bloom, every scarlet glory of sumach and warm bronze hue of oaks. Even the corn shocks spreading their brown skirts as if indulging in some quaint minuet stamped themselves upon her inner vision to be remembered long after. She did not wish to talk, scarcely even to think. She desired only to feel--to let the benediction of the jewel-tinted day possess her spirit.Suzanne, less susceptible to the mood of tranquillity, was bubbling over with gayety, her attention centering chiefly on Phil Lorrimer sitting in the seat opposite her. She chose to ignore Roger Minot's steady hazel eyes. He need not think his coming made any difference to her. Whether he came or went was a matter of supreme indifference. He might just as well have stayed in his grim little, trim little, office in Norton, Pa., as to have pursued a will-o'-the-wisp to Arden Hall so far as Suzanne was concerned. Some women were made unhappy by men. Suzanne had a cousin to whom this had befallen and had long since determined none should have power to hurt her. She meant to guard well the citadel which was Suzanne Morrison. If there were any casualties in the attempt to scale the walls the responsibility would not be on her head. Let men look to themselves. Suzanne had small compassion. Though she thoroughly enjoyed the stimulus of the society of the other sex and dearly loved to clash swords with them she wished nothing at their hands. She meant to show the world that a woman could stand alone, strive and conquer alone, fail if need be, alone, sufficient unto herself unto the end. There should be no doll's house for her, no more confining limits than life itself, wide as ether and deep as the sea, for her abiding place.On the driver's seat were Jack and Sylvia, the latter a little silent. Though she had made no protest against her companion's rather high-handed disposition of herself it had not wholly pleased Sylvia. For one thing, she thought it assumed too much on the basis of that half promise of last night. She did not desire that Phil or indeed any of the party should infer that she and Jack must necessarily pair off like a couple of Noah's ark animals; moreover she considered it extremely thoughtless, not to say selfish, of Jack to leave Phil to the society of a group of almost strangers when his time in Greendale was so limited; for Phil was taking the midnight train back to New York having allowed himself little more than twenty-four hours for a holiday."Too bad everybody has to go away," Jack was saying. "May I come over often and help cheer your lonely hours?" His voice was lowered and his head bent toward Sylvia in an intimate fashion."No." The negative was sufficiently decisive to make the driver send a sharp glance at his companion."Why not?""Several why nots. One is because you said last night you were going to work in earnest. You can't do that and keep flying out to Greendale every other day the way you have been doing all summer. Besides, I expect to be busy myself.""You! May I ask what you are going to do that is so almighty important?""You may ask but I am not likely to inform you if you take that tone."Jack whistled softly."Gee! Am I in as bad as all that?""As all what? Did I sound cross?" Sylvia smiled relentingly. "Well, maybe I was. I hate the lordly male attitude you assume at times. Your tone bristled with it just then.""Did it?" he chuckled. "Sorry. Honest, I didn't mean to patronize your ladyship. So far from feeling lordly in your presence you usually make me feel infernally infinitesimal, not to say atomic. I have a fearful and wonderful respect for your serene high mightiness. I truly did want to know what you were going to do.""I am going to get to work on my music for one thing. I've promised to practice with Gus. Then I am going to learn to cook.""In the name of heaven why?""Because I want to, chiefly. Also I think everybody--male and female--ought to know how."Jack groaned."Thence to dressmaking and millinery, I suppose?""Hardly. I haven't the slightest interest in sewing, though I could do it on a pinch I believe. I know I couldn't trim a hat--at least not one I would wear. But cooking is different. I believe I could get up quite a passion for it. Hilda used to. She claimed it was just as much an art to create a perfect salad as to write a sonnet.""I'd vote for the salad personally. By the way, where is Hilda? Heard lately?""No, and I'm worried. One hears such horrid stories of what is happening over there. I don't know whether she and the Armstrongs can't get back or don't want to.""Most likely the latter. Johnny Armstrong is darned likely to do what he wants. He is just the boy not to want to get back to safe and sane America. He is much more apt to be down in a trench or up in a 'plane by this time.""I know. He's a wonder--one of the finest men I know. Just to think he was my gardener once! Wasn't it funny?""He got mighty good pay for that piece of masquerading. Constance is a shade too much on the grand duchess order for my taste but she suits him down to the ground. Only wish Isabel had drawn a man like John instead of the rotter she took a fancy to marry." For a moment Jack's serene brow looked thundery. "Queer world!" he muttered. "Sometimes I think we Amidons are doomed to go amuck one way or another. Jeanette's not much better off. Guess we're all sort of rudderless as you say, excepting Dad. He knows where he is going all right.""You had better get on to his ship then," suggested Sylvia a little dryly."I am going to. You needn't think I didn't mean what I said last night. I did mean it, every word. If sticking to a job is going to mean getting what I want, I'll stick tighter than a stamp."There was a ring of determination in his voice which startled Sylvia a little, it sounded so alarmingly conclusive."Jack! I didn't promise," she protested."Oh, I know. I'm not such a cad as to throw it up at you if even the sticking isn't enough. But if it's the one chance I'm too good a gambler not to take it--or to kick if I fail in the end." And Jack's lips came together with a firmness which avouched the sincerity of his statement.Sylvia watching the landscape flit by looked thoughtful. It suddenly occurred to her that her companion had spoken the literal truth. Jack Amidon was first and last a good gambler, ready to play high stakes, to win or lose like a gentleman, without vainglory or bitterness. If she had said yes to his impassioned plea last night Sylvia could not help wondering if a little of the ardor of his love might not have abated in spite of himself. Wasn't it the chase itself he loved? If so, he was only his father's own son. Jackson Amidon, Senior, went on quietly bagging his millions, not because he cared a snap of his fingers for the money but because the exhilaration of achieving it in the face of obstacles was the breath of life to him. Like the biblical war horses he metaphorically trumpeted "Ha Ha!" in the battle hour. With father and son the game itself was the thing. The nature of the stake did not matter so much. With one it was Power, with the other Love, as it happened, but with both the zest lay, not in the end, but in the pursuit. Of course Sylvia did not reason all this out clearly, but vaguely she sensed the truth which the boy's words had revealed. Many months later the revelation recurred to her and she wondered if Jack, too, had understood himself as clearly as for a moment she had understood him. She thought it possible with his keen power of intuition, he had always understood. Perhaps he had.So through the deepening autumnal twilight sped Youth with its visions and its questionings, Youth unproved, pressing forward toward some unknown mark in challenging mood, knowing little of the eternal mystery of Life and less of that even more baffling mystery, the mystery of Self.
