CHAPTER IXTHE MOTH AND THE STARThe audience settled itself into place, rattling its programs, prepared idly to be either amused or bored as the opportunity presented itself, mildly curious as to the personality and talent of the young violinist "heard for the first time in this country.""They say he used to be old man McIntosh's office boy. He certainly struck it soft. Old man's worth near a million they say and this darned Dago'll get it all I suppose. Some folks just naturally nab the luck." Thus a young reporter to his neighbor."I don't know about that. I can't imagine old McIntosh standing for this fiddling business. He's a husky old Puritan.""Well, he did stand for it to the tune of quite a pretty price, I understand. The chap's had four years of Berlin and Dresden and the rest of it. Some mixture! Italian birth, American start, Scotch bringing up, German polish. Whew! Wonder what he's like with all that in him. Talk about your melting pots!""There's old McIntosh in the box now. No, the left. Ugly old snoozer, ain't he? But brains. Gee! He's shrewd as they make 'em. Hello! Who's the dame? Pretty easy to look at it, ain't she?""That's Miss Arden--lives on a high mucky muck hill out in Greendale. She's something to old McIntosh. Niece maybe. I forget.""No, she isn't. Old man used to be bookkeeper for her father's firm. I remember. My dad knew 'em. Arden and Daly--big cotton concern. Arden died young. Daly lost his money in some railroad slump and croaked too. Son's a doctor--making the wires hum out in Greendale about a hospital or something. So that's Miss Arden. Engaged to young Amidon, isn't she?""I reckon. Shut up. There he comes. Gee! He's nothing but a kid."It must be admitted that Gus, appearing on the program as Gustavus Niccolini, did look very much indeed like a "kid" as he came across the stage and made a shy, stiff little bow to the audience. Angus McIntosh fidgeted in his chair and cleared his throat irritably. "Fool to let him try," he thought. "How do I know whether he can play or not? What if he can't?" A cold perspiration stood out on the old man's forehead. What if the boy made a failure of the thing? What if the audience smiled, hissed? Audiences did behave like that sometimes. Why hadn't he told the boy, short-off, long ago, he shouldn't try it? Thus he worked himself into a perfect passion of apprehension. But in the midst of his perturbation Sylvia's hand rested on his knee and Sylvia's eyes smiled reassurance."It's all right, Daddy McIntosh," she whispered. "Just you wait till they hear him."In a moment they did hear him and the great hall was hushed to respectful silence. The audience had the grace to recognize a master touch when they heard it. Angus McIntosh was justified. The boy whom he had plucked out of a den of squalor and vice was an artist, and the grim old man who had had a hand in the creation had been something of an artist at the job himself. As for Sylvia, who was behind it all, she hardly breathed until the music ceased. She listened rapt while the voice of the violin sang and soared, now rapturous, now tender, now triumphant, now dying away like the note of a wild bird in the night. She had known before that Gus could play, but this--why this was a thing born of Heaven to which she listened reverently. Finally the last note came and quivered into silence. There was an instant's hush then the applause thundered. The boy lifted his head quietly, but with a certain grave pride, and his eyes sought the box where Angus McIntosh and Sylvia sat. Then suddenly his face was lit with a light which was not a smile but an enveloping radiance which seemed to say, "This is yours. I give it to you. I am glad it is worth giving." Then he bowed to the audience and the applause redoubled.Angus McIntosh never knew much about the rest of that program. He knew it went on and the applause went on, that the boy went through the varied and difficult performance with ease and serenity and simplicity, but what he was playing the old man never knew. It might have been "Yankee Doodle" or the "Cam'el's are Coming" for all he heard. He only knew the thing was beautiful. All the remnants of still lingering prejudices floated off into some dim cavern where such limbo is stored or annihilated. There was a place in the world it seemed for sheer beauty. Maybe it had a spiritual essence all its own. Anyway, this music of the boy's seemed oddly connected in his mind with the psalms and other fine old religious poetry with which his mother had filled his mind long ago. He was humbly glad that he had had a share in letting loose this thing upon the world. He remembered always that it was Sylvia who had really opened the door. Beauty--Kindness--Happiness--Love--all these things had been slipping almost beyond his grasp that December nearly six years ago when Sylvia and her Christmas family had brought them back. It was Sylvia who had given the boy to him, Sylvia, who had given his music to the world by making himself who had been blind see.The concert was over and Herr Bernsdorf, Gus' old music teacher, had rushed up to the box and was pumping Mr. McIntosh's hand up and down violently with inarticulate croonings and mutterings of delight and congratulation. "Haf I not told you that the boy was a genius? Haf I not said it hundertmal? I knew. I, who was his master, I knew. They haf done well by him over there, they haf done well. But somebody else, she haf done more? Is it you, mein Fraulein?" He turned his flashing little black eyes on Sylvia as he asked the question."I! Oh, no. I have done nothing," disclaimed Sylvia."No? Maybe it is another, in Berlin or Dresden or elsewhere. I know not. I only know the boy haf learned to play like that from luf. Luf haf taught him. Only luf learns to play like that. Ach! Do I not know?"And then Gus himself stepped into the box, having gently but firmly slipped away from the crowd which would have waylaid him."Did you like it, Daddy McIntosh?" he asked playfully, and the old man coughed and sputtered and could not speak. But Gus was satisfied. Even as he grasped his sponsor's hand the boy's eyes went beyond to Sylvia, who had purposely stepped back. Though his lips said nothing, his eyes asked her too, "Did you like it, Sylvia?" and said again what they had proclaimed from the stage. "It is yours. I give it to you."And a little shiver went over Sylvia as she read the boy's eyes, and suddenly she felt very sad and humble and a little ashamed because she had been so blind. She knew he was asking nothing, probably never would ask anything, but she also knew he was giving something very precious, something for which she had nothing to give in exchange. Mr. McIntosh, absorbed in his emotions, did not understand, but the old music teacher did."I haf said it," he thought triumphantly. "I haf had right. It was luf--luf and no other who have learned the boy to play like that. I haf heard it from his fingers and now I haf seen it in his eyes. And by and by he will play efen better, for luf will also learn him pain, and pain he is the great master. He it is who learn the masters themselves. Haf I not seen it?"Only for a moment Gus had let his eyes betray him, so brief an interval indeed that Sylvia thought afterward she must have imagined it so naturally did she and the young man find themselves chatting over the details of the concert.But later, after she was home in Greendale and curled comfortably in bed, that eloquent look from those dark eyes came back and would not let her sleep."Oh, dear," she thought. "Who would ever have thought it of Gus, of all people? I thought he was just wrapped up in his music. Why won't they stay friends? It is so discouraging and uncomfortable. There is no end to the trouble it makes when they begin to want to be lovers. Jack is likely to come any minute and tell me what a good boy he is and demand the plums out of the Christmas pie. I don't want to marry any of them. I don't. I don't. So there."But even as she snuggled down among the pillows she heard a wee distinct little voice inside her somewhere say something quite different."Oh, yes, you do," it said. "You want to marry Phil, by and by, way off in the future, a thousand years from now. Only he doesn't want to marry you, and that is what makes you so restless and discontented and horrid. That's why you've been flirting with Jack and--yes, Gus, too, in a demure, artistic sort of way, not thinking it would do any harm to anybody. And even Doctor Tom looked funny at you the other night. And--but then it is all Phil's fault--so you needn't worry."And then Sylvia put her hands over her ears, for she didn't want to hear any more of that kind of talk."You are quite mistaken," she retorted to the disagreeable little voice. "I haven't been flirting with anybody. Jack and Gus are both good friends and I can't help being nice to them. And Doctor Tom is safe and married, so he doesn't count. But, anyway, I'll be careful after this and I don't want to marry anybody--not anybody."And down in the near-by city the young violinist who had scored such a success that the papers were already writing up flattering notices about him sat in his room, furiously scribbling poetry, at least that is what he would probably have called it, poetry whose theme was mostly borrowed from another young lover, and had in it a lot about the "desire of the moth for the star" or some such rubbish. Gus was very young yet if he was a master violinist and Love was beginning to teach him other things than how to make his violin sing. But the poetry was not so good as his music and presently he pushed aside his scribblings in disgust and went and stood by the window looking out into the night.It had been raining and the pavements glistened in the light reflected from the arc-lamps. And suddenly the twinkling lights called up to the boy the memory of a Christmas eve when he had followed Angus McIntosh into a brilliantly lighted room with a wonderful Christmas tree in the center, such a Christmas tree as he had never dreamed of in his wildest dreams. And then he forgot the tree and remembered Sylvia smiling kindly at him, saying, "Christmas Family, here are Mr. McIntosh and Gus Nichols. Isn't it nice they could get here to-night?"He knew now that the desire of the moth for the star had been born then and there, only it wasn't even a desire, it was just