CHAPTER XVIAS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTEDIt seemed as if Sylvia's cup of disenchantment were destined to brim over before the city was done with her. She tried to view Jeanette's affair with the portrait painter with an open mind and tolerant attitude. She saw that there was no real evil in it as yet--probably never would be for Jeanette was likely to "play safe" having much at stake. But somehow it all disheartened the younger girl. She thought she could have forgiven both the transgressors more easily if they had dared a little more, or cared a little more for each other and less for themselves. If they had eloped she would have been shocked and troubled but she would have understood their conduct. It was the amazing bad taste and effrontery of carrying on so half-hearted a liaison in Francis Latham's own house and under his very eyes which was to Sylvia the least excusable phase of the matter. Deceit of any sort was obnoxious to her straightforward soul. She herself could never have kept on living a daily lie such as Jeanette was living. Something would have snapped. And somehow Sylvia found herself seeing things all around her blacker, no doubt, than they were, because of her too much recently acquired knowledge, and often she remembered the explorer's terse verdict that these people were "punk." It was all very disillusioning and made one sick at heart.But Sylvia had other cause to feel that happiness was eluding her these days in early January. The wound to her pride that Phil Lorrimer had dealt, though seared over, was by no means healed. She tried to be perfectly fair and sane, to admit that if Jeanette's supposition were correct, Barb would doubtless make Phil a better wife than she herself would have done, to acknowledge that it was entirely natural and appropriate that Phil and Barb should have learned to care for each other during the intimate months past when she herself had deliberately neglected Phil. Even so, Phil need not have looked at her as he had that night on Jeanette's doorstep. He needn't have let her all but propose to him. That was the deepest rankling thorn of all. She had almost offered herself to him on Jeanette's threshold. If he had really cared as his eyes had said wouldn't he have understood what she was trying to tell him that the money was nothing at all, that it didn't matter in the least, that there was, indeed, nothing to be afraid of, as she had twice taken the pains to reassure him?If he had really cared would he not have found means to see her during her weeks with Jeanette in spite of her mantle of invisibility? It was all too evident that he didn't care, that it was Barb who could give him what he wanted, or rather let him give everything as his pride demanded. Sylvia knew perfectly well that she had wanted Phil Lorrimer to ask her to marry him, knew too, that she had meant to say yes if he did ask her, but she also knew that though her pride was offended, her heart was far from being broken. Indeed, love in its entirety, in its heights and depths, its glory and its mortal agony, its madness and its abiding joy, she had scarcely as yet conceived.She was still questing experience, tasting life, and even the bitter flavor of this last new-gained knowledge was interesting because bitterness was new to Sylvia Arden. Youth drinks its gall and wormwood with almost as supreme satisfaction as it does its nectar and ambrosia.Not that Sylvia understood all this or consciously analyzed her mental processes. She did nothing of the sort. She only knew she had been hurt, and found it a rather fascinating game to hide the hurt from herself and the rest of the world.Perhaps her zest for the hiding game made her play a little more recklessly with the men who dogged her footsteps than was entirely wise or kind. Certainly it made her eyes a little starrier, her cheeks a little deeper carmine, her laugh a little more tantalizing. Men saw and smiled and said the little Maryland "Deb" was a queen, a beauty, and a wit as well as an heiress, an unbelievably lucky combination."Knows how to hold her own too," they agreed. "She'll lead you on to the limit and then when you think you have her--she isn't there. Got the elusive game to perfection, wherever she learned it."But the last night of her stay in the city Sylvia came near playing her game an inch too far. There had been a theater party and supper afterward at the Astor and when at last they started for home she chanced to get separated from Jeanette who, supposing her guest was with her husband, had gone on in another car."Why!" exclaimed Sylvia, from the curbing. "I do believe they have all deserted me. There goes Jeanette, and Francis went with the Homers.""Well, here am I!" challenged Porter Robinson, at her elbow. Porter Robinson was the most daring and insistent of all the swarmers about the most popular new rose. "Whither thou goest I will go! Here, Cabby," and his uplifted finger summoned a taxicab in which he and Sylvia were in a moment ensconced.It was a wonderful night. Brilliant stars studded the heavens and the trees in the park were laden with a fleecy burden of new-fallen snow. The little girl still in Sylvia who loved snow storms and had too little of them in Maryland cried out in ecstasy at the sight."Oh-h! Couldn't we drive in there a little and see it? It's so lovely after the lights and the crowd--like a different world!"Naturally Porter Robinson had no objections to driving at midnight in a closed cab through the park with the prettiest, liveliest, most piquant girl he had met in many a season.But a half hour later Sylvia flashed into the library at the Lathams with wrath and shame in her heart and ran square into Jack standing with his back to the fireplace."Ugh! I hate men," she greeted him stormily."You do! What's up? Where is Jeanette? You look like a Valkyr or an avenging fury.""I don't know where Jeanette is. Porter Robinson brought me home.""Oh," comprehended Jack. "So that is the rumpus. Didn't Porter behave like a perfect gentleman?""He did not." Sylvia threw off her cloak with a wrathful gesture, leaving her slim, rounded young loveliness, clad in the white tulle and gold "dream," suddenly revealed to Jack's eyes. "He tried to kiss me, if you must know.""And what did you expect at this time of night when you had shed your lawful chaperones?" inquired Jack blandly. "Especially after you had been flirting like the mischief with him all the evening!"Sylvia slipped into a chair and stared up at Jack. "How did you know?" she asked with astonished meekness.Jack laughed."Didn't. I just guessed. So you did flirt with him like the mischief?""I--shouldn't wonder," admitted Sylvia with a grimace. "He's a beast, but then maybe I was a little to blame. I suppose I shouldn't have asked him to take me riding in the park at this time of night.""Possibly not," agreed Jack."You wouldn't have taken advantage of a situation like that, Jack. You know you wouldn't.""H-m-m?" interrogated Jack dubiously. "That so? If you looked one half as pretty in the cab as you do this minute, I'm morally or immorally certain I should not only have tried to kiss you but have succeeded.""Jack!""Like this!" And suddenly, to Sylvia's utter surprise, he had stooped and kissed her full on one crimson, excited cheek. "Game's up, sweetheart. My turn. You've had your fling, and I guess from all Jeanette writes it has been a pretty lively one. Honest Injun, Sylvia, aren't you sick of it all, ready to try it out on a different line with me? No, don't speak just yet. I'm not quite through. I promised I would get busy and show you I could hold down a man's job if necessary. Well, I've done it. I'm not boasting, but you can ask Dad if I haven't made good and kept my promise to the letter. That is all on that subject. Secondly, I don't pretend to be a saint, but thanks to you and the Christmas Family setting me straight some years ago I'm a fairly decent specimen as men go. I believe I'd show up moderately well by comparison with the Porter Robinsons and the rest. That is all of that. Thirdly, I love you. There isn't any other girl, never has been, and, so far as I can see, never will be. Now--did you mind very much having me kiss you?"Sylvia's eyes were demurely downcast, her cheeks flushed, but a quiver of a smile appeared around the corners of her mouth."Not much. I rather think I--I liked it--a little," she admitted.That was