CHAPTER III
TWENTY-TWO
"Please, Felicia. Look at me. Am I all right?"
Mrs. Emory turned from her mirror before which she had been adjusting a last hairpin in her blond hair and smiled at the radiant vision which hovered on her threshold. But before she had time to render verdict the vision ceased to be stationary and became before her eyes a vivid, ecstatic flash and whirl of white chiffon and silver.
"Bless us, child!" laughed Felicia. "You are as bad as Marianna. How can I tell anything about you when you are spinning like a Dervish? You look as if you might float out the window any minute and join the moon sprites."
Sylvia laughed, too, and came to a halt, though one silver slipper paused tip toe as if it scorned prosaic levels and held itself ready for further airy revolutions.
"And leave my birthday party! Not much! The moon sprites shan't get me to-night. Honest, Felicia, I just can't keep still. I'm too alive."
The chiffons and silver began to shimmer and quiver again in testimony and Felicia smiled understandingly. But even as she smiled she felt a sharp little pang--the pang of chastened maturity for exuberant youth. A vagrant bit of verse flashed through her mind.
"Pity that ever the jubilant springs should fail at their flowAnd that youth so utterly knowing it not should one day know."
"Pity that ever the jubilant springs should fail at their flowAnd that youth so utterly knowing it not should one day know."
"Pity that ever the jubilant springs should fail at their flow
And that youth so utterly knowing it not should one day know."
Yes, that was the pity. Here was Sylvia Arden, glad, and young, and free, smiling into the future with fearless eyes, challenging experience. Must she too, one day know? At any rate, the hour of too much knowing was as yet afar off. At twenty-two Sylvia was still very close to the jubilant springs. But even as she reached this comforting conclusion Felicia saw the girl's eyes grow sober.
"Felicia, sometimes I think it's a dreadful thing to grow up. Life is so fearfully complex somehow. All sorts of questions jump out and 'Boo' at you from behind every tree."
"What kind of questions?"
"Oh, all kinds!" Sylvia dropped down on the low window seat, like a bird suddenly alighting, and clasped her hands around her knees in reckless disregard of her billowing chiffons. "I'm a little afflicted with socialism and that is a sad disease for a person who has as much money as I have. But that isn't all. I am so at sea about so many things, and there are so many strings pulling in all directions. Suzanne thinks New York is the only place in the world to really live in and she wants me to come and live with her and study or do something. She doesn't think it matters much what, so long as I breathe New York, and Barb is nearly as bad. They are both full of up-to-date notions and they think I'm just going to slip behind if I stay here and maybe I shall. I can see pretty easily how I could. Everybody here expects me to do the regular coming out performance, teas and dinners and balls and the rest, with maybe a little discreet charity work thrown in, and possibly a paper on art or ethics for the literary club. You know what Greendale is. The Gordons want me to go to Japan with them and Hilda wants me to join her in Berlin, or did before the war. Goodness knows where she is now. I haven't heard since July. And--well, there are other things."
Felicia quite understood that Jack Amidon might possibly be another string pulling the girl. It was no secret from the Hill, and certainly not from the wise-eyed "Big Sister," that that devoted, persistent and "magerful" young man had every intention of storming Sylvia's hill top and carrying off its princess if such a feat were humanly possible.
"And you don't want to do any of these things?"
Sylvia smiled dubiously.
"Oh, yes, a little of me wants to do all those things. But the most of me wants to stay right here at Arden Hall and do nothing particular. I'd like a kind of year o' grace I think. I don't seem to have any especial ambitions nor desires except to learn to live as broad and deep and quick as I can." She shifted her position slightly and looked out into the night where her beloved rose garden lay in magical moonlight and shadow and a faint sigh escaped her, born of the very beauty, poignant almost as pain, so quick was her response to it. Suddenly she turned back and her eyes smiled at Felicia.
"Life's funny, isn't it?" she said, springing up. "Felicia, what ever in the world should I do without you?" She eyed a little sternly the bunch of violets Felicia was wearing, a fresh bunch which had arrived that day. "Felicia, Mr. Kinnard isn't--you aren't--?"
Felicia laughed.
"Your observations lack a certain finished coherence but I assure you I am not, nor is he--at least, not seriously."
"I'm so glad!" sighed Sylvia. "I know I'm a pig but I should simply hate Stephen Kinnard if I thought he were going to carry you off, and I should hate to hate him he is so exceedingly nice. I wish he could have stayed for the party to-night. Oh me! We ought to be downstairs this blessed minute.AmI all right, Felicia? You never did tell me." And Sylvia whirled around to the mirror for a last critical survey. Felicia, whose eyes also sought the reflected figure in the glass, thought she had never seen the girl lovelier than she was to-night in all her shimmering bravery of white and silver. But there was always something more than mere prettiness about Sylvia, something which seemed to shine from within out. She was so exquisitely alive like the fire in the heart of an opal or a jet of pure flame.