a worship.And in the Oriole Inn, at the foot of Sylvia's Hill, Hope Williams lay asleep with Stephen Kinnard's four weeks' old letter under her pillow, and a smile on her lips, for she was dreaming she was back in the garden with Stephen sketching her among the wistaria vines. But Stephen Kinnard was having a very amusing and profitable time sketching a wild, little beauty of a half breed on an Arizona desert these days and had all but forgotten such a person as Hope existed. But never once in all his wanderings did he forget to mail a weekly letter to Felicia Emory, who had rejected him "with reasons."So things go in this piquant world of ours. And there is much truth hidden for the wise in the depths of the "Grecian Urn."CHAPTER XTHE CITYBy November Barbara had become so accustomed to the city that she no longer jumped at its noises or shrank physically from its crowds. She learned to ignore the thunder of the El and to regard the Subway as a necessary evil, the traffic policeman a very present help in time of trouble. She even learned to zigzag deftly, alone and unprotected, in and out among the automobiles, and to calculate on the chance that a Fifth Avenue Bus driver would probably prefer not to run her down, other things being equal.But she never quite made friends with the big, strange city--the Step-Mother city--as some one has called it. Always it seemed to hold her at a distance, perfectly amicable and perfectly impersonal. It seemed to say to her "What are you to me? There are hundreds---yes, thousands, like you in my gigantic household. Can I be expected to care for you each as individuals? Watch the motes dancing in the sunshine. As the motes to you so you to me. Go look at the sands shining on the beach at Coney. As the grains to you so you to me. Let your eyes follow the ripples of my big river. As the ripples to you so you and all the rest of the human eddies which make up my great tide to me."Yet there were moments when Barb felt as if she had almost surprised the city's secret, caught it unaware, as it were, and half ashamed, slipping into its holy of holies. Once coming over on the ferry from Jersey City she had scanned the great towers and buildings, set with twinkling lights as with many jewels, and beheld the huge bridges, across which an endless stream of traffic passed and repassed, like human life itself in its unending succession. And then she had seemed to see for a moment what the city really meant. Sordid, material, menacing, heartless as it was in many of its aspects did it not after all cherish a big vision? Were not those very towers and bridges the symbol of its restless aspiration?Suddenly above it all had risen a pale lackadaisical looking moon, slipping quietly from behind a smoke bank to look down at the seething tumultuous life of the great city. To Barb the moon had seemed almost to smile, a world-weary, somewhat cynical smile as one who should say "Go on. Keep it up. Burrow and build, crush and create, scream and scuffle. What will it matter a million years hence? You will have learned by then to be cold and calm like me."But the bridges and towers had mocked the moon and defied it. "We are wood and stone and steel," they said. "We may crumble and fall but what we stand for will neither crumble nor fall. For we are the symbol of man, aspirant, conquering--a spirit which shall not grow cold or calm while there is anything in life to which to aspire, anything left to conquer. We are nothing. That we grant you, Moon. But the spirit of man is everything, yes, even God himself, God passioning, agonizing, ultimately victorious."So the vision came to little Barb, and after that she was not afraid of the city. She had the clew as to what it was all about. It whirred and rumbled and rushed and screeched like its own busses but it had a method in its madness. Like the busses, it had a destination. It was going somewhere whether it knew it or not.As for Barb's own little life, caught in the whirl of the city's, it was full and breathless and on the whole incredibly agreeable. She typed her Aunt's eloquent pro-suffrage pamphlets and articles and listened with rapt eyes and eager ears to her Aunt's glowing speeches and all the while in her busy brain the meaning of this, too, was gradually dawning. At first it had been like a confused, jumbled picture puzzle, but little by little she was able to put the pieces together into their proper places. She was beginning to see that though one talked a great deal about the woman question and listened to a great deal about the woman question, there was really, after all, no woman question, just the human question--the human questions.How could every man and woman and child in America--in the world--be assured enough to eat and to wear, enough and not too much? How could each have leisure to play, also just enough, neither too much, nor too little? How was each to find his own work, neither too much nor too little, but the right work, the work he could do with all his heart, not for the payment, though that must be adequate, but for the zest of the doing itself, that special, personal service which every human being should be God endowed and man fitted to perform? Above all, how could every man, woman and child be sure of happiness? Since she had come to the city happiness had come to seem a very fundamental thing, perhaps because she herself was so happy, partly also because she was so sorry for the rest who were not happy. And so few of them seemed to be happy. They looked complacent, or smug, or well-fed, or blatantly successful, some of them, but almost none looked happy, and most of them, it seemed to Barb, looked downright miserable, haunted and hunted, which was very sad.Barb herself was happy, as has been said. In her ignorance and innocence she supposed her happiness had its roots in the fact that she was young and healthy and busy and useful and interested in her work. She had no idea that her happiness was at all bound up in the other fact that few days passed that she did not either see or talk over the telephone with a certain rather grave but very friendly young doctor from the near-by clinic, who was also interested in getting at the secret of the city, especially in trying to pluck out the heart of its physical miseries, fighting the seemingly futile battle with filth and disease and ignorance and vice and their sad consequences, attacking the Augean stables of the city with the energy of a Hercules, though there was no magic stream to turn to his aid except the magic stream of youth and courage and determination and faith, which was, after all, a fairly efficient substitute.And if sometimes when there was a silence between the two young people and Barb's heart was almost overbrimming with a wistful, half-conscious joy in things as they were, she did not know that the grim set to Phil's mouth and the tired look in his eyes was due to the fact that his Faraway Princess was looking particularly far off just then and that he was all but oblivious of the presence of the contented little Beggar-Maid quite within hailing distance. So much for Fools' Paradises where Youth lives from preference and for Nature going quietly about her business in the background!The city had its way with Suzanne, too, and though she loved it better than Barb, it treated her less genially. Suzanne worked hard and hopefully. The click of her typewriter resounded faithfully by night and day. But, somehow, her plays and stories did not sell. The arrival of the mails with the persistently returning long envelopes was a daily agony. She got to know all the hateful platitudinous variations of the printed slip "Does not necessarily imply lack of merit," "Not exactly suited to the needs of the magazine," and so on. How she detested the smug, smooth, complacency of those printed formulæ! How she hugged to her heart the occasional kindly, personal notes of the compassionate editors who salved the pain of rejection by a brief word or two of encouragement or advice. But, alas, these favors were as few as they were precious!The plays fared no better. The managers smiled unctuously upon her prettiness when Suzanne bearded them in their dens. Some of them even patted her on the shoulder and told her her work was "promising," and advised her by all means to keep at it. But there was always some thoroughly excellent reason why they could not take the particular play or sketch she had to offer and she had eventually to retreat from the dens, one after the other, sore, indignant, but more doggedly determined than ever to storm the citadel.In the meanwhile Aunt Sarah's little legacy dwindled until it became a mere shadow of itself. It had never been very portly at the best of times, and living in the Village is deceptively expensive. By the first of December Suzanne moved, taking with her her "Factory re-built," which skipped a few letters for variety's sake now and then, but was, on the whole, very dependable. Certainly it could be depended upon to turn out manuscript which would return with automatic precision after the briefest allotment of days. Suzanne informed Barb about this time over the telephone that it was incomparably more picturesque to be living over a fruit vender's shop in the Alley than it was to inhabit a mere studio. It gave you loads of "copy." Miss Murray looked meditative when her niece reported this new viewpoint on Suzanne's part and suggested that that young lady be invited to take supper with them at an early date, to which Barbara joyfully acquiesced. She felt that she had seen too little of Suzanne of late. Suzanne accepted and Barb looked at her very critically and accused her of working herself to death and getting great dark circles under her eyes.But Suzanne only shrugged and asserted that work agreed with her and sent up her plate for more salad, apologizing for her appetite on the score of having been so busy at lunch time she had forgotten to eat any."Oh, you genii!" laughed Barb reproachfully, but Miss Josephine Murray vouchsafed her guest a keen scrutiny which Suzanne perceiving, straightway rattled off a lot of voluble enthusiasm about the delights of the "Dutch Oven" and other Bohemian eating-places.Later, Phil Lorrimer dropped in and took the girls to a show. He, too, looked rather hard at Suzanne later when they were having innocuous sandwiches