enough for Jack, and five minutes later when Jeanette came in she found him on the arm of Sylvia's chair, her tulle and gold rather crushed and mussed but with her eyes looking very starry.He sprang up with alacrity as his sister entered and went to give her a brotherly kiss."'Lo, Jeannie. Sylvia and I have just got engaged. Hope you don't mind?"Jeanette shot a straight, questioning, dubious look at Sylvia then remarked she was delighted, of course, and if they would excuse her she would go to bed as she was very tired. Sylvia had vaguely realized at the moment that Jeanette was white, but it was not until the next day that she understood. Charlton Haynes had left suddenly for California on the midnight train and he and Jeanette had apparently parted for all time. Of what lay behind Sylvia could not even surmise and Jeanette kept her own counsel. At any rate, Sylvia was able to perceive that under the circumstances the other woman had little enthusiasm left over for the love affairs of even her sole and beloved brother.And that next afternoon Sylvia and Jack went South together, and the Minotaur did not get Sylvia after all. But whether she had not stepped blithely into a deeper labyrinth than the one she had evaded was another question.CHAPTER XVIIBARB DIAGNOSESThe evening that culminated in Sylvia's engagement to Jack, Phil had spent with Barbara. Barb had discovered that it was neither impossible nor very difficult to slip back into the beaten way of friendship with the young doctor, especially as he himself had never left that safe and sane path and had no faintest conception of the mad little, sad little detour the girl had accomplished beneath his very eyes. Barb was a very wise and brave little lady and having realized that she had been reaching for the moon withdrew her hand and made the most she could out of every day sunbeams. Phil never guessed that his occasional visits to Miss Murray's apartment were rather bittersweet occasions to Barb, nor did he notice that she was quieter, graver, not quite so responsive as he had hitherto found her. As a matter of fact, Phil wasn't seeing much of anything these days except his own stolidly endured misery. It had been bad enough to know Sylvia was in Greendale where he couldn't see her at all, but to know she was within easy reach and yet farther from him to all intents and purposes than if an ocean or a desert separated them was incomparably worse.He hated Jeanette Latham's kind of life, hated to have Sylvia's fresh radiance tarnished by its contact, hated to think of her, night after night, in the society, even in the arms of the Porter Robinsons of Jeanette's circle, jealous of it all because it kept Sylvia from him, hurt that she would give up none of her gayeties for his sake, blindly conscious that he had offended her, though only half guessing how and to what extent.One night he had been at the opera, way up in the upper tiers, as was his custom, and between the acts he had wandered about in the galleries and seen Sylvia in a box below, surrounded by a swarm of devoted male attendants, and he had watched her with mingled gloom and avidity. She was so lovely in her chiffons and furs and her exquisite youthfulness and grace, her face uplifted, her hair shining in the light like burnished copper, her lips parted with laughter. She seemed so eminently a part of the picture to fit into the brilliant scene as a diamond sparkles appropriately in its hoop of gold that Phil's heart sank heavier than ever. Well, it only proved he had been right. What had he to offer Sylvia in exchange for all this? She belonged to it and it to her, as a bird belongs to the air.Perhaps it was the intensity of his gaze that had made Sylvia look up. At any rate she raised her eyes and met his, staring hungrily down at her. The exciting, haunting music of Tristan and Isolde had stirred strange deeps in Sylvia, begotten an élan of flesh and soul which flared like a pure flame in her eyes at the moment. The man at her side, Porter Robinson, as it happened, saw the look and followed her gaze with curiosity to see what had lit the flame. But in all that sea of faces he had no means of distinguishing the one which stood out for the girl as if it had been the one face in the world. In a second she had turned away and lowered her eyes."What was it?" asked her companion. "Did you see a vision?""Maybe," said Sylvia. "Hush! The music is beginning."All the rest of the evening she half hoped Phil would seek her out in the box but he had not come. And the next night had been the one when she had discovered Porter Robinson was a beast and an hour later had found herself rather unexpectedly engaged to Jack Amidon.As for Phil, his will tugged at its moorings that night. He, too, had been moved by the music, and even more by the challenge of Sylvia's eyes. He had telephoned her the next day to try to make an engagement with her for the evening but Sylvia was submerged with engagements, had a tea, a dinner, a theater party, and so forth, already on hand, and her voice over the telephone was as cool and remote as a mountain stream. She even forgot to tell him she was leaving the city the next day. Sylvia's pride in its way matched Phil's own.And so instead of spending the evening with Sylvia, Phil had dropped in to see Barbara, which is where this chapter really began.He was certainly anything but good company that night. He sat somberly looking into the fire, answering Barb's casual chatter with brief absent-minded monosyllables. Barb, watching out of the corner of her eye, and with the sure intuition that love teaches, guessed the source of his gloom. She forgot all about her own hurt in sorrow for his and longed with all the mother in her to comfort him. Suddenly the silence which had fallen became intolerable, the weight of the unspoken thing too heavy to be endured another minute. So out of a clear sky Barb dropped a bomb."Phil, why don't you ask Sylvia to marry you?"Phil jumped and stared and frowned."Reason's sufficiently obvious I should say. The gown and the furs and the pearls she had on last night probably cost more than my year's income.""What of it? Gowns and furs and pearls aren't important. There are things that Sylvia cares much more about.""What?""You," was on the tip of Barb's tongue, but she did not say it. After all, that was for Sylvia to say. She had no means of knowing how Sylvia felt except that vivid memory of the way the other girl's eyes had looked that night on Lover's Leap."Happiness, for one thing," she substituted. "Phil Lorrimer, don't you know Sylvia Arden well enough to know the things that money buys are not the real things--the things she cares for. She is willing to play with them while she is waiting. Who wouldn't? I would myself, if I had the chance. But Sylvia never mixes things up. She knows what counts and what doesn't count as well as anybody I know. If you think her having money and your not having it makes the slightest difference to her, you're even stupider than I gave you credit for." Barb had warmed to her subject and did not care if the lash of her tongue did sting a little. She rather thought Phil Lorrimer needed a sting or two. She had forgotten for the moment she had ever been in love with this young man herself. She remembered only she was a woman speaking for her sex in plain round terms."You mean Sylvia wants me to ask her to marry her?"Barb made an impatient gesture."I don't know anything about that. That is between you two. What I do know, and what I am trying to tell you, is that the modern woman despises a man just as much for not wanting to ask her to marry him because she has money as she does for wanting to ask her to marry him because she has it. That kind of idea is ancient and exploded and idiotic and disgusting."Phil threw out his hand in half humorous, half serious protest."My word! What an avalanche! So you think it is thoroughly contemptible in me to care whether the woman I marry has a million dollars or not when I haven't a red cent?""I do," asserted Barb stoutly. "The money isn't any of your affair, any more than the kind of knife you use on the operating table is hers, or the color of your hair or eyes, for that matter. It just hasn't anything to do with it.""What is my affair? What is the male end of the bargain, according to the latest approved feministic standards?""It's the male end of the bargain, if you choose to put it that