"Aren't you coming, Syl?" Suzanne's voice called from the hall as she knocked and entered almost simultaneously, followed by Barbara.
"'The feast is set,The guests are met.May'st hear the merry din.'"
"'The feast is set,The guests are met.May'st hear the merry din.'"
"'The feast is set,
The guests are met.
May'st hear the merry din.'"
May'st hear the merry din.'"
she chanted gayly, looking more impishly charming even than usual in her beruffled corn yellow taffeta, which set off her sparkling brunette beauty to perfection. "Do come down quick and get the hand shaking over so we can begin to dance. It is a shame to waste a moment of that heavenly music. And here's Barb just dying to get to cracking the hearts of the Greendale swains. Look at her. Behold my handiwork. She even let me apply the faintest soupçon of Nature's sweet reënforcer. Madame Delphine's Parisian Bloom. Isn't she adorable? Barbie, my child, revolve for the ladies."
"Oh, Suzanne!" The roses in Barb's cheeks needed no further reënforcement at the moment. "Do please rub it off. It's dreadful. Does it show, Sylvia? She would do it."
"Nothing shows except that you're the cunningest mite I ever laid eyes on," approved Sylvia. "Felicia, do look at her. Doesn't she look precisely like one of Marianna's dolls? In that darling white baby dress and blue sash to match her eyes, would you ever suspect her of being a Summa cum Laude and a frightfully new woman?"
"You all look new enough when it comes to that," laughed Felicia. "You haven't a notion how young you really are. Now, shoo, every one of you. I'll follow as soon as I have rounded up Donald and Marianna."
It was a rather heterogeneous assembly which met at the Hall that night, as Sylvia's parties were apt to be. The guests ranged from "Grandpa McIntosh," getting to be rather an old gentleman these days but still hale and a little crusty as became a good Scotchman, down to little Mary Lane, the youngest, shyest member of the "Hester house" family which continued to hold its hospitable doors open to those who needed a home "with some one to care" as Sylvia had stipulated from the beginning.
Marianna, still fairy-like, in spite of her eleven-year-old dignity, flitted happily among the guests feeling delightfully grown up and important, but Donald, younger and shyer, boyishly conscious of his hands and feet, slipped into unobtrusive corners save for the rare moments when he could squeeze into an empty space beside his mother.
Of course the Hill was all there, Miss Priscilla, and Miss Rosalie and Julietta feasted their eyes delightedly on Sylvia, telling every one who would listen what a very picture of her Aunt Eleanor Arden the child was, rapturously reminiscent of other days and other parties when they, too, like Arden Hall were younger than at present, and Doctor Tom and Lois were there also, rallying each other on being such old fogies that a party was an event and the new dances utterly beyond their ken.
"Hester house" was present too in full force, including Mrs. Lorrimer and all the family of girls who had the luck to be mothered by her skillful hands and warm heart. All kinds of girls they were, big and little, pretty and plain, stupid and clever, but all of the workaday world and all otherwise homeless, united by one common bond, a warm adoration for Sylvia through whom they felt themselves linked to the world of their rosiest dreams. Sylvia would no more have omitted them from her list of guests on this birthday celebration than she would have omitted the Byrds or Doctor Tom. To be of the Hill was open sesame to Sylvia's favor, and moreover these girls were every one of them her personal friends and she wanted them here for their own sakes.
Hope and Martha, too, had come up from the Oriole Inn, the former still a little inarticulate and somber but happily having lost the old-young, pinched look about the mouth and the bitterness about the eyes which had been hers that night in Sylvia's garden when she had charged the owner so sternly with possessing "Hundreds of roses when Hope hasn't even one;" a charge which Sylvia had never since been able to forget for long. It was to her a symbol of the mesh of inequality and injustice of the world in which she herself was caught and struggled. For Sylvia wanted to share her roses. She always had wanted to, as Martha had long since learned. Hope was even sweeter and lovelier at twenty than she had been at fifteen, still a little frail in appearance though perfectly well. This summer there was an added grace about her, a sort of suppressed joyousness, a glow which transformed her rather ethereal charm into an even more appealing human guise. During the sunny summer days past when Stephen Kinnard had been using her as the incarnation of gardens, Hope herself had bloomed from a shy bud of a rose into a half-blown flower, though perhaps only Martha's keen, devoted eyes saw what had happened.
Professor Lane and his wife, Sylvia's original "Christmas Mother," were unfortunately unable to be present, though they sent warm greetings and hearty congratulations from the Western university to which the professor had recently been called. With them, too, was Elizabeth, also of the original famous family, who had come of late to be almost like a daughter in their childless home.
Gus Nichols was here, however, a slim, dark youth, extremely quiet, though not in the least awkward; unobtrusive, grave, giving the impression somehow of banked fires behind those solemn dark eyes of his, which followed Sylvia Arden wherever she passed. Though Gus was thoroughly American in dress and manner and articulation, the trail of his Italian ancestry was upon him. Even after all these years he looked "different," an odd contrast to the grim conservative old man, Angus McIntosh, whose adopted son and idol he was. Gus had been studying abroad for several years, had indeed just returned to America, ready to start his career on the concert stage. If this profession elected by the boy were at all a bitter pill for the old Scotchman to swallow he made no protest about it and had even furthered the lad's ambition. Mr. McIntosh was not one to indulge in half-way measures and Sylvia had long since driven home her point that if he was to transform Gus Nichols, office boy, into Augustus Nichols, his adopted son, he had no right to change the currents of the boy's being in the process. He quite understood that if Gus "had to play the music that was in him," hehadto. That was the end of it. Angus McIntosh was enough of a predestinarian to perceive that. At any rate, Sylvia and her Christmas family had inoculated the fast hardening old man with a certain infusion of human tolerance and human understanding and he had all the reward for his kindness that he desired and more in the boy's usually silent but none the less deep gratitude and devotion.