and beer at a little German restaurant. Phil and Barb escorted Suzanne home to her alley but she would not let them come in, protesting that it was too late and she didn't want to ruin her reputation with Giovanni and Pepita downstairs, who were very proper people.On the Bus Phil turned to Barb to ask a rather odd question."Roger Minot been in town lately?""I don't think so. Suzanne wouldn't let him see her if he did come. Why?""I just wondered. Suzanne is looking a little peaked, don't you think?""Dreadful," sighed Barb. "Suzanne is such a fiend for work. She owned up to forgetting to eat any luncheon to-day she was so interested in what she was doing. I'm afraid she forgets rather often.""Shouldn't wonder," agreed Phil. He had seen more than one young man and young woman, too, for that matter, who had developed that convenient kind of memory about food in the city when pockets were empty. He shrewdly suspected that Suzanne was "up against it" in his own parlance. He had made a fair diagnosis of her case in the garish lights of the German restaurant. "Overwork, underfeeding, devilish desperation. Something sure to snap soon." Thus he summed the matter up mentally, for he had not thought it necessary to alarm Barb about her friend's situation, since she was so obviously unsuspecting. He knew Suzanne would brook no help nor pity. "Proud as Lucifer, of course," he thought. But he made up his mind to keep his eye on Suzanne, as he put it.To that end he made his way to the Village a few evenings later, found from Giovanni that Suzanne was out and discovered her, for himself shortly, sitting in a bench on the Square, looking pinched and blue about the lips. Phil Lorrimer was a very direct person and usually went straight for any goal he had in sight. He finally succeeded in wringing the truth out of Suzanne. She had not sold a story since she came to New York or "landed" a play. Her money was all but gone and she had been living on one meal a day for a week past."And the worst of it is, I'm a rotten failure. That's what I can't stand." And Suzanne had clenched her fist in her shabby little glove and set her white teeth together sharply. "I won't give up. I tell you I won't. I won't go home and I won't ask 'em for a cent. I won't let 'em say, 'I told you so.' I won't. I won't. Phil Lorrimer, if you dare to hint one word of what I've told you to-night to Rog--er--to my people, I'll borrow a stiletto of Giovanni and ram it clean through you. What did you ever make me tell you for, anyway? You hadn't any business to. I hate you!" And with an ejaculation somewhere between a snarl and a sob, Suzanne had turned and fled away from him into the night.But it had not taken Phil's long legs many seconds to be up with her again."See here, Suzanne," he urged. "Don't take it like that. My knowing doesn't count. Doctors and priests are dumb as the grave. I won't peach, but do let me help you over the bad spot. I haven't much myself, as you know, but I'd be glad to ease you along a bit if you'll let me, man to man."Suzanne smiled an April smile at him."Man to man, you are a darling, Phil Lorrimer. I'd let you help me if I'd let any one but I won't. My pride's all I have left, and I'm going to hang on to that like grim death. Don't you worry. I know what I can do and I'm going to do it.""What?" Phil was somewhat dubious about the sudden flush on Suzanne's cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.She shook her head, mischief written in every line of her thin, pretty, piquant face."'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,Till you applaud the deed,'"she quoted gayly. "It is much better you shouldn't know. I'm not even going to tell Barb. She will only be informed that I am out of town with friends. My esteemed parents and dear Roger will hear the same. Your job is to sit tight and know nothing. You won't be responsible. Your skirts--I mean your coat-tails---will be entirely clear.""Suzanne, I've half a mind to telegraph your father this minute--or Roger. Maybe it would be better to summon Roger." He eyed her sternly.Suzanne giggled wickedly."You will do nothing of the sort, dear Dumb as the Grave. I have your sacred oath not to peach.""Let me off, Suzanne," he begged. "Honest, I'm worried about you. You look wild."But Suzanne only laughed again, and assured him she was saner than the statue of Liberty."Let you off nothing, dear sir," she added for good measure. "But please don't fret. I assure you I am not going to do a thing either desperate or immoral. I'm going on a lark, that is all. You can't down Suzanne. Like Ivory Soap--it floats. Here we are at my alley. My fruit stand's just beyond. Shake hands like a good boy and wish me luck. Don't frown like that. It spoils your leonine beauty. Good night--and good-by." And, before he could speak, Suzanne had darted into her own doorway leaving Phil staring rather ruefully after her."Now what in time or eternity is she up to?" he pondered. "She isn't the kind to play the fool to any great extent. Got too much head and too little heart. I may as well let her gang her own gait. She's bound to anyway. Poor old Roger! She is certainly leading him a trail. Wouldn't he curse me for letting her make a getaway like this if he knew? Out of town with friends!" he muttered as he descended into the depths of the subway. "I'd like to see the friends. And if I were Rod Minot, I would too, or know the reason why."Thus satisfactorily can one young man sum up the whole duty of another in a recreant courtship though remaining as helpless and inefficient as a new-born infant in the management of his own.CHAPTER XIMARGINS"Hello, Jack! I had no idea you were home." Sylvia, rosy and blown from a spin behind Doctor Tom's frolicsome black mare, entered the living-room at Arden Hall, bringing with her a whiff of fresh outdoor air. She threw down her muff and held out a welcoming hand to her guest who had been waiting her return."Bad penny, you know." Jack captured both hands instead of the one vouchsafed as he spoke. "Can't leave business very long, you see." His eyes twinkled mischievously as he looked down at Sylvia, making shameless bid for her favor. Sylvia laughed, but she withdrew her hands and shook her head at him."You are a dreadful fraud, Jack. You don't really care such a lot about the business all at once. You know you don't.""Not a tinker's dam," he shrugged. "Whatever that may be.""Then why--" began Sylvia and stopped."There is only one why, young lady, and you know it."Sylvia frowned and jabbing out her hatpins a little irritably, tossed her black velvet toque on the table. She had already removed her coat and furs and stood, trim and tailored, in her simple blue serge dress; a simplicity which was exceedingly becoming and likewise extremely expensive as Jack's approving gaze, sweeping the lithe young curves of her figure, knew very well."I wish you wouldn't, Jack.""Wouldn't what?" blandly."Wouldn't work--just because I want you to. It is so horribly like a bribe.""It is a bribe.""Then I don't like it. I told you I didn't promise anything.""And I told you I didn't expect anything. You can't blame a fellow for putting all the eggs he can find into his basket.""Put all the eggs you like into the basket, only don't blame me if they get smashed. Sometimes, Jack, I think you don't really want to marry me at all--you just want the fun of pursuing me.""Maybe so," agreed Jack so amicably that Sylvia lifted her eyebrows at him. "I was brought up never to contradict a lady."Sylvia laughed at that and sat down, running her hand over her hair, to brush back its turbulent ripple, a gesture Jack loved because it was so interwoven with his mental pictures of her."Let's not discuss ourselves," she added. "Tell me the news. Did you see Barb and Suzanne?""I saw Barb. Suzanne has fled the coop.""What?""The report is she is out of town, traveling with friends. Barb looks worried and Phil looks wise but neither has much to say.""Does Phil know where she is?""He says not, but he knows something, or I miss my guess. Not that the old oyster would open up his shell a fraction of an inch even to oblige yours truly. I pried like a good one but to no purpose. Talk about your professional secrecy! Phil's got it down to the finish. The old chap is different somehow, older and solemn as a fish. Horrible example of what work will do to a fellow!" he grinned.Sylvia stooped to pick up the tongs and stir the fire, which was smoldering a little sulkily on the hearth. Out of the tail of his eye Jack watched her."He and Barb seem to be remarkably good pals," he continued. "The Aunt orders him about like a member of the family. Don't wonder he obeys. That woman is a general. I wouldn't be surprised if she took the vote away from the men and gave it to the women any day, if she took the notion. Lucky she and Napoleon didn't hitch their wagons to the same star in the same generation. The star would have dragged Aunt Josephine and ditched the emperor, that's certain.""Do stop talking nonsense, Jack, and tell me more about Suzanne."Sylvia's voice had a faint edge of sharpness to it as if a little of the grim December wind outside had gotten into it."I don't know any more. I've told you all that is generally published. Even Norton, Pa., gropes in middle darkness. She didn't even write to Roger it seems. He is in bad. Had the temerity to propose to her again just after she had emerged with a bundle of manuscripts from a manager's office, which wasn't a tactful moment, I gather. She consigned him to the devil or some feminine equivalent thereof, apparently. Pa and Ma knows she's traveling. Had cards from Buffalo and Cleveland, I understand. Pa's excited and Ma's took to her bed. Looks as if they feared the worst.""Jack!""Sorry. I was only joking, of course. Trust Suzanne to take care of herself. She is all right. Roger is having a fit or two though, and no wonder.""Serves him right. Why didn't he go and marry her and not let her go off on a tangent like that?""Why, indeed?" murmured Jack. "It is so hanged easy to marry a girl when she won't have you! Give me the good old cave days. You could knock your bride down with a club if she objected. Then, when she came to, she would get up and grin at her noble master and string some red berries round her neck, or stick a ring in her nose, to enhance her charms, and everything would be