way, to give a woman love and respect and comradeship, a clean, strong, healthy body and mind and soul, to be the kind of man she would like the father of her children to be. I believe that is about all. Read Beatrice Forbes-Robinson Hale's chapter on the 'New Man' and you'll understand why Sylvia's money has nothing to do with the case and why your pride is stupid and conceited and old-fashioned, a relic of the time when man expected to be the sole provider and expected his wife to be the chief parasite of the family, when he gloried in his high and mighty superiority and expected her to be meekly grateful and appreciative of said superiority. Now, do you understand?""A little," said Phil Lorrimer slowly. "Thank you, Barb. Maybe I have been an idiot, as you say. It takes you to clear away the rubbish in a fellow's mind. Jack tried to tell me the same thing and, well, I guess Sylvia tried, too, only she didn't put it as violently visibly as you have, and I threw the words back in her face like the donkey I am. Barb, do you believe there is any chance she'll forgive me?" he begged anxiously."I don't know how much she has to forgive," retorted Barb shortly. "But you had better be about it before her forgiveness is all she has left to give. You can't expect a girl like Sylvia to sit down and wait for a man to get his eyes open like a Maltese kitten. I suppose you know Jack is hot on the trail, and no doubt there are plenty of others here in New York.""Lord! Don't I know it?" Phil got to his feet. "You needn't rub it in, Barb. I'm scared enough on that score already and jealous as the old one. I'd have liked to drop asphyxiating gas on the moon-faced calf I saw with her last night at the opera, looking as if he owned her. Gee! I've got to get out and let the air circulate through my brains a little. I feel as if I had a hot box up there." He gave his tawny head a thump. "Honest, Barb, I'm much obliged to you for your efficiently brutal treatment. You are some doctor, all right."And in his genuine gratitude Phil started to seize both Barb's small hands in his, but she backed away, fearful perhaps lest he see more than she wanted, now that his eyes were unsealed in other respects. In a moment he was gone and Barb walked deliberately over to the mirror and surveyed her flushed face and big, excited eyes."They say a critic is a man who can't write. I begin to think a reformer--at least, a woman reformer--is a woman who can't have what she wants. Maybe I can get the sacred fire after all. Wonder if Aunt Jo got it--my way."Barb laughed a little tremulously and then picked up a volume of Ellen Key and sat down to read as hard as she could.Her brain was very clear that night it seemed. She felt as if she could have written a book about woman herself.CHAPTER XVIIITHE CAUSE AND THE CAREERFor two weeks after that Barb saw nothing of Phil, a fact for which she was exceedingly grateful. The news of Sylvia's engagement had come up from Greendale, and Barb had no wish to see the look which she knew would be in Phil's blue eyes, if he too, had heard, as no doubt he had. Neither had she any desire to say "I told you so," though it was her right. Her warning, though late, had been justified. No one could expect Sylvia Arden to sit down and wait "for a man to get his eyes open like a Maltese kitten." Sylvia had not waited, and Phil's eyes were open at least twenty-four hours too late.The next time Phil and Barb met was at a public meeting. Miss Murray had been scheduled to speak but at the last moment had succumbed to laryngitis, and Barbara, dismayed and protesting, had been haled into the breach.It was the first time Barb had ever spoken in public, though she had more than once sat on platforms with her aunt, striving to look dignified and impressive and generally worthy of the "mantle." She was desperately frightened now and when she finally rose to face the audience, which was made up mostly of women of the working-class, her knees shook and her throat felt as if she were trying to swallow the whole Sahara Desert. The upturned faces paralyzed her forces. She wished an earthquake would come and dispose of the audience and bury herself in eternal oblivion. And then suddenly behind those weary-eyed, apathetic faces in the foreground, she saw Phil Lorrimer's friendly, encouraging eyes and some tension within her snapped. She began to talk slowly at first, and then more swiftly, borne along on the current of her own surging thought and emotion. She never knew afterward quite what she said. She seemed to have talked more about happiness than about enfranchisement. Perhaps the women who listened were more interested in happiness than they were in the vote anyway. At all events, they listened respectfully, even eagerly, as Barbara Day painted for them her crystal clear vision of a world where women were to be neither drudges nor toys, but honored co-workers, laboring in joyous self-expression, side by side with men, a world where motherhood should be respected and supported by the nation, where education should be open not to the favored few but to the many, a world where war and brutality and slavery, of soul and body, and all blood guiltiness should be impossible, a world enlightened, free, strong, glad. And this millennium, the women of America were to help to bring about,musthelp if they were to save themselves and their sisters--so Barbara Day told them. "We have to work together. Whatever we are, the one thing we cannot be is indifferent--you and I--we must be awake--wide awake."And with that Barb had slipped shyly back into her seat amid the applause which greeted her little speech, terribly frightened again now it was all over and wondering if it had not been intolerably presumptuous in her to have spoken at all, much less present so portentous a plea.There were other speeches but Barb scarcely heard them. She fell into a revery, in which she carried the vision she had shared with these women on and on until it became almost as the new Jerusalem in its transcendent splendor.And in her vision she seemed to see why it had been given her to desire and to have no fruition of desire, to know the flare of happiness and to know happiness gone out like a wind blown candle, to understand what it was to be acquainted with heartache and loneliness. For all these things would teach her how other women yearned and suffered and were denied. If she herself had found her heart's desire in a good man's protecting love, in the warm glow of her own hearth fires, with her own children in her arms, would she have desired so poignantly to help these others to find life more abundant? By the measure of what she had lost, had she not gained?"Happiness left us content with happiness but sorrow bids us rise up and seek something divine," says some one, and Barbara Day had come to understand this with many other things. As the old music teacher had said: "Love is the great Master."The hint of the "Something divine" was still in Barb's eyes when she took Phil's outstretched hand in the doorway where he waited. He had meant to congratulate her on her speech but somehow the words evaporated before the look on her face as she lifted it to him. He saw she had been in some far, high place where he could not follow and the spell was still upon her."How did you know I was here?" she asked presently, as they made their way to the Subway together in silence."Your aunt sent me word. I am tremendously grateful. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Barb, you made me understand a whole lot of things."She flashed him a quick, startled glance. She did not wish him to understand too much. But she need not have feared. Phil was as blind as ever so far as she was concerned."You are a wonder, Barbie. I'm a little scared of you all at once. I am afraid I haven't been quite appreciating what an angel I was entertaining--or rather letting entertain me.""Don't. If you mean that silly speech, you needn't talk. I feel as humble as--that puddle," groping for a simile she happened to let her gaze fall upon a pool which a recent shower had left in the gutter.Phil smiled."There's a star reflected in the puddle," he said gently, then dropped the subject as she obviously desired.As they stood in the crowded Subway later there was little chance for conversation, but Barb noticed that Phil looked worn and tired, almost haggard. Her heart was very tender for him. It didn't matter how much she was hurt. Barb sensed intuitively that women were meant to be hurt. But that Phil should suffer was all but intolerable. She almost hated Sylvia who had brought that look to his eyes. Alas! What a jumble things were! How changed everything was since that happy September week with Sylvia at Arden Hall! She remembered how Suzanne had rallied Sylvia on her fitness for matrimony and charged herself in jest with having designs on Phil Lorrimer. Funny Suzanne! Poor Suzanne! What was she doing?It happened at the moment Suzanne was sitting by the fire in Miss Murray's apartment, doing absolutely nothing for the first time in many strenuous weeks. There Barbara and Phil found her a few moments later, to their unbounded astonishment."Well, aren't you going to greet the returning prodigal?" asked Suzanne, getting up.Whereupon Barb recovered sufficiently to throw her arms around her friend with a series of little rapturous, inarticulate, affectionate gurgles such as women occasionally indulge in.When she had finished it was Phil's turn, and though his greeting was more decorous, it was no less hearty."Where have I been? I know that is what you are bursting to ask. Sit down all and let me tell you. Dearly beloved, I have been on the road. No, not selling petticoats like the immortal Emma, but in the chorus of 'The Prettiest Princess,' and it's been worth a fortune to me.""In the chorus! Oh, Suzanne! What did your father and mother say?""They haven't said anything up to present speaking, for the very good reason that they don't know what I've been up to. I told them I was traveling. I was. Gee! How I've traveled! I also told them I had been visiting Aunt Selina in Salt Lake City. I did visit Aunt Selina. I spent a week with her while the 'Prettiest Princess' and her retinue delighted the enthusiastic Mormon gentlemen. For Heaven's sake, don't stare so, Barb! I assure you both my virtue and my looks are unimpaired. You can see the latter for yourself."Suzanne whirled round to the mirror as if to assure herself that her statement was true. Certainly the others could see for themselves that Suzanne had never looked prettier in her life.Little by little the story came out, delivered with much glee and gusto by the irrepressible Suzanne. That night Phil had found her in the Square she had come to the end of her resources and knew something had to be done at once if she were going to avoid an ignominious return to Norton, Pa., or the sacrifice of her pride to ask for an advance of money. A manager had refused her latest play that day but even as he had done so he had offered her a place in the third company of the musical comedy he was just starting on the road. Suzanne had asked for a night to consider and she had been considering when Phil had interrupted her meditations. In his society, too, she had decided to take the offer. The next day she had become a member of the third company and the next was "on the road.""Why did you come home? Show bust?""Indeed, no. The 'Prettiest Princess' goes on as cheerfully as may be lacking its most charming first row right chorus girl.""Fired?" still further inquired Phil."Nope. Resigned. Came into a fortune and flew back to the Great White Way instanter.""What kind of a fortune? Anybody died?""Thank goodness no. On the contrary. An editor came to life. I've sold a series of stories to the Ultra Urban, two hundred plunks per. 'Melissa on the Road' is the general title, Melissa being, of course, Suzanne, thinly disguised. I thought I might as well make copy out of myself and I did. I've given things so close to the way they really were that every one will swear they are fiction of the most romancy order.""Are they coming out under your own name?" Barb found breath to ask."No. I thought they might begin to appear before I had a chance to explain things, so it seemed better to break the shock, as it were. They are anonymous, which will make them more spicy.""Good for you!" chuckled Phil. "I'll bet they are spicy all right.""But the best isn't told. I've written a play--a real play that is going to make the managers sit up on their haunches and beg prettily. And I've got a Star in my crown--I mean in my circle of friends--who wants to play the lead. What do you think of that? Let Broadway stop, look, and listen. Suzanne is coming, Hurray! Hurray!" she chanted. "I'll cause more of a sensation than my predecessor at the bath. Now, tell me the news."CHAPTER XIXOH, SUZANNE!It was not until Phil had gone and Barb and Suzanne were reduced to the intimate kimono and pigtail state that Barb got the full force of the stream of Suzanne's confidences."When I think what a fool I was only just last September I could weep, if only it weren't so killingly funny." Suzanne sat up in bed to announce. "I thought because I had a pretty knack of juggling words and a little mother wit I could just walk right in and conquer the literary and dramatic world as easy as anything. The trouble with college is it gives you an over-dose of fine spun theories about life and doesn't teach you a thing about being up against the real article. Maybe it couldn't. I guess we all have to knock that lesson out of the bed rock itself with a chisel or a pick axe. I've tried both ways. I don't know all there is to know yet by a long shot but I know a whole heap more than I did, which is something to be thankful for." And the speaker thumped the pillow with her doubled fist rather as she had thumped Sylvia's hammock cushions the preceding September.Barb, listening, sighed a little as she wondered if this knowledge of life were as desirable as Suzanne seemed to think. It left one a little tired, she thought, this knowing things."I don't know whether you ever guessed," Suzanne rattled on, "how near I was to the end of my rope last November. Phil knew, but he kept my secret, like the good dear he is. By the way, what is the matter with Phil? He looks awfully seedy and sober. Don't know but you do, too, come to think of it. City got on your nerves?"Suzanne's keen eyes sought her friend's face with an intentness that made the latter turn under pretense of switching off the light."Nothing the matter with me," she said cheerfully. "With Phil, of course, it is Sylvia.""H'm, I suppose so. He certainly looked as jolly as a tombstone when we were talking about her engagement a while ago. Well, why didn't he go in and get her himself? He could have last September easily enough. Anybody could have seen that with half an eye. Gets me why he didn't clinch it that night at Lover's Leap."Barb made no reply. Even with Suzanne she could not discuss Phil's mischance, especially as Suzanne would be sure to say it served him right. Barb was very pitiful for Phil. She did not want to hear anybody say sharp things about him."Go on about yourself," she suggested, getting into bed. "Do you mean you were really hard up, last November?""Hard up!" chuckled Suzanne. "My dear, I was not merely badly bent. I was broke. That night I was up here to supper I was as hungry as a wolf. I hadn't been eating much of anything for days.""Oh, Suzanne! And you never told me!""Naturally not. I had made my own bed and I intended to lie on it even if it was a bit rocky. Of course they would have sent me money from home, or Sylvia or any of you would have lent me some. But I wouldn't ask anybody. I set myself to work out my own salvation and I meant to finish up the job.""You are a wonder, Suzanne! But wasn't the show work dreadful?""Not so dreadful as you might think. You have to work like everything, and there is a good deal naturally that you have to shut your eyes and ears to, but it was Life with a capital letter, which was what I was looking for. Heaven knows I got it! Sometimes more than I bargained for." There was a catch in Suzanne's voice which made Barb come a little nearer and put out her hand until it touched her friend's."Barbie!" Suzanne's voice was lowered."Yes.""Did you ever think goodness was a sort of relative thing? That some girls are good just negatively because they never have any temptation or opportunity to be anything else?""Yes," said Barbara again."You don't know what you are really like inside until you suddenly come up against the sharp edges of things. Do you remember when Sylvia said she wanted to get acquainted with herself and I said I knew all about myself. Well, I didn't, that's all. I found out.""Suzanne!" Barb's voice had a motherly