Other friends there were of Greendale and the near-by city, assembled to do honor to the young mistress of Arden Hall who had at last come home to take her place among them no longer a half-fledged school girl, but a poised and very lovely young woman.
"I suppose you will be marrying her off next," observed Mr. McIntosh curtly, with bent brows, to Mrs. Emory who chanced to be standing near by as Sylvia sped past in Jack Amidon's arms.
"Not I," smiled Felicia. "I should be sorry to have her marry for a year or so yet. One is young such a very short time in this world at best. I should like to keep her just as she is for awhile if I could."
"You'll have some trouble doing it unless you muzzle that young man, I'm thinking." The speaker frowned thoughtfully at Jack Amidon's back. "I suppose that is what most people would call a suitable match, eh?" he wheeled on Felicia to ask.
"I suppose so," admitted Felicia.
"H-mp!" snorted her companion. "Most people are fools."
Whether fools or not there were plenty of people to note with interest, pleasure or alarm, according to their several viewpoints, when as the music ceased Sylvia stepped through the French window into the balcony beyond, followed by Jack Amidon. Perhaps more than one guest would have echoed Suzanne's verdict that Sylvia was spoiled indeed if Jack Amidon were not good enough for her; handsome, debonair, thoroughly charming as he was. Health, wealth, good looks and good old family on both sides. What more could be desired? Who but a canny old Scotchman would have "H-mped" in the face of such a very obviously appropriate combination? Yet Sylvia herself was still to be reckoned with; Sylvia who wore her heart on her sleeve as little now as in the old St. Anne days, Sylvia, who wanted to learn to live as broad and deep and quick as she could.
CHAPTER IV
THE WAYS OF A MAID
"You look mighty sweet and cool and moonshiny!"
Jack stooped to draw Sylvia's scarf about her bare shoulders with the protecting chivalrous touch which was characteristic of him. His ancestors had been cavaliers and none of them all knew better than he the art of little, tender, intimate, endearing ways which women--even new women--love. The ardently adoring expression in his eyes was also characteristic. Jack Amidon's eyes were accustomed to looking adoring. He could no more help making love to a pretty girl than he could have been rude to an ugly one. It was constitutional. To do him justice, however, this time the adoration came from rather deep. There had been girls and girls in his life but never but one Sylvia.
"Ah, but it's good to have you home for good and all." And he let his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders as he spoke and permitted the ardentness of his eyes to deepen.
But Sylvia slipped away from his hands and his too eloquent gaze. She turned to rest her hands on the railing and look down at the fountain which flashed and gurgled pleasantly below in the moonlight. Perhaps she knew that all the summer day playing had been leading up to this night, that a serious question was likely to "Boo" at her at any minute unless she could keep it at a safe distance, which as Jack's eyes just now betrayed was not going to be so easy.
"I am not sure Iamhome--for good and all," she said, still with her eyes on the fountain. "I have to find something to do. Just being 'out' isn't going to satisfy me. I have to be in something or rather. I am looking for a Cause," she turned back to him with a smile to add.
Jack dropped on the railing by her side and bent his handsome head until it was very near the girl's.
"Won't I do--for a Cause?" he asked, unconsciously echoing Suzanne.
Sylvia smiled.
"Scarcely. I am afraid you are more like an effect."
"An effect!"
"You are a fearful example of what I don't want to be and what I am bound to be if I don't watch out."
"What?"
Sylvia paused for a word, then, "A derelict," she pronounced.
Jack's head went up quickly, his self-complacency shattered for the moment. Sylvia's word had stung.
"Do I honestly remind you of anything so--dilapidated, not to say rotten?" he asked.
Sylvia caught the hurt sound in his voice and looked up, taking in at a glance his wholesome, young vigor, his essential cleanness and fineness. Excellent things these in themselves as the girl knew, though she asked for more.
"No," she admitted. "It wasn't a good figure after all. You are more like a freshly rigged, beautifully appointed yacht, without a rudder or a pilot, going nowhere--anywhere."
Jack settled back on the railing with a shrug.
"Same old Sylvia! You always did hit straight from the shoulder. What do you want me to do? There is more money in the family now than is good for us. What's the infernal use of my scrapping and scrambling for more? I'm a nincompoop at the business anyway."
"Then for goodness' sake find one you aren't a nincompoop at," retorted Sylvia.
"Easier said than done, young woman."
"Oh, I know," relented his mentor. "I haven't any right to preach till I find my own job."
"You! Girls don't need a job. Their job is to look pretty and get married."
Sylvia frowned at that.
"Heretic! That's not twentieth-century lingo. You are positively mediæval. I shall set Barb on you."
Jack smiled.
"Barb knows it's true just as well as I do for all her theories. She would marry the right man in a minute if he turned up and forget the suffrage stuff. She's by all odds the most domestic of the three of you."
Sylvia looked thoughtful. She remembered Barb's opinion about the "loveliness" of having babies and wondered. For all his inconsequence Jack had a somewhat startling habit at times of getting beneath the surface of things. She suspected he had hit upon a truth now but would not give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the fact. Therefore she said nothing, and her silence gave her companion the opening he had been waiting for. He had not brought Sylvia out in the moonlight to talk "twentieth-century lingo."