entirely agreeable.""Jack, you are perfectly horrid to-day. I wish you had stayed in New York. How is Jeanette?" Sylvia changed the subject severely."Going the pace, as usual. Good Lord, Sylvia, what do you suppose a woman wants to live the kind of life she's elected for? I like a good time myself. It's a family trait. But she goes as if all the devils of Hell were loose and after her. Maybe they are, after a fashion. See here, Sylvia, aren't you going up to see her soon?""After Christmas. Why?""Nothing especial. I thought a dose of you might be good for her, that is all."And that was all the explanation that Sylvia extracted on that subject, though she guessed that there was more than Jack admitted behind his rather enigmatic remarks. Jack was incredibly clear-sighted about some things, and it was evident he saw cause to worry about his sister Jeanette, even to the extent of hurrying Sylvia to New York where he himself could not follow unless he turned back the page of the virtuous new leaf of his devotion to business. There was a puzzle behind it somewhere, Sylvia knew. She also knew she was going to be left to discover the exact nature of the puzzle for herself.So December went its way. Suzanne continued mysteriously "traveling with friends." Barb and Phil kept hard at work in the city and managed to see a good deal of each other in their off hours. Sylvia and Phil had almost ceased to write to each other, though there was no open break in their friendship. It was rather that a wall, intangible but unsurmountable, had risen between them, as perhaps it had, for pride is a mightier barrier than a mountain peak sometimes. Gus went his quiet, successful way on his concert tour, refusing politely but conclusively to be made a lion of, keeping rather to himself in his leisure hours, living on his unspoken dreams and managing to get a great deal of pure happiness out of his star worship. To Sylvia's delight, and almost to Felicia's consternation, the latter's designs for a mural relief, which Stephen Kinnard had fairly bullied her into submitting in a competition, had been accepted and she was hard at work on the actual modeling these brief winter days, though she found time, Felicia fashion, to be an excellent "Home-keeper" and Mother along with the other task.Early in November Lois Daly had rather astonishingly announced her intention of "doing some writing" as she put it rather vaguely. Lois was always reticent, especially about her literary work, and even her husband asked no questions, realizing it suited her better to be let alone to work out her purpose for herself. She was far too conscientious about her other duties to neglect any of them and it was consequently the long evenings when the children were in bed and the household affairs quiescent that she found most profitable for her new work. This arrangement was admirable in all but two respects. It made Lois' working day an almost impossibly long one and left her a little too weary for restful sleep when she did finally creep into bed. It also curtailed almost to a minimum the moments which she had to spare for her husband's society, which had been all too few even before the advent of this new era. Doctor Tom made no protest as to this. He was always over-sensitive to the sacrifice of her work which Lois had made for him and his, but he did beg her at times not to "bother" so much about the house and the children and himself.But Lois always shook her head at his pleas and explained quietly that he and the house and the children were her real job and she could not neglect them for the other. And if Tom Daly found it in his heart to wonder sometimes if his wife's "real job" did not include a little closer companionship with himself he never voiced his wondering. He was no "martyr," as he had once long ago protested to Sylvia.But human relations are never static and while Lois shut herself in her den and wrote feverishly, night after night, her husband, being only human, easily drifted into the habit of finding elsewhere than at his own home the companionship and sympathy which even the strongest and most independent of men half-consciously crave. Arden Hall and Sylvia were close at hand and it was almost inevitable that he should find his way to the two rather often. Sylvia was intensely interested in all his schemes for the hospital and other altruistic visions which made up a very large part of his wide, busy career. Often they talked eagerly for hours, either with or without Felicia's presence. Oftener still Tom Daly would sit and smoke in contented silence while Sylvia played soft music or read aloud out of some magazine stories which let his mind rest instead of wrestle.It was all the most natural, even inevitable development. The two were old friends. Tom Daly was thirty-eight and happily married. Sylvia Arden was twenty-two questing for experience innocently enough. There was no one to question or warn, or indeed, anything to question or warn against. Yet there sat Nature spinning away at her web all the time and Tom Daly and Sylvia were near to being caught in the mesh, without even knowing there was any mesh. And the danger for Tom Daly as it happened was considerably greater than for Sylvia just because he was a man. Man is the so-called reasoning sex, but, as has been more than once noted, sex is the one subject upon which he will not reason. And so things slipped easily and pleasantly along up to Christmas time.It was Jack Amidon who involuntarily opened Sylvia's eyes by uttering an unusually sharp protest that she went nowhere any more, either with him or any one else, but just sat in the chimney corner and played Joan to Tom Daly's Darby. "And soon there'll be the deuce to pay whether you know it or not," he had added darkly.Of course Sylvia had flared out in quick anger at his implications."What do you mean, Jack Amidon, by saying such horrid things?" she had stormed. "It is perfectly ridiculous. Doctor Tom is years and years older than I am. He is just like a brother."Jack had seen the brother dodge worked before and said so somewhat caustically, whereupon Sylvia lost what little temper she had left, and having delivered a volley of violent wrath upon her guest's imprudent head, shot out of the room, leaving him to enjoy the hospitality of the Hall in solitude or beat a retreat as pleased him best.Meanwhile, upstairs in her own room, Sylvia threw herself on the bed, and, first of all, woman fashion, relieved her feelings by indulging in a good old-fashioned "weep," her anger dissipating with her tears. Presently she sat up and began to take stock of the situation and herself, and found to her consternation that things as they actually were, were about as safe as a child with a box of matches in a haymow.She was a perfectly clear-eyed and sophisticated young woman and when her attention was called, however brutally, to the fact that you cannot see a man, night after night, week after week, as she had been seeing Tom Daly, without there being at least the possibility of the "deuce to pay," as Jack had bluntly expressed it, she was willing to acknowledge the fact to herself at least. She carefully analyzed her own mental processes for the past few weeks and discovered to her surprise and some chagrin that she had been ruthlessly cutting out engagements in which Tom Daly did not figure, and eagerly making those in which he did figure, that she had deliberately plunged into everything that interested him, Red Cross work, the new hospital, the needs of some of his poorer patients; everything, in short, that he cared about heartily. She even had to admit to herself that she had been a little complacent and self righteous in her genuine interest and sympathy with these things because she resented Lois Daly's apathy in the matter and felt profoundly sorry for Doctor Tom. She discovered that it is not prudent in the world as it is lived to be too sorry for another woman's husband. That way danger lies, and a signboard to that effect is in order. Beyond this, however, Sylvia knew she had little for which to blame herself. She was not a deliberate coquette. She had acted in all simplicity and naturalness, but there had been a risk to the experiment for all that and she was a bit ashamed of her hitherto state of blindness.Being a very honest young person, Sylvia sat down, as soon as she had threshed the whole matter out to the satisfaction of her clear, fair mind, and wrote a very artistically penitent note to Jack, retracting some of the unwarrantable things she had said in her wrath and admitting rather hazily that there was a faint possibility that he might have been in the right about certain matters, implying that she was magnanimously willing even to ignore his objectionable rightness if he so desired.And her note crossed one from Jack, begging her to forgive his "darned impertinence" and adding that he had behaved like a jackass and a dog in the manger and Heaven knows how many other kinds of animals, but if she would be good enough to overlook his misdemeanors he would be eternally grateful.And the next evening Sylvia appeared under Jack's escort at the Honeycutt ball, wearing a marvelous new gown and looking extraordinarily pretty after her temporary estrangement from Vanity Fair. And from that time on during all the mad gayeties of Christmas week Jack was constantly in attendance, obviously the favored knight. Life is mostly made up of reactions. The pendulum having swung so far to the left, swings back an equal distance to the right. Sylvia was the kinder to Jack because of her deflection away from him in an entirely opposite direction. And he, with the wisdom born of considerable experience of the feminine sex in general, and Sylvia Arden in particular, made no comment though he perfectly understood what had happened, but sunned himself agreeably in his lady's rather uncertain grace and bided his time.And the night of the Honeycutt ball for the first time in several weeks Tom Daly sat and smoked before his own fireside and not once did he think of the new hospital.
CHAPTER IX
THE MOTH AND THE STAR
The audience settled itself into place, rattling its programs, prepared idly to be either amused or bored as the opportunity presented itself, mildly curious as to the personality and talent of the young violinist "heard for the first time in this country."