croon to it."Don't be scared. I'm all right. I did get scorched a little, and I know fire now when I see it. Who do you suppose came to my rescue when I was singeing?" And Suzanne mentioned the name of a "Star" all America knows and loves--a Star of the first magnitude."There was a big snow storm and we were blocked for a day this side of Kansas City. Her company happened to be on the same train ours was. I dug her Chow out of a snow bank for her and we got acquainted. I guess she saw where I was drifting. Anyway, she pulled me back just in season. Never mind who the man was. He doesn't count any more. He never counted very much. I was just dizzy with life. It all frothed and bubbled and sparkled like champagne, and I was a little drunk with it all maybe. She made me see things. She'd been there. She knew."Barb nestled closer, but did not speak. Did she not understand? Had life not frothed and bubbled and sparkled for her, too? Did she not know how nearly anything could happen when you felt like that? Especially if the man cared or pretended to care. It had been at once her own safety and torture that in her case the man had not cared."I saw her again at Denver," continued Suzanne, "and she told me the kind of a play she wanted. And Barb, just like a flash of lightning it came so quick, I knew I was going to try to write a play for her and I did. And she's seen it and she likes it and she wants me to take it to ----. He's her manager--just as soon as I can and tell him she liked it. And I'm going to, to-morrow. Oh, Barbie! If he should like it. But he won't. I mustn't think he's going to. I'd die if I were sure, I'd be so happy."And to-morrow Suzanne had taken the play to the great manager and had sent in the Star's card bearing the magic caption, "Introducing Miss Morrison." The caption had worked like a charm, swung open doors and fore-shortened delays. It was an incredibly brief space of time before Suzanne found herself in the most inner of all the offices with a pair of shrewd kindly eyes fixed inquiringly upon her.The manager had glanced over her manuscript with a swift apprising gaze, then glanced over Suzanne in something of the same manner."I'll read this, this afternoon," he promised. "I have the greatest confidence in the judgment of that lady," with a nod at the card which lay among the litter on his desk. "If she says this is good, I have no doubt it is. At any rate, we will hope for the best. Lord knows we are looking for something good. I'll telephone you to-morrow if you will leave me your number and address. By the way--" he frowned a little. "Haven't I seen you before somewhere, Miss Morrison?"Suzanne twinkled."I've brought you three plays--all impossible," she said."Indeed! Let us hope this one--" he glanced at the manuscript--"will be at least--probable.""It is more than that," said Suzanne. "It is a dead sure thing. Read it. You will see." And with that parting shot Suzanne withdrew, leaving the manager grinning at her effrontery.But the next day when the great manager sought to communicate with Suzanne over the telephone, Suzanne, white and silent, was packing to take the next train for Norton, Pa.A telegram had been sent to Salt Lake City in her aunt's care and followed her back to New York. The telegram had said: "Mother very sick. Come home at once.""It is Mr. ----" said Miss Murray from the telephone. "Will you speak to him, Suzanne?""No," said Suzanne curtly. "Tell him I'm out of town. Tell him anything. I don't care."Thus did the Nemesis of Suzanne's joyous tilting with the universe overtake her. At the moment when victory seemed well within her hands life had struck back. Like the star of the seer's vision, the star of her ambition fell burning into the waters."And the name of the star is called wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood and many died of the waters because they were made bitter."At the station in Norton, Roger Minot waited with his car to meet Suzanne--a crushed anguished Suzanne, her pertness and her prettiness equally in eclipse. She could only put out her hand to him with a little moan and gasp "Mother?""She is holding her own. There is hope--at least a little," he told her. "When did you start?""From New York?""From Salt Lake City?""I haven't been in Salt Lake City for days. I got to New York yesterday. I didn't know. I didn't know. Oh, Roger, it's dreadful! I've been so selfish--so everything that is horrid."Roger Minot looked straight ahead of him and said nothing. Perhaps he knew it was for the good of Suzanne's soul to taste the whole acrid cup of her remorse.But as they neared the parsonage his heart was smitten with pity. Suzanne looked so wan and grief-stricken and subdued, so utterly unlike the Suzanne he knew, all sparkles and ripples and laughter, like a little shallow stream running along through sunshine. The hand which was not busy at the wheel closed over Suzanne's."Don't give up, little girl. Maybe it will come out right, after all. Anyway, remember I'm right here if you need me."Suzanne uttered a sound which was a little bit like a sob. When, indeed, had Roger not been right there when she needed him? though she had treated him as the very dust beneath her feet. Dear Roger! And with an impulse of penitent tenderness she gave back the pressure of his hand.And then in a moment they were at home, where the chairs still stood stiff and angular against the wall, though up there in a quiet room above the hand that had put them in their places lay very still and white. Suzanne's mother was very sick indeed. It was she, after all, and not her willful little daughter that had pulled the family out of its comfortable rut and cast a sad spell of differentness upon the household. Suzanne had stayed away but sickness had come in and another darker guest waited outside the door, his shadow already on the threshold. Poor Suzanne! The waters were made bitter, indeed, at the falling of her star.
CHAPTER XVI
AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED
It seemed as if Sylvia's cup of disenchantment were destined to brim over before the city was done with her. She tried to view Jeanette's affair with the portrait painter with an open mind and tolerant attitude. She saw that there was no real evil in it as yet--probably never would be for Jeanette was likely to "play safe" having much at stake. But somehow it all disheartened the younger girl. She thought she could have forgiven both the transgressors more easily if they had dared a little more, or cared a little more for each other and less for themselves. If they had eloped she would have been shocked and troubled but she would have understood their conduct. It was the amazing bad taste and effrontery of carrying on so half-hearted a liaison in Francis Latham's own house and under his very eyes which was to Sylvia the least excusable phase of the matter. Deceit of any sort was obnoxious to her straightforward soul. She herself could never have kept on living a daily lie such as Jeanette was living. Something would have snapped. And somehow Sylvia found herself seeing things all around her blacker, no doubt, than they were, because of her too much recently acquired knowledge, and often she remembered the explorer's terse verdict that these people were "punk." It was all very disillusioning and made one sick at heart.
But Sylvia had other cause to feel that happiness was eluding her these days in early January. The wound to her pride that Phil Lorrimer had dealt, though seared over, was by no means healed. She tried to be perfectly fair and sane, to admit that if Jeanette's supposition were correct, Barb would doubtless make Phil a better wife than she herself would have done, to acknowledge that it was entirely natural and appropriate that Phil and Barb should have learned to care for each other during the intimate months past when she herself had deliberately neglected Phil. Even so, Phil need not have looked at her as he had that night on Jeanette's doorstep. He needn't have let her all but propose to him. That was the deepest rankling thorn of all. She had almost offered herself to him on Jeanette's threshold. If he had really cared as his eyes had said wouldn't he have understood what she was trying to tell him that the money was nothing at all, that it didn't matter in the least, that there was, indeed, nothing to be afraid of, as she had twice taken the pains to reassure him?
