CHAPTER VIOF MISSIONS, AND OMISSIONS"H-mm!" Suzanne meditatively surveyed the depleted feast. "Thermos bottles! Silver spoons! Sophisticated salads! Is this your notion of roughing it, Mr. Jack Amidon? Of all Sybaritical picnics!""Same old bugs! Same old sticks in the lemonade!" retorted Jack, leaning forward to extract a leaf from Sylvia's cup with the prong of a salad fork. "The good old times aren't utterly gone.""Oh, but think of the bacon bats of yesteryear!" mourned Suzanne. "The fingers I've burned! The clothes I've spoiled! The smudges wherewith I've smudged my nose! I begin to feel fatally reminiscent. Give me some more lemonade, I pine to drown my grief.""And I pine to see the sunset from Lover's Leap." And Sylvia sprang up hastily, perceiving that the sun was already glinting flame and gold through the trees. "Come on everybody or it will be too late." The others rose to follow her lead. Phil fell into step beside Sylvia, leaving Jack to Barbara's society, as Suzanne and Roger had at last struck up a conversation, albeit a rather non-amicable one and strayed off together."Are you sure your name isn't Pease Blossom or Mustard Seed? I could swear you were a fairy. Are you really a Militant? Would you resist forcible feeding? Here, let me test you with a pickle."But Barb only laughed and accepted the pickle."I'm nothing militant to-night. I'm at peace with the whole world.""Even the menacing male?" teased Jack."The menacing male is a spoiled baby, biting off his own nose. Mr. Amidon, it would serve you right if I delivered a suffrage lecture here and now. I don't believe you know a thing about the movement," severely."Heaven forbid!" he ejaculated piously."You will sing a different tune before many years. You'll have it forcibly fed to you unless you take to it of your own accord as babies take to their thumbs.""I believe I could bear to have even Suffrage rammed into me at your hands, Mademoiselle Mustard Seed, especially if you would make pansy eyes at me while you did it," he added audaciously. "What are you going to do with those eyes of yours anyway? They are altogether too expressive to be wasted on a Cause."Barb frowned."You wouldn't wear a last year's hat. Why do you use last century methods with women? They hate compliments.""Do they? I wonder." And his wonder was genuine. He honestly reflected a moment. Sylvia did hate compliments he knew. But then he never offered her any. He never even flirted with Sylvia, though she was about the only pretty girl of his acquaintance of whom as much could be said. He had been perfectly willing to play the game à deux with this demurely charming, pansy-eyed, little suffragist however. But he was evidently not going to be permitted to have his will. Were Barbara Day and Sylvia and the sharp-tongued Suzanne really a new breed of womankind? Were his own sisters and the dozens of other girls of their kind with whom he had played and danced and flirted for the past five or six years really an older type, soon to be as extinct as the Dodo? Only for a moment, however, he wondered. Jack was not much given to serious thinking. He took life and the feminine sex on the whole rather as he found them. He was always genially ready to "play up" to both. He was now. It was rather agreeable he thought to watch Barb's eyes shine and the color surge in her cheeks, so he laid the match to the tow chiefly from an artistic impulse to see the flame."Tell me," he urged. "What is this thing you girls are up to? What is it you are going to New York to do?"Barb shot him a shrewd rather indignant glance. Then she laughed."You don't really care, but, just to punish you, I'm going to tell you. You deserve it."And then she did tell him, a little reservedly at first, but soon losing both her resentment and her shyness she forgot herself entirely and warmed to her loved theme, betraying something of the dream of her Aunt Josephine, of herself, of all women who think and feel and are forever disenchanted with any Pisgah heights they themselves might have the luck to attain, so long as the great weary horde of the "dispossessed" wait without the gates, scarcely even knowing in the apathy of their misery that there is a Promised Land. And her listener did not scoff even to himself at the revelation he was vouchsafed. He had the grace to recognize with suitable humility that he unworthy had been permitted a brief glimpse into a holy of holies. And irreverence was not one of Jack's failings, for all his habitual levity of mood.In the meanwhile, not far ahead, Roger and Suzanne were quarreling hotly. At least Suzanne was quarreling. Roger never quarreled, which was perhaps one of his most glaring defects in Suzanne's eyes."I told you not to come and you came," was the burden of Suzanne's complaint."I didn't come to see you. I didn't even know you were in Greendale until Jack told me. And when I knew, how could I resist a chance to see you, especially as it will be months before I can see you again? Be reasonable, Suzanne. Why are you so angry at me for coming?"Suzanne shot him an exasperated and somewhat malicious glance. Unfortunately, Mr. Minot was a lawyer and not a clairvoyant and therefore was totally without means of knowing that the chief reason for Suzanne's anger was the fact that she had been so foolishly glad to see him. For every quickened beat of her pulse in his near presence poor Roger had to pay with a lash of her tongue. Angry, indeed, was Suzanne at Roger Minot for disobeying her royal mandates, but angrier still was she at Suzanne Morrison for being automatically glad of his nearness. Scant wonder the young lawyer had a very bad quarter of an hour as he mounted the pine-needled slope toward the sunset.Phil and Sylvia had less to say than either of the other couples, strange to say, though it had seemed to both beforehand they would have volumes. The hush of the forest and the hour seemed to have cast a spell upon them, or was it an even more potent enchantment that held them fast bound in silence? They had seen so little of each other during this brief visit of Phil's. Last night had been too full and joyous and excited for much conversation, even had Sylvia's responsibilities as hostess left her much time for her latest arrived guest. Those few moments on the stairs had been practically--indeed, the only ones--they had enjoyed alone, and this morning Phil had given to his mother while Sylvia and her guests slept away the hours up at the Hall. Both had felt a little aggrieved and cheated at the way circumstances had curtailed the pleasure of their being together for the first time since the June Commencement at college. Yet now that the awaited moment had come at last neither seemed to have anything particular to do with it. It was strange, and both felt slightly embarrassed by the strangeness, suddenly grown shy, after all their years of friendship."Oh!" Sylvia uttered the exclamation as she stepped out upon the great ledge of rock from which she could see the sun's gold rim just dipping behind the crest of the topmost purple peak leaving a sea of tulip colors in its wake.For a moment neither spoke again. A mood of complete serenity was upon them that forbade speech, a sense of nearness, each to the other, and to some high other Presence which might have been God or Nature or Love or a mystic commingling of all three. Were the three, indeed, a new Trinity, perfect and indivisible? There was a crackling among the bushes behind, the sound of voices. The others were near. The enchanted moment passed. Sylvia sighed, and, turning, met Phil's eyes and her own drooped before what she saw there. No word was spoken, nor needed, yet something unforgettable had been communicated. Sylvia's heart was beating a little more quickly than usual and there was dew and star shine in her eyes as she smiled at Jack and Barbara, a shine which was lost on neither of the two new arrivals, though later it suited both to pretend they had never seen it. For the moment Barbara's only feeling was a quick compunction lest they had interrupted something which they had no right to share. As for her companion, sharp fear and half resentful jealousy went through him like keen-bladed knives. Had he lost just at the moment when he seemed to have gained something almost tangible? And then Suzanne and Roger reached the rock also, arriving rather dilatorily by another path, having arrived also apparently at a state of something faintly resembling truce, for Suzanne was wearing a spray of vivid scarlet berries which Roger had risked thorns and a possible broken neck to acquire. The risk had been worth it, it seemed, for Roger was looking happier than at any moment since Suzanne had first snubbed him several hours ago on Sylvia's piazza.Barb, standing apart, watching the whole pageant from the outside, felt oddly cold and lonely all of a sudden. There seemed to be so much love in the world somehow and yet so little left over, as it were. And Sylvia and Suzanne--did they know? Did they even begin to know how precious love was? How one needed it in this great lonely world? She walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river whose rapid current whirled fiercely, down below her. She remembered Sylvia's story of how the rock was named. There are so many Lover's Leaps in the world and their stories are all somewhat the same story. An Indian girl and her lover had been forbidden to marry because they belonged to hostile tribes and here they had gladly taken the consecrated leap together, hand in hand, into space and eternity, one in death as they could never have been in life.What a strange thing love was! So Barb meditated. Was it something to be avoided as Suzanne insisted because it demanded too high toll? The others had seated themselves on the rock to watch the shifting panorama of color in the western skies, but Barb wandered off by herself, still pondering about that strange thing love. And the others scarcely noticed her going, which was in its way a symbol.Suddenly a single sharp cry broke the silence of the dusk and then ceased. They all sprang to their feet in alarm, but it was Phil Lorrimer's quick eye that first discovered what had happened. Below them, and somewhat at the right of the outcropping ledge on which they stood, hung Barbara, clinging to a slender sapling whose trunk bent, it seemed almost to snapping beneath her slight weight. Sylvia saw, too, almost at the same instant."There she is!" Her finger pointed. "Oh, Phil!"But Phil had not waited for his embassy. He was already speeding down the steep bank on his way to the scene of the accident."Hold on," he called cheerfully. "I'm coming. Can I reach you from above?""No." Barb's voice sounded faraway but steady as Phil's own. "Don't try. It's all crumbly.""Hang tight then. I'll be there in a minute."In what appeared to be an endless stretch of time to everybody, but which was in reality an astonishingly brief interval, Phil's tall form appeared on the river bank precisely beneath the tiny figure suspended as it seemed in midair, but still clinging pluckily to the stout ash sapling which held her weight gallantly. The distance between Phil and the girl was perhaps ten feet, though it looked much more in the gulfing darkness to them both."All right. Let go. I'll catch you."A shudder shook Barb's whole body. That slim, tough little ash-tree seemed all that kept her from the greedy swirl of the black river. Her hands were grooved and cut with clinging and her arms ached until it seemed as if she could not bear the pain, but for all that she felt as if the one thing she could not do was to release her hold and slip into the darkness. But there below loomed Phil Lorrimer's comforting size and strength and Barb's courage grew as she looked down into his uplifted face."Come on, Barbie, I'm right here." He had never called her anything but Miss Day before, not even Barbara. Barbie was Sylvia's name, as it had once been her mother's in the dear long ago. Somehow it seemed right and natural and sweet that Phil should use it now. Suddenly she became the trusting, obedient little