"They say he used to be old man McIntosh's office boy. He certainly struck it soft. Old man's worth near a million they say and this darned Dago'll get it all I suppose. Some folks just naturally nab the luck." Thus a young reporter to his neighbor.
"I don't know about that. I can't imagine old McIntosh standing for this fiddling business. He's a husky old Puritan."
"Well, he did stand for it to the tune of quite a pretty price, I understand. The chap's had four years of Berlin and Dresden and the rest of it. Some mixture! Italian birth, American start, Scotch bringing up, German polish. Whew! Wonder what he's like with all that in him. Talk about your melting pots!"
"There's old McIntosh in the box now. No, the left. Ugly old snoozer, ain't he? But brains. Gee! He's shrewd as they make 'em. Hello! Who's the dame? Pretty easy to look at it, ain't she?"
"That's Miss Arden--lives on a high mucky muck hill out in Greendale. She's something to old McIntosh. Niece maybe. I forget."
"No, she isn't. Old man used to be bookkeeper for her father's firm. I remember. My dad knew 'em. Arden and Daly--big cotton concern. Arden died young. Daly lost his money in some railroad slump and croaked too. Son's a doctor--making the wires hum out in Greendale about a hospital or something. So that's Miss Arden. Engaged to young Amidon, isn't she?"
"I reckon. Shut up. There he comes. Gee! He's nothing but a kid."
It must be admitted that Gus, appearing on the program as Gustavus Niccolini, did look very much indeed like a "kid" as he came across the stage and made a shy, stiff little bow to the audience. Angus McIntosh fidgeted in his chair and cleared his throat irritably. "Fool to let him try," he thought. "How do I know whether he can play or not? What if he can't?" A cold perspiration stood out on the old man's forehead. What if the boy made a failure of the thing? What if the audience smiled, hissed? Audiences did behave like that sometimes. Why hadn't he told the boy, short-off, long ago, he shouldn't try it? Thus he worked himself into a perfect passion of apprehension. But in the midst of his perturbation Sylvia's hand rested on his knee and Sylvia's eyes smiled reassurance.
"It's all right, Daddy McIntosh," she whispered. "Just you wait till they hear him."
In a moment they did hear him and the great hall was hushed to respectful silence. The audience had the grace to recognize a master touch when they heard it. Angus McIntosh was justified. The boy whom he had plucked out of a den of squalor and vice was an artist, and the grim old man who had had a hand in the creation had been something of an artist at the job himself. As for Sylvia, who was behind it all, she hardly breathed until the music ceased. She listened rapt while the voice of the violin sang and soared, now rapturous, now tender, now triumphant, now dying away like the note of a wild bird in the night. She had known before that Gus could play, but this--why this was a thing born of Heaven to which she listened reverently. Finally the last note came and quivered into silence. There was an instant's hush then the applause thundered. The boy lifted his head quietly, but with a certain grave pride, and his eyes sought the box where Angus McIntosh and Sylvia sat. Then suddenly his face was lit with a light which was not a smile but an enveloping radiance which seemed to say, "This is yours. I give it to you. I am glad it is worth giving." Then he bowed to the audience and the applause redoubled.
Angus McIntosh never knew much about the rest of that program. He knew it went on and the applause went on, that the boy went through the varied and difficult performance with ease and serenity and simplicity, but what he was playing the old man never knew. It might have been "Yankee Doodle" or the "Cam'el's are Coming" for all he heard. He only knew the thing was beautiful. All the remnants of still lingering prejudices floated off into some dim cavern where such limbo is stored or annihilated. There was a place in the world it seemed for sheer beauty. Maybe it had a spiritual essence all its own. Anyway, this music of the boy's seemed oddly connected in his mind with the psalms and other fine old religious poetry with which his mother had filled his mind long ago. He was humbly glad that he had had a share in letting loose this thing upon the world. He remembered always that it was Sylvia who had really opened the door. Beauty--Kindness--Happiness--Love--all these things had been slipping almost beyond his grasp that December nearly six years ago when Sylvia and her Christmas family had brought them back. It was Sylvia who had given the boy to him, Sylvia, who had given his music to the world by making himself who had been blind see.
The concert was over and Herr Bernsdorf, Gus' old music teacher, had rushed up to the box and was pumping Mr. McIntosh's hand up and down violently with inarticulate croonings and mutterings of delight and congratulation. "Haf I not told you that the boy was a genius? Haf I not said it hundertmal? I knew. I, who was his master, I knew. They haf done well by him over there, they haf done well. But somebody else, she haf done more? Is it you, mein Fraulein?" He turned his flashing little black eyes on Sylvia as he asked the question.
"I! Oh, no. I have done nothing," disclaimed Sylvia.
"No? Maybe it is another, in Berlin or Dresden or elsewhere. I know not. I only know the boy haf learned to play like that from luf. Luf haf taught him. Only luf learns to play like that. Ach! Do I not know?"
And then Gus himself stepped into the box, having gently but firmly slipped away from the crowd which would have waylaid him.
"Did you like it, Daddy McIntosh?" he asked playfully, and the old man coughed and sputtered and could not speak. But Gus was satisfied. Even as he grasped his sponsor's hand the boy's eyes went beyond to Sylvia, who had purposely stepped back. Though his lips said nothing, his eyes asked her too, "Did you like it, Sylvia?" and said again what they had proclaimed from the stage. "It is yours. I give it to you."
And a little shiver went over Sylvia as she read the boy's eyes, and suddenly she felt very sad and humble and a little ashamed because she had been so blind. She knew he was asking nothing, probably never would ask anything, but she also knew he was giving something very precious, something for which she had nothing to give in exchange. Mr. McIntosh, absorbed in his emotions, did not understand, but the old music teacher did.
"I haf said it," he thought triumphantly. "I haf had right. It was luf--luf and no other who have learned the boy to play like that. I haf heard it from his fingers and now I haf seen it in his eyes. And by and by he will play efen better, for luf will also learn him pain, and pain he is the great master. He it is who learn the masters themselves. Haf I not seen it?"
Only for a moment Gus had let his eyes betray him, so brief an interval indeed that Sylvia thought afterward she must have imagined it so naturally did she and the young man find themselves chatting over the details of the concert.
But later, after she was home in Greendale and curled comfortably in bed, that eloquent look from those dark eyes came back and would not let her sleep.
"Oh, dear," she thought. "Who would ever have thought it of Gus, of all people? I thought he was just wrapped up in his music. Why won't they stay friends? It is so discouraging and uncomfortable. There is no end to the trouble it makes when they begin to want to be lovers. Jack is likely to come any minute and tell me what a good boy he is and demand the plums out of the Christmas pie. I don't want to marry any of them. I don't. I don't. So there."
But even as she snuggled down among the pillows she heard a wee distinct little voice inside her somewhere say something quite different.
"Oh, yes, you do," it said. "You want to marry Phil, by and by, way off in the future, a thousand years from now. Only he doesn't want to marry you, and that is what makes you so restless and discontented and horrid. That's why you've been flirting with Jack and--yes, Gus, too, in a demure, artistic sort of way, not thinking it would do any harm to anybody. And even Doctor Tom looked funny at you the other night. And--but then it is all Phil's fault--so you needn't worry."
And then Sylvia put her hands over her ears, for she didn't want to hear any more of that kind of talk.
"You are quite mistaken," she retorted to the disagreeable little voice. "I haven't been flirting with anybody. Jack and Gus are both good friends and I can't help being nice to them. And Doctor Tom is safe and married, so he doesn't count. But, anyway, I'll be careful after this and I don't want to marry anybody--not anybody."
And down in the near-by city the young violinist who had scored such a success that the papers were already writing up flattering notices about him sat in his room, furiously scribbling poetry, at least that is what he would probably have called it, poetry whose theme was mostly borrowed from another young lover, and had in it a lot about the "desire of the moth for the star" or some such rubbish. Gus was very young yet if he was a master violinist and Love was beginning to teach him other things than how to make his violin sing. But the poetry was not so good as his music and presently he pushed aside his scribblings in disgust and went and stood by the window looking out into the night.
It had been raining and the pavements glistened in the light reflected from the arc-lamps. And suddenly the twinkling lights called up to the boy the memory of a Christmas eve when he had followed Angus McIntosh into a brilliantly lighted room with a wonderful Christmas tree in the center, such a Christmas tree as he had never dreamed of in his wildest dreams. And then he forgot the tree and remembered Sylvia smiling kindly at him, saying, "Christmas Family, here are Mr. McIntosh and Gus Nichols. Isn't it nice they could get here to-night?"