"You didn't wear my orchids," he observed irrelevantly, at least irrelevantly to everything except his ardent eyes. From the beginning his eyes had been talking a language older than that of feminism.
"I didn't wear anybody's flowers. I had too many."
"And I am not different from just anybody?" There was a caressing, proprietary note in his voice. "Sylvia, sweetheart, youknowI am."
Sylvia faced him and the issue then, aware that she could fend no longer.
"Of course you are different, Jack. I've known you so much longer than the rest, but--I am afraid you are not different in the way you want me to say it. Please, Jack, don't spoil what we have by asking too much." Impulsively she put out her hand and let it rest on his. "Can't we keep on being--just friends?" She pleaded after the immemorial fashion of woman.
"I'm afraid not. You see, I don't want to be just friends. I want a whole lot more as it happens. I know I'm not much good, but I could be with you at the helm. You could do anything with me. You always could. Oh, Sylvia, wouldn't you try it? Couldn't you?" He stooped and lifted her hand to his lips. "Sylvia, isn't there any hope?" he implored, all his boy's heart in his eyes.
Sylvia couldn't help being stirred deeply. When one is loved it is not so hard to believe one loves in return and the call of youth and life is strong. But for both their sakes she steadied herself knowing the time was not ripe for yielding, if, indeed, it ever would be. This was one of the things among others that she was at sea about. She was not yet sure she knew herself, as she had told her friends.
"I am afraid there isn't--much," she said gently, apropos of his wordhope.
His hand clinched.
"Sylvia, is there any one else?"
She shook her head hastily, but her eyes fell beneath his penetrating gaze.
"It isn't--Sylvia, it isn't Phil?"
Sylvia's head went up and there was a flash in her brown eyes, a deeper flush on her cheeks.
"It is nobody. Jack, you haven't any right to ask that," she rebuked him hotly.
"Sorry," he apologized. "Consider it unasked." "So it is old Phil," he thought.
"I don't want to marry anybody--not for a long, long time," Sylvia went on swiftly. "Anyway, I couldn't marry anybody who was just a boy. I've got to marry aman." In her confusion Sylvia hit hard again; harder perhaps than she really meant.
Jack rose and made one or two quick turns tip and down the balcony. Then he came to a halt before Sylvia.
"Maybe I deserve that," he said soberly. "No doubt I do. See here, Sylvia, if I can show you I am a man, will it help any?"
Sylvia hesitated. It would help a great deal and she knew it. And yet could she promise anything while she was still so uncertain of herself? Had she any right to hold out any hope?
"Sweetheart, wouldn't there be any chance for me?" he pleaded.
"I don't know," said Sylvia honestly. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm all in a muddle myself. I do care a lot. How could I help it? You are always so dear and nice to me, and you are so twisted up with so many of the happiest times I've ever had I couldn't help caring. But it isn't enough at present, and I am not at all sure it ever could be enough of the right kind. We are awfully good playmates, but there is more ahead for both of us than play. At least I hope there is. Anyway, I don't want to belong to anybody but myself for awhile."
"I'll wait. I'll work like the devil. I'll do anything if you'll only say there is the slightest shadow of a chance."
Sylvia couldn't help smiling at the boyishness of his protestations, earnest as they were and touching in their unwonted humility. She shook her head.
"That is all there is--just a shadow of a chance. I'm sorry it isn't more. Truly I am. And don't--please, don't--hope too much," she begged.
"I'll hope all there is," he retorted grimly.
"Well, here you are! My word! Your partners are tearing their hair and rushing round like mad dogs. Pretty way for a hostess to behave, vanishing like the original Cheshire puss! Amidon, your life isn't worth a nickle if you go in there." Thus challenged a blond young medical student from the near-by University suddenly appearing in the window, blithely unconscious that he had interrupted anything more than a moonlight interlude.
"Then I'll stay out," announced Jack coolly as Sylvia rose with apologies and followed her captor.
Left alone, Jack lit a cigarette and strode to and fro in the little balcony thinking as hard as perhaps he had ever thought in his twenty-six rather heedless happy-go-lucky years. If ever a man takes square account of himself it is at the moment when he desires with all his heart and soul to win a woman. As young men go, Jack Amidon was as clean and fine as most, considerably more so than might have been expected, in fact, considering his easy-going temperament and unlimited income. But being merely negatively decent was not enough to offer Sylvia Arden. Not even shrewd old Angus McIntosh knew that better than Jack himself.
"Man indeed!" he muttered in the course of his march. "I suppose if I had studied like sin and turned into a saw bones like old Phil she would have had some use for me." The thought of Phil Lorrimer sent his thoughts on a different tangent. For with that uncanny perceptive power which Sylvia herself granted him he knew far better than Sylvia knew that if it had been Phil instead of himself who had been besieging the Princess of the hill top that evening for the boon of her hand and heart a different answer might have been forthcoming. Phil, at least, fulfilled the initial requirement. He was a man, every inch of him. Jack vouchsafed him that just as he had admitted the other lad deserved Sylvia's favor even at his own expense back in the days of the Christmas family.
It was odd how history repeated itself. Just as in that old time, Sylvia had set himself a task to "mend his fences" as she had whimsically expressed it, so she was again bidding him gird on his armor if he would win her respect without which her love was an impossibility. As if it were yesterday Jack remembered that night among the snow-laden pines, out under the stars, when Sylvia had gravely and simply without any preaching, Sylvia fashion, turned him aside from paths already beginning to be dangerous to safer, cleaner ways. Come to think of it, it had always been Sylvia who had pointed him starward, Sylvia only who believed in him enough to swear him into knighthood. Now that they were no longer boy and girl it was the prize of her love which would send him into the fray. Already he had experienced his accolade.