girl Barbie again and without a quiver of dread and with a heart at peace and full of faith she let go her hold on the ash and went down, down, down into space--a surprisingly long journey it seemed, though she felt perfectly comfortable taking it. She had even time to notice that a star had come out and was smiling at her friendlily out of the dusk over a sycamore-tree. She knew somehow or rather that Phil would not fail her. Most people felt that about Phil Lorrimer. More than one of his patients had been willing and unafraid to go down the dark valley if he would stand by and help them on the way.Certainly he did not fail Barbara. Though the shock of the impact of even her "fairy" figure made him sway and stagger a little, he caught her as deftly as he had been wont in his college days to catch a dazzling outfielder. In a second he had deposited her gently on the soft moss on the river bank. Whereupon Barb gave a quick breath of a sob then laughed a little rippling gurgle of a laugh, though there were tears in her eyes."D-don't mi-nd me," she begged. "I'm just being g-glad I let go.""All safe!" Phil's big voice boomed out of the darkness to the relief of the anxious waiters above on the cliff. "All right, little lady? Seeing as you wouldn't walk down, suppose we say you shan't walk up." And Barb was swept like a sudden victim to a bird of prey into his arms."Oh, don't," she begged. "Please put me down. I can walk perfectly well. I'm dreadfully heavy.""So are thistledown and dewdrops," he laughed. "Please forget you are a feminist for once and succumb to the eternal masculine superiority of brawn and muscle."And in spite of herself, Barb felt oddly content to let herself lie passive in his arms, so much so that she closed her eyes and said never a word. At the top of the ascent, which had been short though somewhat steep, Phil put down his burden, and the rest crowded around the two, full of excitement, anxiety and questions. But Phil exercised his doctor's prerogatives and ordered them to let Barb alone and make a speedy start for home. These orders were meekly obeyed, though they managed little by little to get the information of how the accident had occurred. It had been simple enough. The rock on which Barb had been standing had been "crumbly" as she had said, and before she had had time to realize what had happened she had slipped with the shelving stone and soil and had only by the greatest of good fortune managed to snatch at the ash in her descent and thus save herself from the disastrous fall into the turbulent rock-filled bed of the river. It had been obviously a sufficiently narrow escape to make them all rather silent and sober as they packed up the remains of the feast and made their way to the road just beyond the glade where the car waited."Want to have a try at the wheel, old man?" asked Jack, laying an affectionate hand on Phil's shoulder when they were ready to start. "She's a bird.""Why, yes." Phil's frank face lit up with pleasure. "Sure you don't mind, Jackie Horner?""Not a bit. Glad to have a rest," acquiesced Jack cheerfully. "Pile in, Sylvia. Phil's waiting."Sylvia's eyes flashed quick inquiry at Jack as he helped her into the seat beside the driver. He met her gaze imperturbably but she was not deceived by his noncommittal expression. Well she knew that the owner of the "bird" suffered the tortures of the damned when any hand beside his own was on the wheel. Well she knew also that he was deliberately giving Phil a chance to do more than run his car. It was so precisely like Jack, impulsively selfish one minute, impulsively generous the next. Through the white star-lit wonder of the night the car sped, while its occupants sat almost silent, wrapped in an incommunicable garment of dreams. Later, after they had taken leave of the girls, Jack and Roger went with Phil to the station at Baltimore. But Roger stayed in the car while Jack went to the train with Phil. Just as the train pulled in Jack stirred himself to say what was on his mind."Phil! Forgive the impertinence, old man, but I've got to know. If she has decided for you, I'll clear out. You're the better man--always were."Phil Lorrimer drew a long breath and set his lips rather as he used to set them before a tackle in the field."You needn't clear out, so far as I am concerned. I haven't asked Sylvia to marry me. How can I? I've only just finished paying my college debts and she is worth something like a million. Is thy servant a fool?" he added a little bitterly."Yes," said Jack Amidon. "The biggest kind of fool. Do you suppose the money matters a hang to her?""Well, it matters to me," curtly. "Train's under way. 'By." And with a hasty but warm pressure of the hand which went out to meet his, Phil boarded the moving train, leaving Jack staring after."Confound the fellow!" he muttered. "Hanged if I know whether to be mad or glad he's such an idiot. How did he dare not ask Sylvia when her eyes looked like that? Gee! Perhaps he didn't see."But Phil Lorrimer had seen, and all that night he stared sleeplessly out at the stars and the twinkling lights of villages and cities, love and pride battling within him. Once or twice he made up his mind feverishly to telegraph Sylvia the first thing in the morning. Then he would decide it would be better to write her a letter, tell her exactly how it all was and ask if she cared enough to wait for him until he had something worth while to offer her. And all the time he knew he would do nothing of the kind. He would fight on grimly by himself, and if in the meantime somebody else--Jack or another--slipped in ahead, well, that would mean she was not for him, if he knew Sylvia. And so on and so on and so on. But never in all his reasonings did it occur to him that the money was as nothing between him and Sylvia Arden, neither of advantage or disadvantage, simply a zero. Jack Amidon knew it and had generously endeavored to tell his rival. Sylvia knew it and her eyes had also tried to tell him that night in the sunset. But poor Phil, blind as the clearest sighted man sometimes becomes when a woman is involved, saw Sylvia's money as a huge, hateful, insurmountable, mountain peak behind which stood Sylvia herself, only to be reached by accumulating another pile of gold from which he could make the leap to her.And in all that long wakeful night he never once thought of little Barbara Day. He was too used to saving people, one way or another, to think much about this latest exploit in the salvation line; and, besides, his mind was full of other things.But Barbara dreamed of Phil and heard his deep voice calling out of the darkness, "Come on, Barbie. I'm right here." And all through her dreams the star over the sycamore-tree kept smiling at her friendlily but its smile was oddly mixed up with Phil Lorrimer's.CHAPTER VIIOCTOBER DEVELOPMENTSA deeper bronze to the oaks and a more vivid scarlet to the sumach. A sharper tang to the air, mornings. Hilltops veiled in amethyst and golden haze on the meadows, afternoons. At sundown, ghost-like wraiths of mists rising up from the river valley. Now and then a clanging wedge of wild geese speeding southward through the night. October!It must be admitted that in spite of Sylvia's "vicious contentedness" she did feel the Hall a little too peaceful and quiet after her friends had gone, and she settled back into the very life she had chosen for herself. The summer had been brimful of guests and gayeties, with people coming and going all the time and always some new delightful project or enthralling interest afoot, a true Forest of Arden atmosphere of sunshine and happiness and blithe irresponsibility.Even the sharp and sudden thunder crash, heard from overseas in that fateful early August, the din of great nations rushing to arms, came only vaguely to Sylvia's happy Hill as to most of America. Slow to waken, the country had not at once sensed the significance of what was happening. Humane and peaceful itself, it had not taken in the hideous reality of a desolated and ravaged Belgium, the inspiriting vision of a risen and consecrated France beating the enemy back from Paris, of the fearful and relentless grip of the great dog of war upon the stricken nations. To Sylvia, as to others, it all seemed impossible, incredible, not to be apprehended in terms of actuality. These things just couldn't be, that was all. There must be some mistake somewhere. But there was no mistake. People kept coming in on every steamer with harrowing tales of well-substantiated horror. The things they had seen made the heart sick and the blood run cold. It was war indeed. However horrible, these things were possible, had happened.Perhaps the first vital realization came to Sylvia as it came to nearly every one in this country through individual testimony of friends. Even in September, rumor reached her that John Armstrong's money had helped to establish and support a field hospital "somewhere in France," that his wife and her sister Hilda were regular Red Cross nurses. And in October had come a letter from Hilda herself, describing simply but with the fearful graphicness of the bare truth, the horrors, the miracles, the splendid thrills, the supreme satisfaction of the work she and Constance had undertaken. John was driving a relief Ambulance near the battle line. Bertram was at the front somewhere. Bertram, it appeared, was the young Englishman to whom the writer had very recently become engaged after a romantically brief acquaintance. Of course it was horrible, Hilda admitted, having him there, but then she wouldn't want him not to want to be there.All this Sylvia read with absorbed interest and straightway dispatched a generous check to John Armstrong. But giving money being altogether insufficient to express her abounding sympathy she also learned to knit, to Jack's huge delectation and much raillery, and resolutely set herself to making sponges and rather eccentric looking hose, though this process, too, scarcely satisfied her when she thought of what her friend was doing over in France. In fact, it satisfied her so little that she very speedily abandoned it entirely wherein she was rather like a good many other American women. "A thousand shall fall at thy right hand but it shall not come nigh thee" seemed to be America's motto in those days.Perhaps the thing which came nearest, that autumn, to offering Sylvia an outlet for her restless energy was her music. She was an excellent accompanist and she and Gus Nichols spent much time together previous to his departure for the concert tour which was to begin early in November. And while Sylvia was intent on her own dreams and quandaries, weaving much she scarcely understood herself into the music, she had not the slightest perception that these hours she gave the young violinist meant anything more to him than to herself, an agreeable mutual expression in a loved art. "Music is Love in search of a word" and if the boy's violin struggled more than once to tell her what his lips would never have ventured on, Sylvia, with her mind on other things, did not hear.Long enthusiastic letters came frequently from Suzanne, ensconced, according to schedule, in a dingy studio in the Square where one is not encumbered with needless luxuries like steam heat and bath tubs and electricity, where one steeps in "Atmosphere," and pays far more than he can afford for the privilege of living very uncomfortably but artistically. Her letters reeked of Bohemia, of "Polly's" and "Bruno's Garret," of the delicious glamour and picturesqueness of the inimitable Village, of the thrill and stimulus of the whole marvelous city of which the Village was a unique part.Barb, too, wrote often, though with less abandon of rejoicement in her new way of life. It was all "interesting." Aunt Jo was "wonderful." The Metropolitan was "magnificent." People were "kind." But there was a faint panic-stricken note beneath it all, at first, which made Sylvia wonder if poor Barbara were a little submerged by the very seething whirlpool which was such supreme delight to Suzanne. It was as if both were on a "Merry-Go-Round," and