He knew now that the desire of the moth for the star had been born then and there, only it wasn't even a desire, it was just a worship.
And in the Oriole Inn, at the foot of Sylvia's Hill, Hope Williams lay asleep with Stephen Kinnard's four weeks' old letter under her pillow, and a smile on her lips, for she was dreaming she was back in the garden with Stephen sketching her among the wistaria vines. But Stephen Kinnard was having a very amusing and profitable time sketching a wild, little beauty of a half breed on an Arizona desert these days and had all but forgotten such a person as Hope existed. But never once in all his wanderings did he forget to mail a weekly letter to Felicia Emory, who had rejected him "with reasons."
So things go in this piquant world of ours. And there is much truth hidden for the wise in the depths of the "Grecian Urn."
CHAPTER X
THE CITY
By November Barbara had become so accustomed to the city that she no longer jumped at its noises or shrank physically from its crowds. She learned to ignore the thunder of the El and to regard the Subway as a necessary evil, the traffic policeman a very present help in time of trouble. She even learned to zigzag deftly, alone and unprotected, in and out among the automobiles, and to calculate on the chance that a Fifth Avenue Bus driver would probably prefer not to run her down, other things being equal.
But she never quite made friends with the big, strange city--the Step-Mother city--as some one has called it. Always it seemed to hold her at a distance, perfectly amicable and perfectly impersonal. It seemed to say to her "What are you to me? There are hundreds---yes, thousands, like you in my gigantic household. Can I be expected to care for you each as individuals? Watch the motes dancing in the sunshine. As the motes to you so you to me. Go look at the sands shining on the beach at Coney. As the grains to you so you to me. Let your eyes follow the ripples of my big river. As the ripples to you so you and all the rest of the human eddies which make up my great tide to me."
Yet there were moments when Barb felt as if she had almost surprised the city's secret, caught it unaware, as it were, and half ashamed, slipping into its holy of holies. Once coming over on the ferry from Jersey City she had scanned the great towers and buildings, set with twinkling lights as with many jewels, and beheld the huge bridges, across which an endless stream of traffic passed and repassed, like human life itself in its unending succession. And then she had seemed to see for a moment what the city really meant. Sordid, material, menacing, heartless as it was in many of its aspects did it not after all cherish a big vision? Were not those very towers and bridges the symbol of its restless aspiration?
Suddenly above it all had risen a pale lackadaisical looking moon, slipping quietly from behind a smoke bank to look down at the seething tumultuous life of the great city. To Barb the moon had seemed almost to smile, a world-weary, somewhat cynical smile as one who should say "Go on. Keep it up. Burrow and build, crush and create, scream and scuffle. What will it matter a million years hence? You will have learned by then to be cold and calm like me."
But the bridges and towers had mocked the moon and defied it. "We are wood and stone and steel," they said. "We may crumble and fall but what we stand for will neither crumble nor fall. For we are the symbol of man, aspirant, conquering--a spirit which shall not grow cold or calm while there is anything in life to which to aspire, anything left to conquer. We are nothing. That we grant you, Moon. But the spirit of man is everything, yes, even God himself, God passioning, agonizing, ultimately victorious."
So the vision came to little Barb, and after that she was not afraid of the city. She had the clew as to what it was all about. It whirred and rumbled and rushed and screeched like its own busses but it had a method in its madness. Like the busses, it had a destination. It was going somewhere whether it knew it or not.
As for Barb's own little life, caught in the whirl of the city's, it was full and breathless and on the whole incredibly agreeable. She typed her Aunt's eloquent pro-suffrage pamphlets and articles and listened with rapt eyes and eager ears to her Aunt's glowing speeches and all the while in her busy brain the meaning of this, too, was gradually dawning. At first it had been like a confused, jumbled picture puzzle, but little by little she was able to put the pieces together into their proper places. She was beginning to see that though one talked a great deal about the woman question and listened to a great deal about the woman question, there was really, after all, no woman question, just the human question--the human questions.
How could every man and woman and child in America--in the world--be assured enough to eat and to wear, enough and not too much? How could each have leisure to play, also just enough, neither too much, nor too little? How was each to find his own work, neither too much nor too little, but the right work, the work he could do with all his heart, not for the payment, though that must be adequate, but for the zest of the doing itself, that special, personal service which every human being should be God endowed and man fitted to perform? Above all, how could every man, woman and child be sure of happiness? Since she had come to the city happiness had come to seem a very fundamental thing, perhaps because she herself was so happy, partly also because she was so sorry for the rest who were not happy. And so few of them seemed to be happy. They looked complacent, or smug, or well-fed, or blatantly successful, some of them, but almost none looked happy, and most of them, it seemed to Barb, looked downright miserable, haunted and hunted, which was very sad.
Barb herself was happy, as has been said. In her ignorance and innocence she supposed her happiness had its roots in the fact that she was young and healthy and busy and useful and interested in her work. She had no idea that her happiness was at all bound up in the other fact that few days passed that she did not either see or talk over the telephone with a certain rather grave but very friendly young doctor from the near-by clinic, who was also interested in getting at the secret of the city, especially in trying to pluck out the heart of its physical miseries, fighting the seemingly futile battle with filth and disease and ignorance and vice and their sad consequences, attacking the Augean stables of the city with the energy of a Hercules, though there was no magic stream to turn to his aid except the magic stream of youth and courage and determination and faith, which was, after all, a fairly efficient substitute.
And if sometimes when there was a silence between the two young people and Barb's heart was almost overbrimming with a wistful, half-conscious joy in things as they were, she did not know that the grim set to Phil's mouth and the tired look in his eyes was due to the fact that his Faraway Princess was looking particularly far off just then and that he was all but oblivious of the presence of the contented little Beggar-Maid quite within hailing distance. So much for Fools' Paradises where Youth lives from preference and for Nature going quietly about her business in the background!
The city had its way with Suzanne, too, and though she loved it better than Barb, it treated her less genially. Suzanne worked hard and hopefully. The click of her typewriter resounded faithfully by night and day. But, somehow, her plays and stories did not sell. The arrival of the mails with the persistently returning long envelopes was a daily agony. She got to know all the hateful platitudinous variations of the printed slip "Does not necessarily imply lack of merit," "Not exactly suited to the needs of the magazine," and so on. How she detested the smug, smooth, complacency of those printed formulæ! How she hugged to her heart the occasional kindly, personal notes of the compassionate editors who salved the pain of rejection by a brief word or two of encouragement or advice. But, alas, these favors were as few as they were precious!
The plays fared no better. The managers smiled unctuously upon her prettiness when Suzanne bearded them in their dens. Some of them even patted her on the shoulder and told her her work was "promising," and advised her by all means to keep at it. But there was always some thoroughly excellent reason why they could not take the particular play or sketch she had to offer and she had eventually to retreat from the dens, one after the other, sore, indignant, but more doggedly determined than ever to storm the citadel.
In the meanwhile Aunt Sarah's little legacy dwindled until it became a mere shadow of itself. It had never been very portly at the best of times, and living in the Village is deceptively expensive. By the first of December Suzanne moved, taking with her her "Factory re-built," which skipped a few letters for variety's sake now and then, but was, on the whole, very dependable. Certainly it could be depended upon to turn out manuscript which would return with automatic precision after the briefest allotment of days. Suzanne informed Barb about this time over the telephone that it was incomparably more picturesque to be living over a fruit vender's shop in the Alley than it was to inhabit a mere studio. It gave you loads of "copy." Miss Murray looked meditative when her niece reported this new viewpoint on Suzanne's part and suggested that that young lady be invited to take supper with them at an early date, to which Barbara joyfully acquiesced. She felt that she had seen too little of Suzanne of late. Suzanne accepted and Barb looked at her very critically and accused her of working herself to death and getting great dark circles under her eyes.
But Suzanne only shrugged and asserted that work agreed with her and sent up her plate for more salad, apologizing for her appetite on the score of having been so busy at lunch time she had forgotten to eat any.
"Oh, you genii!" laughed Barb reproachfully, but Miss Josephine Murray vouchsafed her guest a keen scrutiny which Suzanne perceiving, straightway rattled off a lot of voluble enthusiasm about the delights of the "Dutch Oven" and other Bohemian eating-places.
Later, Phil Lorrimer dropped in and took the girls to a show. He, too, looked rather hard at Suzanne later when they were having innocuous sandwiches and beer at a little German restaurant. Phil and Barb escorted Suzanne home to her alley but she would not let them come in, protesting that it was too late and she didn't want to ruin her reputation with Giovanni and Pepita downstairs, who were very proper people.