If he had really cared would he not have found means to see her during her weeks with Jeanette in spite of her mantle of invisibility? It was all too evident that he didn't care, that it was Barb who could give him what he wanted, or rather let him give everything as his pride demanded. Sylvia knew perfectly well that she had wanted Phil Lorrimer to ask her to marry him, knew too, that she had meant to say yes if he did ask her, but she also knew that though her pride was offended, her heart was far from being broken. Indeed, love in its entirety, in its heights and depths, its glory and its mortal agony, its madness and its abiding joy, she had scarcely as yet conceived.
She was still questing experience, tasting life, and even the bitter flavor of this last new-gained knowledge was interesting because bitterness was new to Sylvia Arden. Youth drinks its gall and wormwood with almost as supreme satisfaction as it does its nectar and ambrosia.
Not that Sylvia understood all this or consciously analyzed her mental processes. She did nothing of the sort. She only knew she had been hurt, and found it a rather fascinating game to hide the hurt from herself and the rest of the world.
Perhaps her zest for the hiding game made her play a little more recklessly with the men who dogged her footsteps than was entirely wise or kind. Certainly it made her eyes a little starrier, her cheeks a little deeper carmine, her laugh a little more tantalizing. Men saw and smiled and said the little Maryland "Deb" was a queen, a beauty, and a wit as well as an heiress, an unbelievably lucky combination.
"Knows how to hold her own too," they agreed. "She'll lead you on to the limit and then when you think you have her--she isn't there. Got the elusive game to perfection, wherever she learned it."
But the last night of her stay in the city Sylvia came near playing her game an inch too far. There had been a theater party and supper afterward at the Astor and when at last they started for home she chanced to get separated from Jeanette who, supposing her guest was with her husband, had gone on in another car.
"Why!" exclaimed Sylvia, from the curbing. "I do believe they have all deserted me. There goes Jeanette, and Francis went with the Homers."
"Well, here am I!" challenged Porter Robinson, at her elbow. Porter Robinson was the most daring and insistent of all the swarmers about the most popular new rose. "Whither thou goest I will go! Here, Cabby," and his uplifted finger summoned a taxicab in which he and Sylvia were in a moment ensconced.
It was a wonderful night. Brilliant stars studded the heavens and the trees in the park were laden with a fleecy burden of new-fallen snow. The little girl still in Sylvia who loved snow storms and had too little of them in Maryland cried out in ecstasy at the sight.
"Oh-h! Couldn't we drive in there a little and see it? It's so lovely after the lights and the crowd--like a different world!"
Naturally Porter Robinson had no objections to driving at midnight in a closed cab through the park with the prettiest, liveliest, most piquant girl he had met in many a season.
But a half hour later Sylvia flashed into the library at the Lathams with wrath and shame in her heart and ran square into Jack standing with his back to the fireplace.
"Ugh! I hate men," she greeted him stormily.
"You do! What's up? Where is Jeanette? You look like a Valkyr or an avenging fury."
"I don't know where Jeanette is. Porter Robinson brought me home."
"Oh," comprehended Jack. "So that is the rumpus. Didn't Porter behave like a perfect gentleman?"
"He did not." Sylvia threw off her cloak with a wrathful gesture, leaving her slim, rounded young loveliness, clad in the white tulle and gold "dream," suddenly revealed to Jack's eyes. "He tried to kiss me, if you must know."
"And what did you expect at this time of night when you had shed your lawful chaperones?" inquired Jack blandly. "Especially after you had been flirting like the mischief with him all the evening!"
Sylvia slipped into a chair and stared up at Jack. "How did you know?" she asked with astonished meekness.
Jack laughed.
"Didn't. I just guessed. So you did flirt with him like the mischief?"
"I--shouldn't wonder," admitted Sylvia with a grimace. "He's a beast, but then maybe I was a little to blame. I suppose I shouldn't have asked him to take me riding in the park at this time of night."
"Possibly not," agreed Jack.
"You wouldn't have taken advantage of a situation like that, Jack. You know you wouldn't."
"H-m-m?" interrogated Jack dubiously. "That so? If you looked one half as pretty in the cab as you do this minute, I'm morally or immorally certain I should not only have tried to kiss you but have succeeded."
"Jack!"
"Like this!" And suddenly, to Sylvia's utter surprise, he had stooped and kissed her full on one crimson, excited cheek. "Game's up, sweetheart. My turn. You've had your fling, and I guess from all Jeanette writes it has been a pretty lively one. Honest Injun, Sylvia, aren't you sick of it all, ready to try it out on a different line with me? No, don't speak just yet. I'm not quite through. I promised I would get busy and show you I could hold down a man's job if necessary. Well, I've done it. I'm not boasting, but you can ask Dad if I haven't made good and kept my promise to the letter. That is all on that subject. Secondly, I don't pretend to be a saint, but thanks to you and the Christmas Family setting me straight some years ago I'm a fairly decent specimen as men go. I believe I'd show up moderately well by comparison with the Porter Robinsons and the rest. That is all of that. Thirdly, I love you. There isn't any other girl, never has been, and, so far as I can see, never will be. Now--did you mind very much having me kiss you?"
Sylvia's eyes were demurely downcast, her cheeks flushed, but a quiver of a smile appeared around the corners of her mouth.
"Not much. I rather think I--I liked it--a little," she admitted.
That was enough for Jack, and five minutes later when Jeanette came in she found him on the arm of Sylvia's chair, her tulle and gold rather crushed and mussed but with her eyes looking very starry.
He sprang up with alacrity as his sister entered and went to give her a brotherly kiss.
"'Lo, Jeannie. Sylvia and I have just got engaged. Hope you don't mind?"
Jeanette shot a straight, questioning, dubious look at Sylvia then remarked she was delighted, of course, and if they would excuse her she would go to bed as she was very tired. Sylvia had vaguely realized at the moment that Jeanette was white, but it was not until the next day that she understood. Charlton Haynes had left suddenly for California on the midnight train and he and Jeanette had apparently parted for all time. Of what lay behind Sylvia could not even surmise and Jeanette kept her own counsel. At any rate, Sylvia was able to perceive that under the circumstances the other woman had little enthusiasm left over for the love affairs of even her sole and beloved brother.
And that next afternoon Sylvia and Jack went South together, and the Minotaur did not get Sylvia after all. But whether she had not stepped blithely into a deeper labyrinth than the one she had evaded was another question.
CHAPTER XVII
BARB DIAGNOSES
The evening that culminated in Sylvia's engagement to Jack, Phil had spent with Barbara. Barb had discovered that it was neither impossible nor very difficult to slip back into the beaten way of friendship with the young doctor, especially as he himself had never left that safe and sane path and had no faintest conception of the mad little, sad little detour the girl had accomplished beneath his very eyes. Barb was a very wise and brave little lady and having realized that she had been reaching for the moon withdrew her hand and made the most she could out of every day sunbeams. Phil never guessed that his occasional visits to Miss Murray's apartment were rather bittersweet occasions to Barb, nor did he notice that she was quieter, graver, not quite so responsive as he had hitherto found her. As a matter of fact, Phil wasn't seeing much of anything these days except his own stolidly endured misery. It had been bad enough to know Sylvia was in Greendale where he couldn't see her at all, but to know she was within easy reach and yet farther from him to all intents and purposes than if an ocean or a desert separated them was incomparably worse.