Suzanne kept clapping her hands and crying "Faster! Faster!" while Barb's timid "pansy" eyes begged in silence for a safer, less mad rate of revolution.Aside from her aunt, of whom Barb could never say enough, the person most frequently mentioned in her letters was Philip Lorrimer. "Dr. Lorrimer is so good to me." "Dr. Lorrimer took me to a roof garden last night." "Phil and I rode over on the ferry to Staten Island to cool off last evening." "Phil just came in and sends greetings. He is going to take me to a Socialist meeting soon." "Aunt Jo likes Phil so much," and so forth.And though Sylvia made no comment on this new development it gave her cause for reflection. Sylvia was more than ever "at sea" these days. That sunset moment on Lover's Leap had been an illuminating moment for her and she guessed it had been one for Phil also. Though she told herself later she must have been mistaken, she knew in her heart she had not been so. The look in Phil's eyes as they had met hers that moment was unmistakable, more eloquent than volumes of speech. She had felt the same thing vibrating in his voice when later he had bidden her "Good night" and "Good-by" and stepped into Jack's car, something which met a quick leap of response in herself. Sylvia was very woman and she knew what had happened, though she did not know whether the thing was going to be permanent or not.All that next day and the next and for a week beyond she watched the mails, pretending to herself, feminine wise, that she was doing nothing of the sort. And, finally, when on the tenth day a brotherly, brief, impersonal, not to say casual, note came from New York in Phil's big sprawling hand, she felt as if a shower of icy water had been hurled at her. Not that she wanted Phil to ask her to marry him, not that she was at all sure she would have said yes if he had asked her. She was by no means certain it would not be Jack to whom she would surrender when the time came for surrender. At least so she told herself to save her pride. Certainly she was far from ready to marry any man that Fall, sincerely desirous as she was to belong to herself awhile as she had told Jack. Nevertheless Phil's very discretion angered and hurt her. Every now and then she was tortured by an agonizing fear that in the strange exhilaration of that moment in the forest she might have betrayed to him more than she had been in any degree willing to admit to herself. Consequently, Philip Lorrimer, M.D., got very few and very brief letters from Arden Hall those golden autumn days.Neither is it strange that out of favor with his "Faraway Princess" Phil turned to sympathetic little Barbara in his few idle hours. Not that he took Barb into his confidence. Indeed there were no confidences to make. To no one in the world would he have admitted that Sylvia's apparent indifference hurt. Sylvia had the right to ignore him if she chose. The Queen could do no wrong. Nor was there anything to say about the rumors which reached him frequently that Sylvia and Jack were often together, and that an engagement was obviously to be expected if not already secretly in existence. That, too, he had counted on as a possibility when he had told Jack there was no reason for him to "clear out." Phil Lorrimer was man enough to want the lady of his heart to be free in her choice. Had he been in Jack's position he would have entered the race and run, neck and neck, beside his rival and abided the end whatever it was. But he was handicapped, or so he believed, by his poverty, so he set his teeth and stood out of the way leaving Jack a clear road. If Jack could win--well, it meant Sylvia cared, that was all. Phil's philosophy was a very simple one.In the meantime there was work. And Phil was the kind to be able to assuage nearly every mortal ill in work. In the strenuous demands of the day-time hours at the hospital he had little chance to brood over any personal woes and when night came on he took what consolation he could, man fashion, from another woman's obvious pleasure in his society, never once suspecting he was playing with edged tools any more than Barb herself did. Of the physiological action of the heart Phil Lorrimer knew a great deal but of the more subtle manifestations of that organ he knew astonishingly little.Only Miss Josephine Murray kept her keen eyes wide open. "Babes in the wood!" she thought sometimes. "Heavens! What a fearful thing it is to be young!" And then seeing the soft flush on Barb's cheeks when she came in from an excursion with the young doctor, and the starry shine in her eyes, Miss Murray would add grimly to herself, "Fearful but divine! It's a million years since I had the gift of looking like that."And sometimes she would ask her niece questions about young Dr. Lorrimer, and Barb would chatter on innocently about him, how he was an old, old friend of Sylvia's, so old, they were almost like brother and sister, though she and Suzanne used sometimes to think maybe Sylvia would marry him some time, but now everybody said it would be Jack Amidon. And once Barb had told the story of how she had slipped over the edge of the cliff and hung to the little ash-tree until Phil had called to her to let go and she had obeyed and gone down, down into space, not one tiny bit afraid for she had felt just as sure as sure that Phil Lorrimer would catch her just as he promised."He's the kind of person you just have to have faith in. You know he wouldn't fail you, no matter what happened," she had finished. And Aunt Jo had "H-med" meditatively and risen to switch on the electric light and sit down to her letters. But Barb had lingered before the gas log, watching its scintillating colors and lights and dreaming little vague pleasant dreams. Perhaps the Barb who didn't dare let herself look at the real Barb took a shy peep that night.As for Jack Amidon, he was extraordinarily on his good behavior that autumn. His father was grimly pleased to find him prompt and assiduous at his office desk, a rather unexpected departure from his career of the past two years when he had fulfilled the obligations of his nominal post chiefly by absent treatment. Possibly the sudden change of heart on the part of his rather erratic son reminded the old man of a similar abrupt right-about-face some six years ago when the same delinquent had announced himself blandly as being "on the water wagon" after a rather strenuous course of wild oat sowing. Perhaps, too, Jackson Amidon shrewdly suspected that now as then the impetus to the reform could be traced to a vigorous-willed, clear-eyed young lady who tolerated no weaklings among her retinue."The boy's taken a new turn," he thought. "He'll come out all right in the end. He's sound as a nut inside for all his vagaries. And if that little girl on the Hill can make him come to, it will be one of the best jobs she ever landed." And he added also to himself that if the day ever came when he should welcome Sylvia Arden as his third daughter there would be little left to wish for in the time he had left. And then his eyes had grown sober, for his own daughters, those of his own flesh and blood, had never been of much comfort to him, dearly as he loved them. Over in Europe, Isabel was already threatening stormily to get a divorce from the titled rascal she had insisted on marrying in spite of her father's judgment and protestations. And there was Jeanette, beautiful, willful Jeanette, whose frocks were the last cry from Paris and whose cars and horses and houses and entertainments were all the most daring and expensive America could produce! He, himself, had given her all the money her little hands could hold or spend and Francis Latham had gone on with the prodigious task but neither one of them had been able to give her happiness. That was all too evident. Perhaps if there had been children it would have been different. And at this point in his reflections the old man always broke off with a sigh, for he knew that the moment when Jack should bring Sylvia home for a bride could only yield precedence in satisfaction to that other hoped-for moment when he should see his grandson, Jackson Amidon, the third. Then, indeed, the curtain might go down when it pleased.These dreams of Jackson Amidon's did not look so all improbable that October. Jack was distinctly "on the job" as he would have expressed it, doing his level best to make a man of himself, since that was what Sylvia demanded, and sunning himself happily in her favor during their mutual leisure hours. Very good comrades the two were. Youth turns to youth as a morning glory to the sun and the Goddess of Propinquity is a lady of much influence. Certainly it was not strange that people prophesied that an engagement would soon be announced. Possibly it was not strange either, that Jack and Sylvia themselves believed such a dénouement entirely probable in course of time.CHAPTER VIIIFIRE AND FROST"Lois, aren't you ever going to write any more?" Sylvia on the rug before the fire with wee Marjory in her arms looked up over that young person's bobbing silver curls to ask the question.Lois Daly sitting by the window to catch the last bit of daylight, ran her hand into a small stocking to investigate the number of casualties before she answered."Maybe. When the kiddies are grown up.""But don't you mind not doing it now? Don't you want to do it dreadfully sometimes?""Not especially. In fact I don't believe I could write now if I tried. I've lost the knack as well as the impulse. You have no idea how much such things are a matter of mere habit." Lois' voice had an even flow suggesting cool, shady, translucent waters. Sometimes her friend's serenity irritated Sylvia. It did now."Well, I think that is all wrong," she announced decidedly. "You oughtn't to have let it go.""Just how could I have helped it? You may recall I have been moderately busy these last few years. I haven't had much time to entertain literary angels.""Oh, I know," acknowledged Sylvia penitently, curling one of Marjory's ringlets around her finger as she spoke. "You couldn't, of course, with the house and the babies and the little mother's death and everything. But couldn't you begin again now?""Why should I? Tom doesn't need an author in his household. He needs a housekeeper and a nurse and a seamstress and a wife." There was a faintly satirical twist to Lois' lips as she made the statement. "Of the four he needs the wife least, of course. He is too busy to enjoy my society. This hospital project is the last straw."Sylvia looked thoughtful. Somehow there did seem to be something wrong somewhere. Doctor Tom too occupied to see anything of his beautiful, brilliant wife; she, in turn, too much immersed in household and maternal cares either to cultivate her own particular gift or pay much attention to the things her husband was so vitally interested in! These two had started out so well. They were both so fine, so thoroughly devoted at heart to each other. What was the trouble? Was marriage always a compromise like this? Sylvia did not like to think so. Somewhere there must have been something which could have been done differently. Woman-like she was a bit inclined to blame the other woman. If only Lois had cared a little more for the things Doctor Tom cared for, the things which to Sylvia seemed so splendid, his profession, his tireless service to the community, his dreams for its progress and betterment! Lois rolled up the stockings she had just finished mending and rose."Do you mind staying a few minutes with Marjory, Sylvia? It is cook's night out and I have to see about supper."Sylvia assented willingly and Lois departed. Even as the door closed behind her, Sylvia heard Doctor Tom's step in the hall and his cheerful voice as he greeted his wife."Got in earlier than I expected. Come on back and enjoy the twilight with me," she heard him inviting.Lois' answer was inaudible but in a moment Doctor Tom entered the living-room alone."Hello, here's my best daughter and my star neighbor! Come on, Cherub, and let your old Dad toss you up to the moon."Marjory leaped with a happy little crow out of