"Poor old Lorry!" he thought. "Why didn't he cut his blooming operations and come down here and speak for himself to-night? Thank the Lord he didn't though or yours truly would be ditched and done for. I never had a show with Lorry in the foreground. Well, here's to the breach. Sylvia will never forgive me if I omit to dance with one of her precious orphans."
So it happened that a few moments later shy little Mary Lane watching the dancers with longing eyes from a corner caught her breath with astonishment and delight as Jack Amidon stood before her, his eyes smiling encouragement and friendliness, his lips begging the boon of a dance quite as earnestly as if she had been one of the belles of the ball. So it happened also that Sylvia, being whirled past the two, smiled happy gratitude at Jack over her partner's shoulder, and he knew that his careless kindness to her little guest had scored him a high mark in her favor.
"Jack is such a dear," thought Sylvia. "He is a real knight. I wonder if I am all wrong to try to turn him into a plain workaday person. He is so thoroughly delightful as he is. When men get too much absorbed in their work you can't count on them for the little things, and, after all, the little things mean a whole lot."
Possibly this sage conclusion had some vague connection with the fact that a certain very much "absorbed in work" young doctor way off in a distant city had permitted Sylvia's birthday to come and almost go with no word or sign. If so certainly Sylvia would have been the last to admit the connection even to herself.
"Please, Miss Sylvia, there's some one downstairs in the hall asking for you," whispered a maid in Sylvia's ears as her partner brought her to a chair. "He didn't give any name."
Sylvia excused herself and slipped away wondering as to the identity of her late arriving guest. At the foot of the stairs was an extraordinarily tall, blond young man, with the bluest and friendliest of eyes and the biggest, most crushing hand grip in the world.
"Why, Phil!" gasped Sylvia. "I had no idea you could come." This as soon as she was able to regain her wits and the possession of her hands.
"Nor I. As a matter of fact, I couldn't. I just did," grinned Phil Lorrimer, cheerfully. "Here I am, B. and O. grime and all. May I come to the party just as I am without one plea?"
"You surely may. I'm so glad." And Sylvia's face corroborated her words.
"Here's a nosegay for you," and Phil's fingers fumbled with the string on the box he had deposited in a convenient chair while he had used both hands greeting Sylvia. In a moment a charming bouquet of cream yellow roses, shell pink at the heart, was disclosed.
"How lovely!" Sylvia buried her face in the nosegay. "I just have to wear them. Oh, dear, I haven't a pin."
"Here you are!" And the young doctor solemnly produced the needful article.
"Trust you!" laughed Sylvia. "There, aren't they perfect? Come on, quick. Let's not waste the music."
"Ditto my sentiments. Is this my dance?"
"It's Doctor Tom's, but he won't care. Hurry."
And in a moment the onlookers had something new to think of as Sylvia's white and silverness flashed back into the ballroom with a tall figure in plain traveling clothes by her side.
"Another country heard from," grunted Angus McIntosh as he watched the two swing into step.
Perhaps in the whole room there was no one who had more cause for a sudden reaction of feeling than Jack Amidon, whose quick eye took in even at the length of the hall that Sylvia was at last wearing somebody's flowers. But it was with apparent nonchalance and entire good will that he came to offer Phil Lorrimer a cordial greeting a few moments later, though even as he chatted with the other young man it did not escape him that there was an added radiance to Sylvia's "moonshininess," as if she had tasted some magic draught of youth and joy during those few moments in which she had been out of the room. As has been observed, Jack Amidon was a rather unexpectedly perspicuous person at times.
CHAPTER V
SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON
"Oh, me! Just think! By to-morrow afternoon at this time we'll all be scattered to the four winds," sighed Barbara. "Don't you hate to have things get different?"
"Can't say I do. The differenter the better so far as I am concerned as I have hitherto remarked," put in Suzanne. "I hate staying still, physically, mentally, or morally. I'm ready for new pricks every minute. I feel like saying to life every morning 'Come on. Do your worst. I'm ready. Give me anything--everything--except stagnation.'"
"You don't look as if you were going to stagnate just this minute," laughed Sylvia, surveying her friend, who, indeed, from the tip of her impatiently tapping shoe to the crown of her rebellious blue-black, wavy hair, appeared sufficiently dynamic for any purpose.
"I don't intend to. That is why I am transferring my spiritual and bodily allegiance from Norton, Pa., to New York City. I'd rather live on a crust in that blessed city of enchantment than fare on nectar and ambrosia elsewhere. I wish you would change your mind and come along, Sylvia. I know you are going to be discontented here or even contented, which is worse. Arden Hall is a perfect dream of a place, and I've loved every minute of this week with you, but it would swamp me with its placidity if I settled down in it, and that's the truth."
"Oh, Suzanne!" Thus Barb, always sensitive to the possibility that some one's feelings might be going to be hurt.
"Don't mind her, Barb. I know what she means precisely, and it is all more or less true. Arden Hall is placid and remote. I have to find a way to link it somehow with big moving things outside--below--or the very thing Suzanne threatens me with will happen."
"You'll find a way," prophesied Barb earnestly.
"Of course she'll find it," seconded Suzanne. "If there is anybody on this green earth capable of squeezing the traditional camel through the needle's eye it is the young person I see before me. Isn't it time our cavaliers arrived? I begin to pine for action already."