He hated Jeanette Latham's kind of life, hated to have Sylvia's fresh radiance tarnished by its contact, hated to think of her, night after night, in the society, even in the arms of the Porter Robinsons of Jeanette's circle, jealous of it all because it kept Sylvia from him, hurt that she would give up none of her gayeties for his sake, blindly conscious that he had offended her, though only half guessing how and to what extent.
One night he had been at the opera, way up in the upper tiers, as was his custom, and between the acts he had wandered about in the galleries and seen Sylvia in a box below, surrounded by a swarm of devoted male attendants, and he had watched her with mingled gloom and avidity. She was so lovely in her chiffons and furs and her exquisite youthfulness and grace, her face uplifted, her hair shining in the light like burnished copper, her lips parted with laughter. She seemed so eminently a part of the picture to fit into the brilliant scene as a diamond sparkles appropriately in its hoop of gold that Phil's heart sank heavier than ever. Well, it only proved he had been right. What had he to offer Sylvia in exchange for all this? She belonged to it and it to her, as a bird belongs to the air.
Perhaps it was the intensity of his gaze that had made Sylvia look up. At any rate she raised her eyes and met his, staring hungrily down at her. The exciting, haunting music of Tristan and Isolde had stirred strange deeps in Sylvia, begotten an élan of flesh and soul which flared like a pure flame in her eyes at the moment. The man at her side, Porter Robinson, as it happened, saw the look and followed her gaze with curiosity to see what had lit the flame. But in all that sea of faces he had no means of distinguishing the one which stood out for the girl as if it had been the one face in the world. In a second she had turned away and lowered her eyes.
"What was it?" asked her companion. "Did you see a vision?"
"Maybe," said Sylvia. "Hush! The music is beginning."
All the rest of the evening she half hoped Phil would seek her out in the box but he had not come. And the next night had been the one when she had discovered Porter Robinson was a beast and an hour later had found herself rather unexpectedly engaged to Jack Amidon.
As for Phil, his will tugged at its moorings that night. He, too, had been moved by the music, and even more by the challenge of Sylvia's eyes. He had telephoned her the next day to try to make an engagement with her for the evening but Sylvia was submerged with engagements, had a tea, a dinner, a theater party, and so forth, already on hand, and her voice over the telephone was as cool and remote as a mountain stream. She even forgot to tell him she was leaving the city the next day. Sylvia's pride in its way matched Phil's own.
And so instead of spending the evening with Sylvia, Phil had dropped in to see Barbara, which is where this chapter really began.
He was certainly anything but good company that night. He sat somberly looking into the fire, answering Barb's casual chatter with brief absent-minded monosyllables. Barb, watching out of the corner of her eye, and with the sure intuition that love teaches, guessed the source of his gloom. She forgot all about her own hurt in sorrow for his and longed with all the mother in her to comfort him. Suddenly the silence which had fallen became intolerable, the weight of the unspoken thing too heavy to be endured another minute. So out of a clear sky Barb dropped a bomb.
"Phil, why don't you ask Sylvia to marry you?"
Phil jumped and stared and frowned.
"Reason's sufficiently obvious I should say. The gown and the furs and the pearls she had on last night probably cost more than my year's income."
"What of it? Gowns and furs and pearls aren't important. There are things that Sylvia cares much more about."
"What?"
"You," was on the tip of Barb's tongue, but she did not say it. After all, that was for Sylvia to say. She had no means of knowing how Sylvia felt except that vivid memory of the way the other girl's eyes had looked that night on Lover's Leap.
"Happiness, for one thing," she substituted. "Phil Lorrimer, don't you know Sylvia Arden well enough to know the things that money buys are not the real things--the things she cares for. She is willing to play with them while she is waiting. Who wouldn't? I would myself, if I had the chance. But Sylvia never mixes things up. She knows what counts and what doesn't count as well as anybody I know. If you think her having money and your not having it makes the slightest difference to her, you're even stupider than I gave you credit for." Barb had warmed to her subject and did not care if the lash of her tongue did sting a little. She rather thought Phil Lorrimer needed a sting or two. She had forgotten for the moment she had ever been in love with this young man herself. She remembered only she was a woman speaking for her sex in plain round terms.
"You mean Sylvia wants me to ask her to marry her?"
Barb made an impatient gesture.
"I don't know anything about that. That is between you two. What I do know, and what I am trying to tell you, is that the modern woman despises a man just as much for not wanting to ask her to marry him because she has money as she does for wanting to ask her to marry him because she has it. That kind of idea is ancient and exploded and idiotic and disgusting."
Phil threw out his hand in half humorous, half serious protest.
"My word! What an avalanche! So you think it is thoroughly contemptible in me to care whether the woman I marry has a million dollars or not when I haven't a red cent?"
"I do," asserted Barb stoutly. "The money isn't any of your affair, any more than the kind of knife you use on the operating table is hers, or the color of your hair or eyes, for that matter. It just hasn't anything to do with it."
"What is my affair? What is the male end of the bargain, according to the latest approved feministic standards?"
"It's the male end of the bargain, if you choose to put it that way, to give a woman love and respect and comradeship, a clean, strong, healthy body and mind and soul, to be the kind of man she would like the father of her children to be. I believe that is about all. Read Beatrice Forbes-Robinson Hale's chapter on the 'New Man' and you'll understand why Sylvia's money has nothing to do with the case and why your pride is stupid and conceited and old-fashioned, a relic of the time when man expected to be the sole provider and expected his wife to be the chief parasite of the family, when he gloried in his high and mighty superiority and expected her to be meekly grateful and appreciative of said superiority. Now, do you understand?"
"A little," said Phil Lorrimer slowly. "Thank you, Barb. Maybe I have been an idiot, as you say. It takes you to clear away the rubbish in a fellow's mind. Jack tried to tell me the same thing and, well, I guess Sylvia tried, too, only she didn't put it as violently visibly as you have, and I threw the words back in her face like the donkey I am. Barb, do you believe there is any chance she'll forgive me?" he begged anxiously.
"I don't know how much she has to forgive," retorted Barb shortly. "But you had better be about it before her forgiveness is all she has left to give. You can't expect a girl like Sylvia to sit down and wait for a man to get his eyes open like a Maltese kitten. I suppose you know Jack is hot on the trail, and no doubt there are plenty of others here in New York."
"Lord! Don't I know it?" Phil got to his feet. "You needn't rub it in, Barb. I'm scared enough on that score already and jealous as the old one. I'd have liked to drop asphyxiating gas on the moon-faced calf I saw with her last night at the opera, looking as if he owned her. Gee! I've got to get out and let the air circulate through my brains a little. I feel as if I had a hot box up there." He gave his tawny head a thump. "Honest, Barb, I'm much obliged to you for your efficiently brutal treatment. You are some doctor, all right."