Sylvia's arms and Sylvia rose to the higher level of a chair while she smiled at the baby's gurgling delight as her father tossed her "up to the moon." Presently the doctor seated himself before the fire with his small daughter still in his arms. As he settled back with a tired sigh Sylvia saw with sudden quick compunction that Doctor Tom looked old--too old for his years. Some of his characteristic buoyancy had gone out of him."How is the Curry baby?" she asked.He shook his head sadly."Died early this morning," he said."Oh!" Sylvia's exclamation was pitiful. "Can I do anything?""Go down and see the mother. She is like a stone. Can't even cry. Maybe the baby's better off. The father is drunk half the time and there isn't any too much to eat. But if I could have had Jimmy in a decent hospital I could have saved him. Everything was against him down there, poor little chap!" And Tom Daly's big hand closed over little Marjory's dimpled one as if somehow to keep her safe from the grim enemy that had pursued Jimmy Curry, an enemy who had altogether too many allies down in the unsanitary tenement district where the baby had wearily breathed his little life in and out again in one short year. Then the doctor's fist came down with a resounding thump on the arm of the chair. "I tell you, Sylvia, we have got to get that hospital and get it quick. We're wasting human life too fast at this rate.""Will money help? You know I'm ready to give to the hospital any time--any amount you want."Doctor Tom smiled his old wide-mouthed friendly grin."Naturally you are, Miss Christmas. I can always count on you every time. You would give your last red cent if anybody needed it. Thank Heaven you don't come into the bulk of your property till you are twenty-five. You would have made ducks and drakes of it before this if you had it all. I shall tell Gordon to keep his eye on the purse strings until you get a husband to do it for you. You have such dissipating tendencies. Don't wrinkle your nose like that. You shall give when the time is ripe. What I want just now is to wring some money out of the hides of some of these tough old Greendale sinners who keep their religion with their prayer books in the family pew and their brotherly love reduced systematically to lowest terms. The apology for a hospital we have is a disgrace and they know it or they will before I get through with 'em. There isn't even a children's ward. Little Allie Wendell died last week to the tune of Jake Casey's blasphemous D. T. music. Bah! It's rotten.""Tom, I do wish you wouldn't shout so. I could hear you clear out in the kitchen." Thus Lois' silver cool voice from the doorway, contrasting oddly with her husband's vehement ejaculatoriness which still filled the little room. "Supper is ready. You'll stay, won't you, Sylvia? I will be with you as soon as I can get Marjory into Tessy's hands and see if Junior brushed his teeth. He is so bad these days. I can't trust him at all."Sylvia had been about to refuse but Doctor Tom cut her short."Of course you will stay. You haven't been here for a dog's age. Besides, I want to talk to you about the hospital and ask what you think about--""Don't start to talk shop now," ordered Lois from the doorway, with small Marjory's head bobbing sleepily over her shoulder. "The omelet will go down.""It sure will," promised the doctor. "I feel as if almost anything would go down in me this minute.""That is the trouble with Tom," smiled Lois to Sylvia. "He doesn't know the difference between a sublimated soufflé and plain hash. It is all food to him. It is very discouraging."Doctor Tom shook his head as the door closed upon his wife and daughter."If only she wouldn't fuss," he groaned. "Sylvia, I feel like a beast when I think what a lot this life we are leading takes out of her. If only she would take it a bit easier. She's such a confounded perfectionist every blessed thing she does has to be just right. That's why it uses up so much of her."It was certainly a "just right" meal to which they sat down a few moments later. Everything was cold which should have been cold, everything hot which should have been hot. The table linen was fine and dazzling white, the silver and glass resplendently bright and clean. The bowl of yellow chrysanthemums made a perfect centerpiece, under the pleasantly shaded glow of the suspended lamp. Lois herself was exquisite in a soft clinging gray gown which she had taken the time to slip into while she had been upstairs with the children. Not a fold was awry, not a hair out of place. Serene and low-voiced and deft-motioned, she served perfect tea in quaint gold-banded cups from a green-dragoned teapot.But somehow Sylvia was critical in her judgment to-night. The very perfectness of it all jarred upon her. She couldn't help wondering if Lois were after all the consummate artist her husband acclaimed her. Life was made for happiness and was Lois Daly happy or was she making her big-hearted, splendid-souled husband happy? Had she even noticed the tired look in his eyes to-night, the droop to his shoulders? In her conscientious supervision of Junior's teeth and Marjory's bedtime did she think or care at all about the Tommy Currys and Allie Wendells of the world who mattered so gravely to her husband? The two loved each other devotedly, Sylvia knew, yet she could not help seeing how far apart they were after five years of wedded life. It gave one food for thought.After supper Lois excused herself to do some household auditing."You and Tom are going to talk hospital anyway," she added to Sylvia, "and there is no use of my listening while it is all just an air-castle. If I had that on my mind on top of the price of potatoes and bacon I don't know what would happen.""Stay and rest and we'll call hospital taboo," promised Doctor Tom. "Never mind the old accounts to-night."But Lois shook her head, protesting if he ran his business the way he wanted her to run hers they would soon end in the poorhouse."Not that you run your business any too well, Tommy dear," she had added. "You are a scandalously poor bill collector. Aren't the Williamsons ever going to pay?""Steve Williamson's down with pneumonia. I can't press them now.""Pneumonia on top of twins! Theyareunfortunate." And Lois left the room.Sylvia dropped her eyes quickly. Intuitively she knew she didn't want to look at Doctor Tom just then. He made no comment upon his wife's parting speech but settled down in the big armchair with a tired grunt."Mind if I smoke?""Of course not.""All right, here goes." He took one or two long comforting puffs at his pipe. "Let's side-track the hospital for the present. Might as well since it's only an air-castle, as Lois says. I'm a bit frazzled to-night. Can't seem to get the Curry baby off my chest. Suppose you play something instead. Nothing too classic--just agreeable and anæsthetic."Sylvia went to the piano and sat down. Her fingers drifted into a nocturne. Save for the soft music and the crackling of the logs on the hearth there was no sound in the room. Tom Daly sat staring into the leaping flames and smoked stolidly. It would have made an appropriate picture for a woman's magazine cover. The gracious, comfortable room, the tired man, basking in home peace and contentment after the labor and stress of the day; the young girl at the piano, with healing and sympathy, wordless but no less apparent in her finger tips. Only in a woman's magazine the musician would no doubt have been the man's wife. Life is sometimes oddly different from magazine covers.It was nearly an hour before Lois returned to the living-room. She paused a moment on the threshold."Oh, so you aren't building hospitals after all? Forgive me for being such a bad hostess, Sylvia. Was that Brahms?"Sylvia shook her head with a smile."I don't know what it was," she admitted. "Something I heard in my dreams maybe. Did I put you to sleep Doctor Tom?""No, just soothed the savage in me. I feel fairly pacific at the moment. Don't stop.""Ah, but I must. Felicia will think I am lost." She rose as she spoke and Doctor Tom rose too. "Don't come," she protested. "It is too absurd when it's only such a step.""It's a step I intend to take," he grinned. "If you must go, I'm at your service.""I wish you wouldn't," objected Sylvia, but she let him wrap her long moss green cloak about her and in a moment they were out in the keen November air under the stars. Neither said anything until they were at the steps of the Hall. Then suddenly Doctor Tom spoke."Sylvia, how did you know I had the blue devils to-night?" he demanded."Did you?" parried Sylvia. There was something different about Doctor Tom to-night; a queer, tense something in his voice she wasn't used to."You know I did. You played to 'em--charmed 'em, as I said.""I'm glad," said Sylvia. "Glad I charmed them, I mean. You need a rest, Doctor Tom. You are going a pace that would kill any man who wasn't as strong as an ox."He laughed a little grimly."Well, Miss Nestor, any more sage advice to offer your grandfather? Just how am I going to shunt the world I happen to have on my shoulders at present?""Just drop it off. You could if you had to. Why don't you and Lois go on a vacation? Felicia and I will look after the babies.""Thanks, Miss Christmas. That is like you and mighty kind, but do you see Lois letting anybody--the angel Gabriel himself--look after the babies for her?""She might," dubiously."And again she mightn't. But, aside from Lois, I have too many life and death jobs on hand at present to quit. A doctor's no business to get nerves. He ought to leave that to his patients. Anyway, it isn't the work that is getting me just now, it is the damnable futility of it all. The Curry baby is a symbol. I'm pouring water in a sieve, Sylvia, and that's the devil's truth.""It isn't. You aren't," denied Sylvia quickly. "You are doing miracles every day of your life and everybody knows it. Doctor Tom, I never heard you talk like that before. Don't. It makes me feel as if everything were tottering on its foundations.""Sometimes I think they are with that infernal senseless war going on over there after all our peace prating. Sylvia, what's it all for? Where are we going? What's the use?""Everything's the use. Maybe we can't see behind all the agony and blundering but there must be something there even if we can't see it. Why, Doctor Tom, there must be." Sylvia's eyes were earnest, her face uplifted to the stars lit with the fine fires of youth's faith. Tom Daly shook himself like one coming out of a trance. He was suddenly ashamed that he, the strong man, had been outdistanced in courage by the slim girl before him."Right you are," he said heartily. "Theremustbe. It's the only way to look at it. Thank you, Sylvia. I won't bleat again. If only--" But what was to have followed that sharp wrung "if only" Sylvia never knew for suddenly Tom Daly crushed both her hands in a vicelike grip and then turned and fled with a gruff "good night" down the path.In his own yard close by he met his wife placidly draping a blanket over a rhododendron bush."I thought there might be a frost to-night," she observed, and her tone had all the clear crispness of frost in it as she spoke. Tom Daly was only human. It was scarcely strange that he could not help contrasting his wife's voice with that other eager, vibrant, younger, warmer voice he had just heard, passionately asserting faith in that something behind all the miseries and misunderstandings of things without which life were indeed scarcely to be endured.There was a world war on. Little Jimmy Curry lay dead unnecessarily. Tom Daly's nerves and courage and endurance were strained all but to the breaking point. And his wife Lois thought there might be a frost. But long after Tom Daly had fallen into the heavy sleep of complete physical exhaustion Lois lay wide-eyed and sleepless, staring into the darkness.
CHAPTER VI
OF MISSIONS, AND OMISSIONS
"H-mm!" Suzanne meditatively surveyed the depleted feast. "Thermos bottles! Silver spoons! Sophisticated salads! Is this your notion of roughing it, Mr. Jack Amidon? Of all Sybaritical picnics!"