"Jack said he would be here at four sharp. We are going to take you to the most heavenly spot, right over the river with the whole Ridge for a background. Some day when you are being compressed to a wafer in the Subway in your precious old city you will remember it and be willing to give your second-most-becoming hat for a magic carpet to take you back."
"I shouldn't wonder," murmured Barb. "I believe Suzanne would rather hear the roar of the El than the wind in the pines though. She is the most urban person I ever knew."
Suzanne laughed at this arraignment.
"It isn't the music of the El,per sethat I delight in. That's nearer like the thing it rhymes with. But it's a symbol. It means hurrying human beings, the rush and stir of things. I love crowds."
"And I detest them," groaned Barb. "I'm afraid of New York in spite of all its wonderfulness. It is so big and hard and impersonal. If it weren't for being with Aunt Jo I know it would scare me to bits to live there."
"You poor babe!" Sylvia smiled sympathetically at the speaker. "It is unthinkable that a little shrinking infant like you should be dedicated to a great screaming cause. You ought to live in a cozy cottage, in a friendly little village, where everybody knows everybody and grow pansies."
"And babies," added Suzanne, an addition which brought a quick flush to Barb's cheeks and made her put out her hand with a deprecating gesture. "You'll never be able to stand the pace. Better wire your Aunt Josephine you have decided to bury the mantle."
"For mercy's sake, what do you two think I am? I guess I don't have to be packed away in rose petals and pink cotton." There was a strain of indignation in Barb's voice. "I don't belong in the sheltered woman class, and I wouldn't stay in it if I did. How long do you suppose I'd have any peace in my cozy cottage, in my friendly little village, remembering all the other women who don't live in cozy friendly places but have to work in horrid, noisy, sweaty factories or worse? What pleasure would I get out of my pansies--and babies--so long as I knew there was a child in the world who wasn't free to chase butterflies in the sunshine? You two think I am just playing at this woman game. I'm not. Sylvia can act Lady Bountiful from the top of her Hill and you can write about woman, Suzanne, but I'm going to fight for her, so there!"
"Bravo! I stand reproved and beg a thousand pardons. You're a trump, Barbie. You are right, too. Sylvia and I are likely to play with this thing called Feminism, but you'll fight for it to the last trench like the wee bit heroine you are. Oh, there's Mr. Amidon's car. There is Mr. Amidon and Dr. Lorrimer and--Sylvia,whois the third man?"
"If my eyes do not deceive me the third man is Roger Minot. Did you know he was imminent?"
"I did not. Moreover, I am extremely displeased with him for appearing," frowned Suzanne. "I told him distinctly I didn't want to see him again unless I sent for him."
"Well, you will have to look the other way then," observed Sylvia. "He is in plain sight."
So indeed it proved, for three minutes later, Roger Minot, a tall young man with hazel eyes and a firm chin, was shaking hands with the assembled group and explaining with considerable explicitness that he had happened to be in Baltimore on business and had also happened to call up Jack Amidon by telephone, who, in turn, had happened to be taking Sylvia and her guests on an excursion and had been kind enough to include himself in the invitation.
At all of which elaborate eloquence Suzanne had shrugged her displeasure and pointedly turned her back on the young barrister and devoted herself to the doctor. So much "happening" in the face of her expressed command deserved punishment and Suzanne was a firm disciplinarian where her lovers were concerned, especially the unfortunate Roger.
"Sylvia, you will have to sit with me to show me the way," ordered Jack in his usual "magerful" way, taking things into his own hands. "All aboard, everybody? Sure Madame Felicia won't go?" He turned to Sylvia to inquire.
"No, she said not. Felicia is not exceedingly devoted to picnics, and I suspect she has had more than enough of them this summer. Ready?" Sylvia turned back to her guests to ask and in a moment they were off down the hill.
The rich, vivid-hued Maryland fields and meadows lay indeed, "fair as the garden of the Lord" as the car sped out of Greendale beyond to the open country, along the smooth, hard, white pike. The afternoon shadows fell cool and long, and already there was a faint autumnal hint of crispness in the air and a mellow, misty gold to the sunshine. The mountains were outlined, palely blue, against the deeper azure of the cloudless September skies. Here and there a buzzard sailed and dipped above some wooded slope or a blue jay screamed and flashed out of an oak thicket.
Amidst the chatter of the rest Barbara fell silent and gave herself blissfully to the serene beauty of the outdoor world so utterly remote from that other world of din and traffic, of strenuous toil and keen competition in which she was to merge her own existence on the morrow. She was profoundly grateful for this last opportunity to feel the benign presence of Nature in field and sky and mountain. Her quick eye took in every patch of purple aster bloom, every scarlet glory of sumach and warm bronze hue of oaks. Even the corn shocks spreading their brown skirts as if indulging in some quaint minuet stamped themselves upon her inner vision to be remembered long after. She did not wish to talk, scarcely even to think. She desired only to feel--to let the benediction of the jewel-tinted day possess her spirit.
Suzanne, less susceptible to the mood of tranquillity, was bubbling over with gayety, her attention centering chiefly on Phil Lorrimer sitting in the seat opposite her. She chose to ignore Roger Minot's steady hazel eyes. He need not think his coming made any difference to her. Whether he came or went was a matter of supreme indifference. He might just as well have stayed in his grim little, trim little, office in Norton, Pa., as to have pursued a will-o'-the-wisp to Arden Hall so far as Suzanne was concerned. Some women were made unhappy by men. Suzanne had a cousin to whom this had befallen and had long since determined none should have power to hurt her. She meant to guard well the citadel which was Suzanne Morrison. If there were any casualties in the attempt to scale the walls the responsibility would not be on her head. Let men look to themselves. Suzanne had small compassion. Though she thoroughly enjoyed the stimulus of the society of the other sex and dearly loved to clash swords with them she wished nothing at their hands. She meant to show the world that a woman could stand alone, strive and conquer alone, fail if need be, alone, sufficient unto herself unto the end. There should be no doll's house for her, no more confining limits than life itself, wide as ether and deep as the sea, for her abiding place.