On the Bus Phil turned to Barb to ask a rather odd question.
"Roger Minot been in town lately?"
"I don't think so. Suzanne wouldn't let him see her if he did come. Why?"
"I just wondered. Suzanne is looking a little peaked, don't you think?"
"Dreadful," sighed Barb. "Suzanne is such a fiend for work. She owned up to forgetting to eat any luncheon to-day she was so interested in what she was doing. I'm afraid she forgets rather often."
"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Phil. He had seen more than one young man and young woman, too, for that matter, who had developed that convenient kind of memory about food in the city when pockets were empty. He shrewdly suspected that Suzanne was "up against it" in his own parlance. He had made a fair diagnosis of her case in the garish lights of the German restaurant. "Overwork, underfeeding, devilish desperation. Something sure to snap soon." Thus he summed the matter up mentally, for he had not thought it necessary to alarm Barb about her friend's situation, since she was so obviously unsuspecting. He knew Suzanne would brook no help nor pity. "Proud as Lucifer, of course," he thought. But he made up his mind to keep his eye on Suzanne, as he put it.
To that end he made his way to the Village a few evenings later, found from Giovanni that Suzanne was out and discovered her, for himself shortly, sitting in a bench on the Square, looking pinched and blue about the lips. Phil Lorrimer was a very direct person and usually went straight for any goal he had in sight. He finally succeeded in wringing the truth out of Suzanne. She had not sold a story since she came to New York or "landed" a play. Her money was all but gone and she had been living on one meal a day for a week past.
"And the worst of it is, I'm a rotten failure. That's what I can't stand." And Suzanne had clenched her fist in her shabby little glove and set her white teeth together sharply. "I won't give up. I tell you I won't. I won't go home and I won't ask 'em for a cent. I won't let 'em say, 'I told you so.' I won't. I won't. Phil Lorrimer, if you dare to hint one word of what I've told you to-night to Rog--er--to my people, I'll borrow a stiletto of Giovanni and ram it clean through you. What did you ever make me tell you for, anyway? You hadn't any business to. I hate you!" And with an ejaculation somewhere between a snarl and a sob, Suzanne had turned and fled away from him into the night.
But it had not taken Phil's long legs many seconds to be up with her again.
"See here, Suzanne," he urged. "Don't take it like that. My knowing doesn't count. Doctors and priests are dumb as the grave. I won't peach, but do let me help you over the bad spot. I haven't much myself, as you know, but I'd be glad to ease you along a bit if you'll let me, man to man."
Suzanne smiled an April smile at him.
"Man to man, you are a darling, Phil Lorrimer. I'd let you help me if I'd let any one but I won't. My pride's all I have left, and I'm going to hang on to that like grim death. Don't you worry. I know what I can do and I'm going to do it."
"What?" Phil was somewhat dubious about the sudden flush on Suzanne's cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.
She shook her head, mischief written in every line of her thin, pretty, piquant face.
"'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,Till you applaud the deed,'"
"'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,Till you applaud the deed,'"
"'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till you applaud the deed,'"
she quoted gayly. "It is much better you shouldn't know. I'm not even going to tell Barb. She will only be informed that I am out of town with friends. My esteemed parents and dear Roger will hear the same. Your job is to sit tight and know nothing. You won't be responsible. Your skirts--I mean your coat-tails---will be entirely clear."
"Suzanne, I've half a mind to telegraph your father this minute--or Roger. Maybe it would be better to summon Roger." He eyed her sternly.
Suzanne giggled wickedly.
"You will do nothing of the sort, dear Dumb as the Grave. I have your sacred oath not to peach."
"Let me off, Suzanne," he begged. "Honest, I'm worried about you. You look wild."
But Suzanne only laughed again, and assured him she was saner than the statue of Liberty.
"Let you off nothing, dear sir," she added for good measure. "But please don't fret. I assure you I am not going to do a thing either desperate or immoral. I'm going on a lark, that is all. You can't down Suzanne. Like Ivory Soap--it floats. Here we are at my alley. My fruit stand's just beyond. Shake hands like a good boy and wish me luck. Don't frown like that. It spoils your leonine beauty. Good night--and good-by." And, before he could speak, Suzanne had darted into her own doorway leaving Phil staring rather ruefully after her.
"Now what in time or eternity is she up to?" he pondered. "She isn't the kind to play the fool to any great extent. Got too much head and too little heart. I may as well let her gang her own gait. She's bound to anyway. Poor old Roger! She is certainly leading him a trail. Wouldn't he curse me for letting her make a getaway like this if he knew? Out of town with friends!" he muttered as he descended into the depths of the subway. "I'd like to see the friends. And if I were Rod Minot, I would too, or know the reason why."
Thus satisfactorily can one young man sum up the whole duty of another in a recreant courtship though remaining as helpless and inefficient as a new-born infant in the management of his own.
CHAPTER XI
MARGINS
"Hello, Jack! I had no idea you were home." Sylvia, rosy and blown from a spin behind Doctor Tom's frolicsome black mare, entered the living-room at Arden Hall, bringing with her a whiff of fresh outdoor air. She threw down her muff and held out a welcoming hand to her guest who had been waiting her return.
"Bad penny, you know." Jack captured both hands instead of the one vouchsafed as he spoke. "Can't leave business very long, you see." His eyes twinkled mischievously as he looked down at Sylvia, making shameless bid for her favor. Sylvia laughed, but she withdrew her hands and shook her head at him.
"You are a dreadful fraud, Jack. You don't really care such a lot about the business all at once. You know you don't."
"Not a tinker's dam," he shrugged. "Whatever that may be."
"Then why--" began Sylvia and stopped.
"There is only one why, young lady, and you know it."
Sylvia frowned and jabbing out her hatpins a little irritably, tossed her black velvet toque on the table. She had already removed her coat and furs and stood, trim and tailored, in her simple blue serge dress; a simplicity which was exceedingly becoming and likewise extremely expensive as Jack's approving gaze, sweeping the lithe young curves of her figure, knew very well.
"I wish you wouldn't, Jack."
"Wouldn't what?" blandly.
"Wouldn't work--just because I want you to. It is so horribly like a bribe."
"It is a bribe."
"Then I don't like it. I told you I didn't promise anything."
"And I told you I didn't expect anything. You can't blame a fellow for putting all the eggs he can find into his basket."
"Put all the eggs you like into the basket, only don't blame me if they get smashed. Sometimes, Jack, I think you don't really want to marry me at all--you just want the fun of pursuing me."
"Maybe so," agreed Jack so amicably that Sylvia lifted her eyebrows at him. "I was brought up never to contradict a lady."
Sylvia laughed at that and sat down, running her hand over her hair, to brush back its turbulent ripple, a gesture Jack loved because it was so interwoven with his mental pictures of her.
"Let's not discuss ourselves," she added. "Tell me the news. Did you see Barb and Suzanne?"
"I saw Barb. Suzanne has fled the coop."
"What?"
"The report is she is out of town, traveling with friends. Barb looks worried and Phil looks wise but neither has much to say."
"Does Phil know where she is?"
"He says not, but he knows something, or I miss my guess. Not that the old oyster would open up his shell a fraction of an inch even to oblige yours truly. I pried like a good one but to no purpose. Talk about your professional secrecy! Phil's got it down to the finish. The old chap is different somehow, older and solemn as a fish. Horrible example of what work will do to a fellow!" he grinned.
Sylvia stooped to pick up the tongs and stir the fire, which was smoldering a little sulkily on the hearth. Out of the tail of his eye Jack watched her.
"He and Barb seem to be remarkably good pals," he continued. "The Aunt orders him about like a member of the family. Don't wonder he obeys. That woman is a general. I wouldn't be surprised if she took the vote away from the men and gave it to the women any day, if she took the notion. Lucky she and Napoleon didn't hitch their wagons to the same star in the same generation. The star would have dragged Aunt Josephine and ditched the emperor, that's certain."
"Do stop talking nonsense, Jack, and tell me more about Suzanne."
Sylvia's voice had a faint edge of sharpness to it as if a little of the grim December wind outside had gotten into it.
"I don't know any more. I've told you all that is generally published. Even Norton, Pa., gropes in middle darkness. She didn't even write to Roger it seems. He is in bad. Had the temerity to propose to her again just after she had emerged with a bundle of manuscripts from a manager's office, which wasn't a tactful moment, I gather. She consigned him to the devil or some feminine equivalent thereof, apparently. Pa and Ma knows she's traveling. Had cards from Buffalo and Cleveland, I understand. Pa's excited and Ma's took to her bed. Looks as if they feared the worst."
"Jack!"