"Same old bugs! Same old sticks in the lemonade!" retorted Jack, leaning forward to extract a leaf from Sylvia's cup with the prong of a salad fork. "The good old times aren't utterly gone."
"Oh, but think of the bacon bats of yesteryear!" mourned Suzanne. "The fingers I've burned! The clothes I've spoiled! The smudges wherewith I've smudged my nose! I begin to feel fatally reminiscent. Give me some more lemonade, I pine to drown my grief."
"And I pine to see the sunset from Lover's Leap." And Sylvia sprang up hastily, perceiving that the sun was already glinting flame and gold through the trees. "Come on everybody or it will be too late." The others rose to follow her lead. Phil fell into step beside Sylvia, leaving Jack to Barbara's society, as Suzanne and Roger had at last struck up a conversation, albeit a rather non-amicable one and strayed off together.
"Are you sure your name isn't Pease Blossom or Mustard Seed? I could swear you were a fairy. Are you really a Militant? Would you resist forcible feeding? Here, let me test you with a pickle."
But Barb only laughed and accepted the pickle.
"I'm nothing militant to-night. I'm at peace with the whole world."
"Even the menacing male?" teased Jack.
"The menacing male is a spoiled baby, biting off his own nose. Mr. Amidon, it would serve you right if I delivered a suffrage lecture here and now. I don't believe you know a thing about the movement," severely.
"Heaven forbid!" he ejaculated piously.
"You will sing a different tune before many years. You'll have it forcibly fed to you unless you take to it of your own accord as babies take to their thumbs."
"I believe I could bear to have even Suffrage rammed into me at your hands, Mademoiselle Mustard Seed, especially if you would make pansy eyes at me while you did it," he added audaciously. "What are you going to do with those eyes of yours anyway? They are altogether too expressive to be wasted on a Cause."
Barb frowned.
"You wouldn't wear a last year's hat. Why do you use last century methods with women? They hate compliments."
"Do they? I wonder." And his wonder was genuine. He honestly reflected a moment. Sylvia did hate compliments he knew. But then he never offered her any. He never even flirted with Sylvia, though she was about the only pretty girl of his acquaintance of whom as much could be said. He had been perfectly willing to play the game à deux with this demurely charming, pansy-eyed, little suffragist however. But he was evidently not going to be permitted to have his will. Were Barbara Day and Sylvia and the sharp-tongued Suzanne really a new breed of womankind? Were his own sisters and the dozens of other girls of their kind with whom he had played and danced and flirted for the past five or six years really an older type, soon to be as extinct as the Dodo? Only for a moment, however, he wondered. Jack was not much given to serious thinking. He took life and the feminine sex on the whole rather as he found them. He was always genially ready to "play up" to both. He was now. It was rather agreeable he thought to watch Barb's eyes shine and the color surge in her cheeks, so he laid the match to the tow chiefly from an artistic impulse to see the flame.
"Tell me," he urged. "What is this thing you girls are up to? What is it you are going to New York to do?"
Barb shot him a shrewd rather indignant glance. Then she laughed.
"You don't really care, but, just to punish you, I'm going to tell you. You deserve it."
And then she did tell him, a little reservedly at first, but soon losing both her resentment and her shyness she forgot herself entirely and warmed to her loved theme, betraying something of the dream of her Aunt Josephine, of herself, of all women who think and feel and are forever disenchanted with any Pisgah heights they themselves might have the luck to attain, so long as the great weary horde of the "dispossessed" wait without the gates, scarcely even knowing in the apathy of their misery that there is a Promised Land. And her listener did not scoff even to himself at the revelation he was vouchsafed. He had the grace to recognize with suitable humility that he unworthy had been permitted a brief glimpse into a holy of holies. And irreverence was not one of Jack's failings, for all his habitual levity of mood.
In the meanwhile, not far ahead, Roger and Suzanne were quarreling hotly. At least Suzanne was quarreling. Roger never quarreled, which was perhaps one of his most glaring defects in Suzanne's eyes.
"I told you not to come and you came," was the burden of Suzanne's complaint.
"I didn't come to see you. I didn't even know you were in Greendale until Jack told me. And when I knew, how could I resist a chance to see you, especially as it will be months before I can see you again? Be reasonable, Suzanne. Why are you so angry at me for coming?"
Suzanne shot him an exasperated and somewhat malicious glance. Unfortunately, Mr. Minot was a lawyer and not a clairvoyant and therefore was totally without means of knowing that the chief reason for Suzanne's anger was the fact that she had been so foolishly glad to see him. For every quickened beat of her pulse in his near presence poor Roger had to pay with a lash of her tongue. Angry, indeed, was Suzanne at Roger Minot for disobeying her royal mandates, but angrier still was she at Suzanne Morrison for being automatically glad of his nearness. Scant wonder the young lawyer had a very bad quarter of an hour as he mounted the pine-needled slope toward the sunset.
Phil and Sylvia had less to say than either of the other couples, strange to say, though it had seemed to both beforehand they would have volumes. The hush of the forest and the hour seemed to have cast a spell upon them, or was it an even more potent enchantment that held them fast bound in silence? They had seen so little of each other during this brief visit of Phil's. Last night had been too full and joyous and excited for much conversation, even had Sylvia's responsibilities as hostess left her much time for her latest arrived guest. Those few moments on the stairs had been practically--indeed, the only ones--they had enjoyed alone, and this morning Phil had given to his mother while Sylvia and her guests slept away the hours up at the Hall. Both had felt a little aggrieved and cheated at the way circumstances had curtailed the pleasure of their being together for the first time since the June Commencement at college. Yet now that the awaited moment had come at last neither seemed to have anything particular to do with it. It was strange, and both felt slightly embarrassed by the strangeness, suddenly grown shy, after all their years of friendship.
"Oh!" Sylvia uttered the exclamation as she stepped out upon the great ledge of rock from which she could see the sun's gold rim just dipping behind the crest of the topmost purple peak leaving a sea of tulip colors in its wake.
For a moment neither spoke again. A mood of complete serenity was upon them that forbade speech, a sense of nearness, each to the other, and to some high other Presence which might have been God or Nature or Love or a mystic commingling of all three. Were the three, indeed, a new Trinity, perfect and indivisible? There was a crackling among the bushes behind, the sound of voices. The others were near. The enchanted moment passed. Sylvia sighed, and, turning, met Phil's eyes and her own drooped before what she saw there. No word was spoken, nor needed, yet something unforgettable had been communicated. Sylvia's heart was beating a little more quickly than usual and there was dew and star shine in her eyes as she smiled at Jack and Barbara, a shine which was lost on neither of the two new arrivals, though later it suited both to pretend they had never seen it. For the moment Barbara's only feeling was a quick compunction lest they had interrupted something which they had no right to share. As for her companion, sharp fear and half resentful jealousy went through him like keen-bladed knives. Had he lost just at the moment when he seemed to have gained something almost tangible? And then Suzanne and Roger reached the rock also, arriving rather dilatorily by another path, having arrived also apparently at a state of something faintly resembling truce, for Suzanne was wearing a spray of vivid scarlet berries which Roger had risked thorns and a possible broken neck to acquire. The risk had been worth it, it seemed, for Roger was looking happier than at any moment since Suzanne had first snubbed him several hours ago on Sylvia's piazza.
Barb, standing apart, watching the whole pageant from the outside, felt oddly cold and lonely all of a sudden. There seemed to be so much love in the world somehow and yet so little left over, as it were. And Sylvia and Suzanne--did they know? Did they even begin to know how precious love was? How one needed it in this great lonely world? She walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river whose rapid current whirled fiercely, down below her. She remembered Sylvia's story of how the rock was named. There are so many Lover's Leaps in the world and their stories are all somewhat the same story. An Indian girl and her lover had been forbidden to marry because they belonged to hostile tribes and here they had gladly taken the consecrated leap together, hand in hand, into space and eternity, one in death as they could never have been in life.
What a strange thing love was! So Barb meditated. Was it something to be avoided as Suzanne insisted because it demanded too high toll? The others had seated themselves on the rock to watch the shifting panorama of color in the western skies, but Barb wandered off by herself, still pondering about that strange thing love. And the others scarcely noticed her going, which was in its way a symbol.
Suddenly a single sharp cry broke the silence of the dusk and then ceased. They all sprang to their feet in alarm, but it was Phil Lorrimer's quick eye that first discovered what had happened. Below them, and somewhat at the right of the outcropping ledge on which they stood, hung Barbara, clinging to a slender sapling whose trunk bent, it seemed almost to snapping beneath her slight weight. Sylvia saw, too, almost at the same instant.
"There she is!" Her finger pointed. "Oh, Phil!"
But Phil had not waited for his embassy. He was already speeding down the steep bank on his way to the scene of the accident.
"Hold on," he called cheerfully. "I'm coming. Can I reach you from above?"
"No." Barb's voice sounded faraway but steady as Phil's own. "Don't try. It's all crumbly."
"Hang tight then. I'll be there in a minute."
In what appeared to be an endless stretch of time to everybody, but which was in reality an astonishingly brief interval, Phil's tall form appeared on the river bank precisely beneath the tiny figure suspended as it seemed in midair, but still clinging pluckily to the stout ash sapling which held her weight gallantly. The distance between Phil and the girl was perhaps ten feet, though it looked much more in the gulfing darkness to them both.
"All right. Let go. I'll catch you."
A shudder shook Barb's whole body. That slim, tough little ash-tree seemed all that kept her from the greedy swirl of the black river. Her hands were grooved and cut with clinging and her arms ached until it seemed as if she could not bear the pain, but for all that she felt as if the one thing she could not do was to release her hold and slip into the darkness. But there below loomed Phil Lorrimer's comforting size and strength and Barb's courage grew as she looked down into his uplifted face.