On the driver's seat were Jack and Sylvia, the latter a little silent. Though she had made no protest against her companion's rather high-handed disposition of herself it had not wholly pleased Sylvia. For one thing, she thought it assumed too much on the basis of that half promise of last night. She did not desire that Phil or indeed any of the party should infer that she and Jack must necessarily pair off like a couple of Noah's ark animals; moreover she considered it extremely thoughtless, not to say selfish, of Jack to leave Phil to the society of a group of almost strangers when his time in Greendale was so limited; for Phil was taking the midnight train back to New York having allowed himself little more than twenty-four hours for a holiday.
"Too bad everybody has to go away," Jack was saying. "May I come over often and help cheer your lonely hours?" His voice was lowered and his head bent toward Sylvia in an intimate fashion.
"No." The negative was sufficiently decisive to make the driver send a sharp glance at his companion.
"Why not?"
"Several why nots. One is because you said last night you were going to work in earnest. You can't do that and keep flying out to Greendale every other day the way you have been doing all summer. Besides, I expect to be busy myself."
"You! May I ask what you are going to do that is so almighty important?"
"You may ask but I am not likely to inform you if you take that tone."
Jack whistled softly.
"Gee! Am I in as bad as all that?"
"As all what? Did I sound cross?" Sylvia smiled relentingly. "Well, maybe I was. I hate the lordly male attitude you assume at times. Your tone bristled with it just then."
"Did it?" he chuckled. "Sorry. Honest, I didn't mean to patronize your ladyship. So far from feeling lordly in your presence you usually make me feel infernally infinitesimal, not to say atomic. I have a fearful and wonderful respect for your serene high mightiness. I truly did want to know what you were going to do."
"I am going to get to work on my music for one thing. I've promised to practice with Gus. Then I am going to learn to cook."
"In the name of heaven why?"
"Because I want to, chiefly. Also I think everybody--male and female--ought to know how."
Jack groaned.
"Thence to dressmaking and millinery, I suppose?"
"Hardly. I haven't the slightest interest in sewing, though I could do it on a pinch I believe. I know I couldn't trim a hat--at least not one I would wear. But cooking is different. I believe I could get up quite a passion for it. Hilda used to. She claimed it was just as much an art to create a perfect salad as to write a sonnet."
"I'd vote for the salad personally. By the way, where is Hilda? Heard lately?"
"No, and I'm worried. One hears such horrid stories of what is happening over there. I don't know whether she and the Armstrongs can't get back or don't want to."
"Most likely the latter. Johnny Armstrong is darned likely to do what he wants. He is just the boy not to want to get back to safe and sane America. He is much more apt to be down in a trench or up in a 'plane by this time."
"I know. He's a wonder--one of the finest men I know. Just to think he was my gardener once! Wasn't it funny?"
"He got mighty good pay for that piece of masquerading. Constance is a shade too much on the grand duchess order for my taste but she suits him down to the ground. Only wish Isabel had drawn a man like John instead of the rotter she took a fancy to marry." For a moment Jack's serene brow looked thundery. "Queer world!" he muttered. "Sometimes I think we Amidons are doomed to go amuck one way or another. Jeanette's not much better off. Guess we're all sort of rudderless as you say, excepting Dad. He knows where he is going all right."
"You had better get on to his ship then," suggested Sylvia a little dryly.
"I am going to. You needn't think I didn't mean what I said last night. I did mean it, every word. If sticking to a job is going to mean getting what I want, I'll stick tighter than a stamp."
There was a ring of determination in his voice which startled Sylvia a little, it sounded so alarmingly conclusive.
"Jack! I didn't promise," she protested.
"Oh, I know. I'm not such a cad as to throw it up at you if even the sticking isn't enough. But if it's the one chance I'm too good a gambler not to take it--or to kick if I fail in the end." And Jack's lips came together with a firmness which avouched the sincerity of his statement.
Sylvia watching the landscape flit by looked thoughtful. It suddenly occurred to her that her companion had spoken the literal truth. Jack Amidon was first and last a good gambler, ready to play high stakes, to win or lose like a gentleman, without vainglory or bitterness. If she had said yes to his impassioned plea last night Sylvia could not help wondering if a little of the ardor of his love might not have abated in spite of himself. Wasn't it the chase itself he loved? If so, he was only his father's own son. Jackson Amidon, Senior, went on quietly bagging his millions, not because he cared a snap of his fingers for the money but because the exhilaration of achieving it in the face of obstacles was the breath of life to him. Like the biblical war horses he metaphorically trumpeted "Ha Ha!" in the battle hour. With father and son the game itself was the thing. The nature of the stake did not matter so much. With one it was Power, with the other Love, as it happened, but with both the zest lay, not in the end, but in the pursuit. Of course Sylvia did not reason all this out clearly, but vaguely she sensed the truth which the boy's words had revealed. Many months later the revelation recurred to her and she wondered if Jack, too, had understood himself as clearly as for a moment she had understood him. She thought it possible with his keen power of intuition, he had always understood. Perhaps he had.
So through the deepening autumnal twilight sped Youth with its visions and its questionings, Youth unproved, pressing forward toward some unknown mark in challenging mood, knowing little of the eternal mystery of Life and less of that even more baffling mystery, the mystery of Self.