"Sorry. I was only joking, of course. Trust Suzanne to take care of herself. She is all right. Roger is having a fit or two though, and no wonder."
"Serves him right. Why didn't he go and marry her and not let her go off on a tangent like that?"
"Why, indeed?" murmured Jack. "It is so hanged easy to marry a girl when she won't have you! Give me the good old cave days. You could knock your bride down with a club if she objected. Then, when she came to, she would get up and grin at her noble master and string some red berries round her neck, or stick a ring in her nose, to enhance her charms, and everything would be entirely agreeable."
"Jack, you are perfectly horrid to-day. I wish you had stayed in New York. How is Jeanette?" Sylvia changed the subject severely.
"Going the pace, as usual. Good Lord, Sylvia, what do you suppose a woman wants to live the kind of life she's elected for? I like a good time myself. It's a family trait. But she goes as if all the devils of Hell were loose and after her. Maybe they are, after a fashion. See here, Sylvia, aren't you going up to see her soon?"
"After Christmas. Why?"
"Nothing especial. I thought a dose of you might be good for her, that is all."
And that was all the explanation that Sylvia extracted on that subject, though she guessed that there was more than Jack admitted behind his rather enigmatic remarks. Jack was incredibly clear-sighted about some things, and it was evident he saw cause to worry about his sister Jeanette, even to the extent of hurrying Sylvia to New York where he himself could not follow unless he turned back the page of the virtuous new leaf of his devotion to business. There was a puzzle behind it somewhere, Sylvia knew. She also knew she was going to be left to discover the exact nature of the puzzle for herself.
So December went its way. Suzanne continued mysteriously "traveling with friends." Barb and Phil kept hard at work in the city and managed to see a good deal of each other in their off hours. Sylvia and Phil had almost ceased to write to each other, though there was no open break in their friendship. It was rather that a wall, intangible but unsurmountable, had risen between them, as perhaps it had, for pride is a mightier barrier than a mountain peak sometimes. Gus went his quiet, successful way on his concert tour, refusing politely but conclusively to be made a lion of, keeping rather to himself in his leisure hours, living on his unspoken dreams and managing to get a great deal of pure happiness out of his star worship. To Sylvia's delight, and almost to Felicia's consternation, the latter's designs for a mural relief, which Stephen Kinnard had fairly bullied her into submitting in a competition, had been accepted and she was hard at work on the actual modeling these brief winter days, though she found time, Felicia fashion, to be an excellent "Home-keeper" and Mother along with the other task.
Early in November Lois Daly had rather astonishingly announced her intention of "doing some writing" as she put it rather vaguely. Lois was always reticent, especially about her literary work, and even her husband asked no questions, realizing it suited her better to be let alone to work out her purpose for herself. She was far too conscientious about her other duties to neglect any of them and it was consequently the long evenings when the children were in bed and the household affairs quiescent that she found most profitable for her new work. This arrangement was admirable in all but two respects. It made Lois' working day an almost impossibly long one and left her a little too weary for restful sleep when she did finally creep into bed. It also curtailed almost to a minimum the moments which she had to spare for her husband's society, which had been all too few even before the advent of this new era. Doctor Tom made no protest as to this. He was always over-sensitive to the sacrifice of her work which Lois had made for him and his, but he did beg her at times not to "bother" so much about the house and the children and himself.
But Lois always shook her head at his pleas and explained quietly that he and the house and the children were her real job and she could not neglect them for the other. And if Tom Daly found it in his heart to wonder sometimes if his wife's "real job" did not include a little closer companionship with himself he never voiced his wondering. He was no "martyr," as he had once long ago protested to Sylvia.
But human relations are never static and while Lois shut herself in her den and wrote feverishly, night after night, her husband, being only human, easily drifted into the habit of finding elsewhere than at his own home the companionship and sympathy which even the strongest and most independent of men half-consciously crave. Arden Hall and Sylvia were close at hand and it was almost inevitable that he should find his way to the two rather often. Sylvia was intensely interested in all his schemes for the hospital and other altruistic visions which made up a very large part of his wide, busy career. Often they talked eagerly for hours, either with or without Felicia's presence. Oftener still Tom Daly would sit and smoke in contented silence while Sylvia played soft music or read aloud out of some magazine stories which let his mind rest instead of wrestle.
It was all the most natural, even inevitable development. The two were old friends. Tom Daly was thirty-eight and happily married. Sylvia Arden was twenty-two questing for experience innocently enough. There was no one to question or warn, or indeed, anything to question or warn against. Yet there sat Nature spinning away at her web all the time and Tom Daly and Sylvia were near to being caught in the mesh, without even knowing there was any mesh. And the danger for Tom Daly as it happened was considerably greater than for Sylvia just because he was a man. Man is the so-called reasoning sex, but, as has been more than once noted, sex is the one subject upon which he will not reason. And so things slipped easily and pleasantly along up to Christmas time.
It was Jack Amidon who involuntarily opened Sylvia's eyes by uttering an unusually sharp protest that she went nowhere any more, either with him or any one else, but just sat in the chimney corner and played Joan to Tom Daly's Darby. "And soon there'll be the deuce to pay whether you know it or not," he had added darkly.
Of course Sylvia had flared out in quick anger at his implications.
"What do you mean, Jack Amidon, by saying such horrid things?" she had stormed. "It is perfectly ridiculous. Doctor Tom is years and years older than I am. He is just like a brother."
Jack had seen the brother dodge worked before and said so somewhat caustically, whereupon Sylvia lost what little temper she had left, and having delivered a volley of violent wrath upon her guest's imprudent head, shot out of the room, leaving him to enjoy the hospitality of the Hall in solitude or beat a retreat as pleased him best.
Meanwhile, upstairs in her own room, Sylvia threw herself on the bed, and, first of all, woman fashion, relieved her feelings by indulging in a good old-fashioned "weep," her anger dissipating with her tears. Presently she sat up and began to take stock of the situation and herself, and found to her consternation that things as they actually were, were about as safe as a child with a box of matches in a haymow.
She was a perfectly clear-eyed and sophisticated young woman and when her attention was called, however brutally, to the fact that you cannot see a man, night after night, week after week, as she had been seeing Tom Daly, without there being at least the possibility of the "deuce to pay," as Jack had bluntly expressed it, she was willing to acknowledge the fact to herself at least. She carefully analyzed her own mental processes for the past few weeks and discovered to her surprise and some chagrin that she had been ruthlessly cutting out engagements in which Tom Daly did not figure, and eagerly making those in which he did figure, that she had deliberately plunged into everything that interested him, Red Cross work, the new hospital, the needs of some of his poorer patients; everything, in short, that he cared about heartily. She even had to admit to herself that she had been a little complacent and self righteous in her genuine interest and sympathy with these things because she resented Lois Daly's apathy in the matter and felt profoundly sorry for Doctor Tom. She discovered that it is not prudent in the world as it is lived to be too sorry for another woman's husband. That way danger lies, and a signboard to that effect is in order. Beyond this, however, Sylvia knew she had little for which to blame herself. She was not a deliberate coquette. She had acted in all simplicity and naturalness, but there had been a risk to the experiment for all that and she was a bit ashamed of her hitherto state of blindness.
Being a very honest young person, Sylvia sat down, as soon as she had threshed the whole matter out to the satisfaction of her clear, fair mind, and wrote a very artistically penitent note to Jack, retracting some of the unwarrantable things she had said in her wrath and admitting rather hazily that there was a faint possibility that he might have been in the right about certain matters, implying that she was magnanimously willing even to ignore his objectionable rightness if he so desired.
And her note crossed one from Jack, begging her to forgive his "darned impertinence" and adding that he had behaved like a jackass and a dog in the manger and Heaven knows how many other kinds of animals, but if she would be good enough to overlook his misdemeanors he would be eternally grateful.
And the next evening Sylvia appeared under Jack's escort at the Honeycutt ball, wearing a marvelous new gown and looking extraordinarily pretty after her temporary estrangement from Vanity Fair. And from that time on during all the mad gayeties of Christmas week Jack was constantly in attendance, obviously the favored knight. Life is mostly made up of reactions. The pendulum having swung so far to the left, swings back an equal distance to the right. Sylvia was the kinder to Jack because of her deflection away from him in an entirely opposite direction. And he, with the wisdom born of considerable experience of the feminine sex in general, and Sylvia Arden in particular, made no comment though he perfectly understood what had happened, but sunned himself agreeably in his lady's rather uncertain grace and bided his time.
And the night of the Honeycutt ball for the first time in several weeks Tom Daly sat and smoked before his own fireside and not once did he think of the new hospital.