"Come on, Barbie, I'm right here." He had never called her anything but Miss Day before, not even Barbara. Barbie was Sylvia's name, as it had once been her mother's in the dear long ago. Somehow it seemed right and natural and sweet that Phil should use it now. Suddenly she became the trusting, obedient little girl Barbie again and without a quiver of dread and with a heart at peace and full of faith she let go her hold on the ash and went down, down, down into space--a surprisingly long journey it seemed, though she felt perfectly comfortable taking it. She had even time to notice that a star had come out and was smiling at her friendlily out of the dusk over a sycamore-tree. She knew somehow or rather that Phil would not fail her. Most people felt that about Phil Lorrimer. More than one of his patients had been willing and unafraid to go down the dark valley if he would stand by and help them on the way.
Certainly he did not fail Barbara. Though the shock of the impact of even her "fairy" figure made him sway and stagger a little, he caught her as deftly as he had been wont in his college days to catch a dazzling outfielder. In a second he had deposited her gently on the soft moss on the river bank. Whereupon Barb gave a quick breath of a sob then laughed a little rippling gurgle of a laugh, though there were tears in her eyes.
"D-don't mi-nd me," she begged. "I'm just being g-glad I let go."
"All safe!" Phil's big voice boomed out of the darkness to the relief of the anxious waiters above on the cliff. "All right, little lady? Seeing as you wouldn't walk down, suppose we say you shan't walk up." And Barb was swept like a sudden victim to a bird of prey into his arms.
"Oh, don't," she begged. "Please put me down. I can walk perfectly well. I'm dreadfully heavy."
"So are thistledown and dewdrops," he laughed. "Please forget you are a feminist for once and succumb to the eternal masculine superiority of brawn and muscle."
And in spite of herself, Barb felt oddly content to let herself lie passive in his arms, so much so that she closed her eyes and said never a word. At the top of the ascent, which had been short though somewhat steep, Phil put down his burden, and the rest crowded around the two, full of excitement, anxiety and questions. But Phil exercised his doctor's prerogatives and ordered them to let Barb alone and make a speedy start for home. These orders were meekly obeyed, though they managed little by little to get the information of how the accident had occurred. It had been simple enough. The rock on which Barb had been standing had been "crumbly" as she had said, and before she had had time to realize what had happened she had slipped with the shelving stone and soil and had only by the greatest of good fortune managed to snatch at the ash in her descent and thus save herself from the disastrous fall into the turbulent rock-filled bed of the river. It had been obviously a sufficiently narrow escape to make them all rather silent and sober as they packed up the remains of the feast and made their way to the road just beyond the glade where the car waited.
"Want to have a try at the wheel, old man?" asked Jack, laying an affectionate hand on Phil's shoulder when they were ready to start. "She's a bird."
"Why, yes." Phil's frank face lit up with pleasure. "Sure you don't mind, Jackie Horner?"
"Not a bit. Glad to have a rest," acquiesced Jack cheerfully. "Pile in, Sylvia. Phil's waiting."
Sylvia's eyes flashed quick inquiry at Jack as he helped her into the seat beside the driver. He met her gaze imperturbably but she was not deceived by his noncommittal expression. Well she knew that the owner of the "bird" suffered the tortures of the damned when any hand beside his own was on the wheel. Well she knew also that he was deliberately giving Phil a chance to do more than run his car. It was so precisely like Jack, impulsively selfish one minute, impulsively generous the next. Through the white star-lit wonder of the night the car sped, while its occupants sat almost silent, wrapped in an incommunicable garment of dreams. Later, after they had taken leave of the girls, Jack and Roger went with Phil to the station at Baltimore. But Roger stayed in the car while Jack went to the train with Phil. Just as the train pulled in Jack stirred himself to say what was on his mind.
"Phil! Forgive the impertinence, old man, but I've got to know. If she has decided for you, I'll clear out. You're the better man--always were."
Phil Lorrimer drew a long breath and set his lips rather as he used to set them before a tackle in the field.
"You needn't clear out, so far as I am concerned. I haven't asked Sylvia to marry me. How can I? I've only just finished paying my college debts and she is worth something like a million. Is thy servant a fool?" he added a little bitterly.
"Yes," said Jack Amidon. "The biggest kind of fool. Do you suppose the money matters a hang to her?"
"Well, it matters to me," curtly. "Train's under way. 'By." And with a hasty but warm pressure of the hand which went out to meet his, Phil boarded the moving train, leaving Jack staring after.
"Confound the fellow!" he muttered. "Hanged if I know whether to be mad or glad he's such an idiot. How did he dare not ask Sylvia when her eyes looked like that? Gee! Perhaps he didn't see."
But Phil Lorrimer had seen, and all that night he stared sleeplessly out at the stars and the twinkling lights of villages and cities, love and pride battling within him. Once or twice he made up his mind feverishly to telegraph Sylvia the first thing in the morning. Then he would decide it would be better to write her a letter, tell her exactly how it all was and ask if she cared enough to wait for him until he had something worth while to offer her. And all the time he knew he would do nothing of the kind. He would fight on grimly by himself, and if in the meantime somebody else--Jack or another--slipped in ahead, well, that would mean she was not for him, if he knew Sylvia. And so on and so on and so on. But never in all his reasonings did it occur to him that the money was as nothing between him and Sylvia Arden, neither of advantage or disadvantage, simply a zero. Jack Amidon knew it and had generously endeavored to tell his rival. Sylvia knew it and her eyes had also tried to tell him that night in the sunset. But poor Phil, blind as the clearest sighted man sometimes becomes when a woman is involved, saw Sylvia's money as a huge, hateful, insurmountable, mountain peak behind which stood Sylvia herself, only to be reached by accumulating another pile of gold from which he could make the leap to her.
And in all that long wakeful night he never once thought of little Barbara Day. He was too used to saving people, one way or another, to think much about this latest exploit in the salvation line; and, besides, his mind was full of other things.
But Barbara dreamed of Phil and heard his deep voice calling out of the darkness, "Come on, Barbie. I'm right here." And all through her dreams the star over the sycamore-tree kept smiling at her friendlily but its smile was oddly mixed up with Phil Lorrimer's.
CHAPTER VII
OCTOBER DEVELOPMENTS
A deeper bronze to the oaks and a more vivid scarlet to the sumach. A sharper tang to the air, mornings. Hilltops veiled in amethyst and golden haze on the meadows, afternoons. At sundown, ghost-like wraiths of mists rising up from the river valley. Now and then a clanging wedge of wild geese speeding southward through the night. October!
It must be admitted that in spite of Sylvia's "vicious contentedness" she did feel the Hall a little too peaceful and quiet after her friends had gone, and she settled back into the very life she had chosen for herself. The summer had been brimful of guests and gayeties, with people coming and going all the time and always some new delightful project or enthralling interest afoot, a true Forest of Arden atmosphere of sunshine and happiness and blithe irresponsibility.
Even the sharp and sudden thunder crash, heard from overseas in that fateful early August, the din of great nations rushing to arms, came only vaguely to Sylvia's happy Hill as to most of America. Slow to waken, the country had not at once sensed the significance of what was happening. Humane and peaceful itself, it had not taken in the hideous reality of a desolated and ravaged Belgium, the inspiriting vision of a risen and consecrated France beating the enemy back from Paris, of the fearful and relentless grip of the great dog of war upon the stricken nations. To Sylvia, as to others, it all seemed impossible, incredible, not to be apprehended in terms of actuality. These things just couldn't be, that was all. There must be some mistake somewhere. But there was no mistake. People kept coming in on every steamer with harrowing tales of well-substantiated horror. The things they had seen made the heart sick and the blood run cold. It was war indeed. However horrible, these things were possible, had happened.
Perhaps the first vital realization came to Sylvia as it came to nearly every one in this country through individual testimony of friends. Even in September, rumor reached her that John Armstrong's money had helped to establish and support a field hospital "somewhere in France," that his wife and her sister Hilda were regular Red Cross nurses. And in October had come a letter from Hilda herself, describing simply but with the fearful graphicness of the bare truth, the horrors, the miracles, the splendid thrills, the supreme satisfaction of the work she and Constance had undertaken. John was driving a relief Ambulance near the battle line. Bertram was at the front somewhere. Bertram, it appeared, was the young Englishman to whom the writer had very recently become engaged after a romantically brief acquaintance. Of course it was horrible, Hilda admitted, having him there, but then she wouldn't want him not to want to be there.
All this Sylvia read with absorbed interest and straightway dispatched a generous check to John Armstrong. But giving money being altogether insufficient to express her abounding sympathy she also learned to knit, to Jack's huge delectation and much raillery, and resolutely set herself to making sponges and rather eccentric looking hose, though this process, too, scarcely satisfied her when she thought of what her friend was doing over in France. In fact, it satisfied her so little that she very speedily abandoned it entirely wherein she was rather like a good many other American women. "A thousand shall fall at thy right hand but it shall not come nigh thee" seemed to be America's motto in those days.
Perhaps the thing which came nearest, that autumn, to offering Sylvia an outlet for her restless energy was her music. She was an excellent accompanist and she and Gus Nichols spent much time together previous to his departure for the concert tour which was to begin early in November. And while Sylvia was intent on her own dreams and quandaries, weaving much she scarcely understood herself into the music, she had not the slightest perception that these hours she gave the young violinist meant anything more to him than to herself, an agreeable mutual expression in a loved art. "Music is Love in search of a word" and if the boy's violin struggled more than once to tell her what his lips would never have ventured on, Sylvia, with her mind on other things, did not hear.
Long enthusiastic letters came frequently from Suzanne, ensconced, according to schedule, in a dingy studio in the Square where one is not encumbered with needless luxuries like steam heat and bath tubs and electricity, where one steeps in "Atmosphere," and pays far more than he can afford for the privilege of living very uncomfortably but artistically. Her letters reeked of Bohemia, of "Polly's" and "Bruno's Garret," of the delicious glamour and picturesqueness of the inimitable Village, of the thrill and stimulus of the whole marvelous city of which the Village was a unique part.
Barb, too, wrote often, though with less abandon of rejoicement in her new way of life. It was all "interesting." Aunt Jo was "wonderful." The Metropolitan was "magnificent." People were "kind." But there was a faint panic-stricken note beneath it all, at first, which made Sylvia wonder if poor Barbara were a little submerged by the very seething whirlpool which was such supreme delight to Suzanne. It was as if both were on a "Merry-Go-Round," and Suzanne kept clapping her hands and crying "Faster! Faster!" while Barb's timid "pansy" eyes begged in silence for a safer, less mad rate of revolution.
Aside from her aunt, of whom Barb could never say enough, the person most frequently mentioned in her letters was Philip Lorrimer. "Dr. Lorrimer is so good to me." "Dr. Lorrimer took me to a roof garden last night." "Phil and I rode over on the ferry to Staten Island to cool off last evening." "Phil just came in and sends greetings. He is going to take me to a Socialist meeting soon." "Aunt Jo likes Phil so much," and so forth.
And though Sylvia made no comment on this new development it gave her cause for reflection. Sylvia was more than ever "at sea" these days. That sunset moment on Lover's Leap had been an illuminating moment for her and she guessed it had been one for Phil also. Though she told herself later she must have been mistaken, she knew in her heart she had not been so. The look in Phil's eyes as they had met hers that moment was unmistakable, more eloquent than volumes of speech. She had felt the same thing vibrating in his voice when later he had bidden her "Good night" and "Good-by" and stepped into Jack's car, something which met a quick leap of response in herself. Sylvia was very woman and she knew what had happened, though she did not know whether the thing was going to be permanent or not.
All that next day and the next and for a week beyond she watched the mails, pretending to herself, feminine wise, that she was doing nothing of the sort. And, finally, when on the tenth day a brotherly, brief, impersonal, not to say casual, note came from New York in Phil's big sprawling hand, she felt as if a shower of icy water had been hurled at her. Not that she wanted Phil to ask her to marry him, not that she was at all sure she would have said yes if he had asked her. She was by no means certain it would not be Jack to whom she would surrender when the time came for surrender. At least so she told herself to save her pride. Certainly she was far from ready to marry any man that Fall, sincerely desirous as she was to belong to herself awhile as she had told Jack. Nevertheless Phil's very discretion angered and hurt her. Every now and then she was tortured by an agonizing fear that in the strange exhilaration of that moment in the forest she might have betrayed to him more than she had been in any degree willing to admit to herself. Consequently, Philip Lorrimer, M.D., got very few and very brief letters from Arden Hall those golden autumn days.
Neither is it strange that out of favor with his "Faraway Princess" Phil turned to sympathetic little Barbara in his few idle hours. Not that he took Barb into his confidence. Indeed there were no confidences to make. To no one in the world would he have admitted that Sylvia's apparent indifference hurt. Sylvia had the right to ignore him if she chose. The Queen could do no wrong. Nor was there anything to say about the rumors which reached him frequently that Sylvia and Jack were often together, and that an engagement was obviously to be expected if not already secretly in existence. That, too, he had counted on as a possibility when he had told Jack there was no reason for him to "clear out." Phil Lorrimer was man enough to want the lady of his heart to be free in her choice. Had he been in Jack's position he would have entered the race and run, neck and neck, beside his rival and abided the end whatever it was. But he was handicapped, or so he believed, by his poverty, so he set his teeth and stood out of the way leaving Jack a clear road. If Jack could win--well, it meant Sylvia cared, that was all. Phil's philosophy was a very simple one.
In the meantime there was work. And Phil was the kind to be able to assuage nearly every mortal ill in work. In the strenuous demands of the day-time hours at the hospital he had little chance to brood over any personal woes and when night came on he took what consolation he could, man fashion, from another woman's obvious pleasure in his society, never once suspecting he was playing with edged tools any more than Barb herself did. Of the physiological action of the heart Phil Lorrimer knew a great deal but of the more subtle manifestations of that organ he knew astonishingly little.
Only Miss Josephine Murray kept her keen eyes wide open. "Babes in the wood!" she thought sometimes. "Heavens! What a fearful thing it is to be young!" And then seeing the soft flush on Barb's cheeks when she came in from an excursion with the young doctor, and the starry shine in her eyes, Miss Murray would add grimly to herself, "Fearful but divine! It's a million years since I had the gift of looking like that."
And sometimes she would ask her niece questions about young Dr. Lorrimer, and Barb would chatter on innocently about him, how he was an old, old friend of Sylvia's, so old, they were almost like brother and sister, though she and Suzanne used sometimes to think maybe Sylvia would marry him some time, but now everybody said it would be Jack Amidon. And once Barb had told the story of how she had slipped over the edge of the cliff and hung to the little ash-tree until Phil had called to her to let go and she had obeyed and gone down, down into space, not one tiny bit afraid for she had felt just as sure as sure that Phil Lorrimer would catch her just as he promised.
"He's the kind of person you just have to have faith in. You know he wouldn't fail you, no matter what happened," she had finished. And Aunt Jo had "H-med" meditatively and risen to switch on the electric light and sit down to her letters. But Barb had lingered before the gas log, watching its scintillating colors and lights and dreaming little vague pleasant dreams. Perhaps the Barb who didn't dare let herself look at the real Barb took a shy peep that night.
As for Jack Amidon, he was extraordinarily on his good behavior that autumn. His father was grimly pleased to find him prompt and assiduous at his office desk, a rather unexpected departure from his career of the past two years when he had fulfilled the obligations of his nominal post chiefly by absent treatment. Possibly the sudden change of heart on the part of his rather erratic son reminded the old man of a similar abrupt right-about-face some six years ago when the same delinquent had announced himself blandly as being "on the water wagon" after a rather strenuous course of wild oat sowing. Perhaps, too, Jackson Amidon shrewdly suspected that now as then the impetus to the reform could be traced to a vigorous-willed, clear-eyed young lady who tolerated no weaklings among her retinue.
"The boy's taken a new turn," he thought. "He'll come out all right in the end. He's sound as a nut inside for all his vagaries. And if that little girl on the Hill can make him come to, it will be one of the best jobs she ever landed." And he added also to himself that if the day ever came when he should welcome Sylvia Arden as his third daughter there would be little left to wish for in the time he had left. And then his eyes had grown sober, for his own daughters, those of his own flesh and blood, had never been of much comfort to him, dearly as he loved them. Over in Europe, Isabel was already threatening stormily to get a divorce from the titled rascal she had insisted on marrying in spite of her father's judgment and protestations. And there was Jeanette, beautiful, willful Jeanette, whose frocks were the last cry from Paris and whose cars and horses and houses and entertainments were all the most daring and expensive America could produce! He, himself, had given her all the money her little hands could hold or spend and Francis Latham had gone on with the prodigious task but neither one of them had been able to give her happiness. That was all too evident. Perhaps if there had been children it would have been different. And at this point in his reflections the old man always broke off with a sigh, for he knew that the moment when Jack should bring Sylvia home for a bride could only yield precedence in satisfaction to that other hoped-for moment when he should see his grandson, Jackson Amidon, the third. Then, indeed, the curtain might go down when it pleased.
These dreams of Jackson Amidon's did not look so all improbable that October. Jack was distinctly "on the job" as he would have expressed it, doing his level best to make a man of himself, since that was what Sylvia demanded, and sunning himself happily in her favor during their mutual leisure hours. Very good comrades the two were. Youth turns to youth as a morning glory to the sun and the Goddess of Propinquity is a lady of much influence. Certainly it was not strange that people prophesied that an engagement would soon be announced. Possibly it was not strange either, that Jack and Sylvia themselves believed such a dénouement entirely probable in course of time.
CHAPTER VIII
FIRE AND FROST
"Lois, aren't you ever going to write any more?" Sylvia on the rug before the fire with wee Marjory in her arms looked up over that young person's bobbing silver curls to ask the question.
Lois Daly sitting by the window to catch the last bit of daylight, ran her hand into a small stocking to investigate the number of casualties before she answered.
"Maybe. When the kiddies are grown up."
"But don't you mind not doing it now? Don't you want to do it dreadfully sometimes?"
"Not especially. In fact I don't believe I could write now if I tried. I've lost the knack as well as the impulse. You have no idea how much such things are a matter of mere habit." Lois' voice had an even flow suggesting cool, shady, translucent waters. Sometimes her friend's serenity irritated Sylvia. It did now.
"Well, I think that is all wrong," she announced decidedly. "You oughtn't to have let it go."
"Just how could I have helped it? You may recall I have been moderately busy these last few years. I haven't had much time to entertain literary angels."
"Oh, I know," acknowledged Sylvia penitently, curling one of Marjory's ringlets around her finger as she spoke. "You couldn't, of course, with the house and the babies and the little mother's death and everything. But couldn't you begin again now?"
"Why should I? Tom doesn't need an author in his household. He needs a housekeeper and a nurse and a seamstress and a wife." There was a faintly satirical twist to Lois' lips as she made the statement. "Of the four he needs the wife least, of course. He is too busy to enjoy my society. This hospital project is the last straw."
Sylvia looked thoughtful. Somehow there did seem to be something wrong somewhere. Doctor Tom too occupied to see anything of his beautiful, brilliant wife; she, in turn, too much immersed in household and maternal cares either to cultivate her own particular gift or pay much attention to the things her husband was so vitally interested in! These two had started out so well. They were both so fine, so thoroughly devoted at heart to each other. What was the trouble? Was marriage always a compromise like this? Sylvia did not like to think so. Somewhere there must have been something which could have been done differently. Woman-like she was a bit inclined to blame the other woman. If only Lois had cared a little more for the things Doctor Tom cared for, the things which to Sylvia seemed so splendid, his profession, his tireless service to the community, his dreams for its progress and betterment! Lois rolled up the stockings she had just finished mending and rose.
"Do you mind staying a few minutes with Marjory, Sylvia? It is cook's night out and I have to see about supper."
Sylvia assented willingly and Lois departed. Even as the door closed behind her, Sylvia heard Doctor Tom's step in the hall and his cheerful voice as he greeted his wife.
"Got in earlier than I expected. Come on back and enjoy the twilight with me," she heard him inviting.
Lois' answer was inaudible but in a moment Doctor Tom entered the living-room alone.
"Hello, here's my best daughter and my star neighbor! Come on, Cherub, and let your old Dad toss you up to the moon."
Marjory leaped with a happy little crow out of Sylvia's arms and Sylvia rose to the higher level of a chair while she smiled at the baby's gurgling delight as her father tossed her "up to the moon." Presently the doctor seated himself before the fire with his small daughter still in his arms. As he settled back with a tired sigh Sylvia saw with sudden quick compunction that Doctor Tom looked old--too old for his years. Some of his characteristic buoyancy had gone out of him.
"How is the Curry baby?" she asked.
He shook his head sadly.
"Died early this morning," he said.
"Oh!" Sylvia's exclamation was pitiful. "Can I do anything?"
"Go down and see the mother. She is like a stone. Can't even cry. Maybe the baby's better off. The father is drunk half the time and there isn't any too much to eat. But if I could have had Jimmy in a decent hospital I could have saved him. Everything was against him down there, poor little chap!" And Tom Daly's big hand closed over little Marjory's dimpled one as if somehow to keep her safe from the grim enemy that had pursued Jimmy Curry, an enemy who had altogether too many allies down in the unsanitary tenement district where the baby had wearily breathed his little life in and out again in one short year. Then the doctor's fist came down with a resounding thump on the arm of the chair. "I tell you, Sylvia, we have got to get that hospital and get it quick. We're wasting human life too fast at this rate."
"Will money help? You know I'm ready to give to the hospital any time--any amount you want."
Doctor Tom smiled his old wide-mouthed friendly grin.
"Naturally you are, Miss Christmas. I can always count on you every time. You would give your last red cent if anybody needed it. Thank Heaven you don't come into the bulk of your property till you are twenty-five. You would have made ducks and drakes of it before this if you had it all. I shall tell Gordon to keep his eye on the purse strings until you get a husband to do it for you. You have such dissipating tendencies. Don't wrinkle your nose like that. You shall give when the time is ripe. What I want just now is to wring some money out of the hides of some of these tough old Greendale sinners who keep their religion with their prayer books in the family pew and their brotherly love reduced systematically to lowest terms. The apology for a hospital we have is a disgrace and they know it or they will before I get through with 'em. There isn't even a children's ward. Little Allie Wendell died last week to the tune of Jake Casey's blasphemous D. T. music. Bah! It's rotten."
"Tom, I do wish you wouldn't shout so. I could hear you clear out in the kitchen." Thus Lois' silver cool voice from the doorway, contrasting oddly with her husband's vehement ejaculatoriness which still filled the little room. "Supper is ready. You'll stay, won't you, Sylvia? I will be with you as soon as I can get Marjory into Tessy's hands and see if Junior brushed his teeth. He is so bad these days. I can't trust him at all."
Sylvia had been about to refuse but Doctor Tom cut her short.
"Of course you will stay. You haven't been here for a dog's age. Besides, I want to talk to you about the hospital and ask what you think about--"
"Don't start to talk shop now," ordered Lois from the doorway, with small Marjory's head bobbing sleepily over her shoulder. "The omelet will go down."
"It sure will," promised the doctor. "I feel as if almost anything would go down in me this minute."
"That is the trouble with Tom," smiled Lois to Sylvia. "He doesn't know the difference between a sublimated soufflé and plain hash. It is all food to him. It is very discouraging."
Doctor Tom shook his head as the door closed upon his wife and daughter.
"If only she wouldn't fuss," he groaned. "Sylvia, I feel like a beast when I think what a lot this life we are leading takes out of her. If only she would take it a bit easier. She's such a confounded perfectionist every blessed thing she does has to be just right. That's why it uses up so much of her."
It was certainly a "just right" meal to which they sat down a few moments later. Everything was cold which should have been cold, everything hot which should have been hot. The table linen was fine and dazzling white, the silver and glass resplendently bright and clean. The bowl of yellow chrysanthemums made a perfect centerpiece, under the pleasantly shaded glow of the suspended lamp. Lois herself was exquisite in a soft clinging gray gown which she had taken the time to slip into while she had been upstairs with the children. Not a fold was awry, not a hair out of place. Serene and low-voiced and deft-motioned, she served perfect tea in quaint gold-banded cups from a green-dragoned teapot.
But somehow Sylvia was critical in her judgment to-night. The very perfectness of it all jarred upon her. She couldn't help wondering if Lois were after all the consummate artist her husband acclaimed her. Life was made for happiness and was Lois Daly happy or was she making her big-hearted, splendid-souled husband happy? Had she even noticed the tired look in his eyes to-night, the droop to his shoulders? In her conscientious supervision of Junior's teeth and Marjory's bedtime did she think or care at all about the Tommy Currys and Allie Wendells of the world who mattered so gravely to her husband? The two loved each other devotedly, Sylvia knew, yet she could not help seeing how far apart they were after five years of wedded life. It gave one food for thought.
After supper Lois excused herself to do some household auditing.
"You and Tom are going to talk hospital anyway," she added to Sylvia, "and there is no use of my listening while it is all just an air-castle. If I had that on my mind on top of the price of potatoes and bacon I don't know what would happen."
"Stay and rest and we'll call hospital taboo," promised Doctor Tom. "Never mind the old accounts to-night."
But Lois shook her head, protesting if he ran his business the way he wanted her to run hers they would soon end in the poorhouse.
"Not that you run your business any too well, Tommy dear," she had added. "You are a scandalously poor bill collector. Aren't the Williamsons ever going to pay?"
"Steve Williamson's down with pneumonia. I can't press them now."
"Pneumonia on top of twins! Theyareunfortunate." And Lois left the room.
Sylvia dropped her eyes quickly. Intuitively she knew she didn't want to look at Doctor Tom just then. He made no comment upon his wife's parting speech but settled down in the big armchair with a tired grunt.
"Mind if I smoke?"
"Of course not."
"All right, here goes." He took one or two long comforting puffs at his pipe. "Let's side-track the hospital for the present. Might as well since it's only an air-castle, as Lois says. I'm a bit frazzled to-night. Can't seem to get the Curry baby off my chest. Suppose you play something instead. Nothing too classic--just agreeable and anæsthetic."
Sylvia went to the piano and sat down. Her fingers drifted into a nocturne. Save for the soft music and the crackling of the logs on the hearth there was no sound in the room. Tom Daly sat staring into the leaping flames and smoked stolidly. It would have made an appropriate picture for a woman's magazine cover. The gracious, comfortable room, the tired man, basking in home peace and contentment after the labor and stress of the day; the young girl at the piano, with healing and sympathy, wordless but no less apparent in her finger tips. Only in a woman's magazine the musician would no doubt have been the man's wife. Life is sometimes oddly different from magazine covers.
It was nearly an hour before Lois returned to the living-room. She paused a moment on the threshold.
"Oh, so you aren't building hospitals after all? Forgive me for being such a bad hostess, Sylvia. Was that Brahms?"
Sylvia shook her head with a smile.
"I don't know what it was," she admitted. "Something I heard in my dreams maybe. Did I put you to sleep Doctor Tom?"
"No, just soothed the savage in me. I feel fairly pacific at the moment. Don't stop."
"Ah, but I must. Felicia will think I am lost." She rose as she spoke and Doctor Tom rose too. "Don't come," she protested. "It is too absurd when it's only such a step."
"It's a step I intend to take," he grinned. "If you must go, I'm at your service."
"I wish you wouldn't," objected Sylvia, but she let him wrap her long moss green cloak about her and in a moment they were out in the keen November air under the stars. Neither said anything until they were at the steps of the Hall. Then suddenly Doctor Tom spoke.
"Sylvia, how did you know I had the blue devils to-night?" he demanded.
"Did you?" parried Sylvia. There was something different about Doctor Tom to-night; a queer, tense something in his voice she wasn't used to.
"You know I did. You played to 'em--charmed 'em, as I said."
"I'm glad," said Sylvia. "Glad I charmed them, I mean. You need a rest, Doctor Tom. You are going a pace that would kill any man who wasn't as strong as an ox."
He laughed a little grimly.
"Well, Miss Nestor, any more sage advice to offer your grandfather? Just how am I going to shunt the world I happen to have on my shoulders at present?"
"Just drop it off. You could if you had to. Why don't you and Lois go on a vacation? Felicia and I will look after the babies."
"Thanks, Miss Christmas. That is like you and mighty kind, but do you see Lois letting anybody--the angel Gabriel himself--look after the babies for her?"
"She might," dubiously.
"And again she mightn't. But, aside from Lois, I have too many life and death jobs on hand at present to quit. A doctor's no business to get nerves. He ought to leave that to his patients. Anyway, it isn't the work that is getting me just now, it is the damnable futility of it all. The Curry baby is a symbol. I'm pouring water in a sieve, Sylvia, and that's the devil's truth."
"It isn't. You aren't," denied Sylvia quickly. "You are doing miracles every day of your life and everybody knows it. Doctor Tom, I never heard you talk like that before. Don't. It makes me feel as if everything were tottering on its foundations."
"Sometimes I think they are with that infernal senseless war going on over there after all our peace prating. Sylvia, what's it all for? Where are we going? What's the use?"
"Everything's the use. Maybe we can't see behind all the agony and blundering but there must be something there even if we can't see it. Why, Doctor Tom, there must be." Sylvia's eyes were earnest, her face uplifted to the stars lit with the fine fires of youth's faith. Tom Daly shook himself like one coming out of a trance. He was suddenly ashamed that he, the strong man, had been outdistanced in courage by the slim girl before him.
"Right you are," he said heartily. "Theremustbe. It's the only way to look at it. Thank you, Sylvia. I won't bleat again. If only--" But what was to have followed that sharp wrung "if only" Sylvia never knew for suddenly Tom Daly crushed both her hands in a vicelike grip and then turned and fled with a gruff "good night" down the path.
In his own yard close by he met his wife placidly draping a blanket over a rhododendron bush.
"I thought there might be a frost to-night," she observed, and her tone had all the clear crispness of frost in it as she spoke. Tom Daly was only human. It was scarcely strange that he could not help contrasting his wife's voice with that other eager, vibrant, younger, warmer voice he had just heard, passionately asserting faith in that something behind all the miseries and misunderstandings of things without which life were indeed scarcely to be endured.
There was a world war on. Little Jimmy Curry lay dead unnecessarily. Tom Daly's nerves and courage and endurance were strained all but to the breaking point. And his wife Lois thought there might be a frost. But long after Tom Daly had fallen into the heavy sleep of complete physical exhaustion Lois lay wide-eyed and sleepless, staring into the darkness.