And in his genuine gratitude Phil started to seize both Barb's small hands in his, but she backed away, fearful perhaps lest he see more than she wanted, now that his eyes were unsealed in other respects. In a moment he was gone and Barb walked deliberately over to the mirror and surveyed her flushed face and big, excited eyes.
"They say a critic is a man who can't write. I begin to think a reformer--at least, a woman reformer--is a woman who can't have what she wants. Maybe I can get the sacred fire after all. Wonder if Aunt Jo got it--my way."
Barb laughed a little tremulously and then picked up a volume of Ellen Key and sat down to read as hard as she could.
Her brain was very clear that night it seemed. She felt as if she could have written a book about woman herself.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CAUSE AND THE CAREER
For two weeks after that Barb saw nothing of Phil, a fact for which she was exceedingly grateful. The news of Sylvia's engagement had come up from Greendale, and Barb had no wish to see the look which she knew would be in Phil's blue eyes, if he too, had heard, as no doubt he had. Neither had she any desire to say "I told you so," though it was her right. Her warning, though late, had been justified. No one could expect Sylvia Arden to sit down and wait "for a man to get his eyes open like a Maltese kitten." Sylvia had not waited, and Phil's eyes were open at least twenty-four hours too late.
The next time Phil and Barb met was at a public meeting. Miss Murray had been scheduled to speak but at the last moment had succumbed to laryngitis, and Barbara, dismayed and protesting, had been haled into the breach.
It was the first time Barb had ever spoken in public, though she had more than once sat on platforms with her aunt, striving to look dignified and impressive and generally worthy of the "mantle." She was desperately frightened now and when she finally rose to face the audience, which was made up mostly of women of the working-class, her knees shook and her throat felt as if she were trying to swallow the whole Sahara Desert. The upturned faces paralyzed her forces. She wished an earthquake would come and dispose of the audience and bury herself in eternal oblivion. And then suddenly behind those weary-eyed, apathetic faces in the foreground, she saw Phil Lorrimer's friendly, encouraging eyes and some tension within her snapped. She began to talk slowly at first, and then more swiftly, borne along on the current of her own surging thought and emotion. She never knew afterward quite what she said. She seemed to have talked more about happiness than about enfranchisement. Perhaps the women who listened were more interested in happiness than they were in the vote anyway. At all events, they listened respectfully, even eagerly, as Barbara Day painted for them her crystal clear vision of a world where women were to be neither drudges nor toys, but honored co-workers, laboring in joyous self-expression, side by side with men, a world where motherhood should be respected and supported by the nation, where education should be open not to the favored few but to the many, a world where war and brutality and slavery, of soul and body, and all blood guiltiness should be impossible, a world enlightened, free, strong, glad. And this millennium, the women of America were to help to bring about,musthelp if they were to save themselves and their sisters--so Barbara Day told them. "We have to work together. Whatever we are, the one thing we cannot be is indifferent--you and I--we must be awake--wide awake."
And with that Barb had slipped shyly back into her seat amid the applause which greeted her little speech, terribly frightened again now it was all over and wondering if it had not been intolerably presumptuous in her to have spoken at all, much less present so portentous a plea.
There were other speeches but Barb scarcely heard them. She fell into a revery, in which she carried the vision she had shared with these women on and on until it became almost as the new Jerusalem in its transcendent splendor.
And in her vision she seemed to see why it had been given her to desire and to have no fruition of desire, to know the flare of happiness and to know happiness gone out like a wind blown candle, to understand what it was to be acquainted with heartache and loneliness. For all these things would teach her how other women yearned and suffered and were denied. If she herself had found her heart's desire in a good man's protecting love, in the warm glow of her own hearth fires, with her own children in her arms, would she have desired so poignantly to help these others to find life more abundant? By the measure of what she had lost, had she not gained?
"Happiness left us content with happiness but sorrow bids us rise up and seek something divine," says some one, and Barbara Day had come to understand this with many other things. As the old music teacher had said: "Love is the great Master."
The hint of the "Something divine" was still in Barb's eyes when she took Phil's outstretched hand in the doorway where he waited. He had meant to congratulate her on her speech but somehow the words evaporated before the look on her face as she lifted it to him. He saw she had been in some far, high place where he could not follow and the spell was still upon her.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked presently, as they made their way to the Subway together in silence.
"Your aunt sent me word. I am tremendously grateful. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Barb, you made me understand a whole lot of things."
She flashed him a quick, startled glance. She did not wish him to understand too much. But she need not have feared. Phil was as blind as ever so far as she was concerned.
"You are a wonder, Barbie. I'm a little scared of you all at once. I am afraid I haven't been quite appreciating what an angel I was entertaining--or rather letting entertain me."
"Don't. If you mean that silly speech, you needn't talk. I feel as humble as--that puddle," groping for a simile she happened to let her gaze fall upon a pool which a recent shower had left in the gutter.
Phil smiled.
"There's a star reflected in the puddle," he said gently, then dropped the subject as she obviously desired.
As they stood in the crowded Subway later there was little chance for conversation, but Barb noticed that Phil looked worn and tired, almost haggard. Her heart was very tender for him. It didn't matter how much she was hurt. Barb sensed intuitively that women were meant to be hurt. But that Phil should suffer was all but intolerable. She almost hated Sylvia who had brought that look to his eyes. Alas! What a jumble things were! How changed everything was since that happy September week with Sylvia at Arden Hall! She remembered how Suzanne had rallied Sylvia on her fitness for matrimony and charged herself in jest with having designs on Phil Lorrimer. Funny Suzanne! Poor Suzanne! What was she doing?
It happened at the moment Suzanne was sitting by the fire in Miss Murray's apartment, doing absolutely nothing for the first time in many strenuous weeks. There Barbara and Phil found her a few moments later, to their unbounded astonishment.
"Well, aren't you going to greet the returning prodigal?" asked Suzanne, getting up.
Whereupon Barb recovered sufficiently to throw her arms around her friend with a series of little rapturous, inarticulate, affectionate gurgles such as women occasionally indulge in.
When she had finished it was Phil's turn, and though his greeting was more decorous, it was no less hearty.
"Where have I been? I know that is what you are bursting to ask. Sit down all and let me tell you. Dearly beloved, I have been on the road. No, not selling petticoats like the immortal Emma, but in the chorus of 'The Prettiest Princess,' and it's been worth a fortune to me."
"In the chorus! Oh, Suzanne! What did your father and mother say?"
"They haven't said anything up to present speaking, for the very good reason that they don't know what I've been up to. I told them I was traveling. I was. Gee! How I've traveled! I also told them I had been visiting Aunt Selina in Salt Lake City. I did visit Aunt Selina. I spent a week with her while the 'Prettiest Princess' and her retinue delighted the enthusiastic Mormon gentlemen. For Heaven's sake, don't stare so, Barb! I assure you both my virtue and my looks are unimpaired. You can see the latter for yourself."
Suzanne whirled round to the mirror as if to assure herself that her statement was true. Certainly the others could see for themselves that Suzanne had never looked prettier in her life.
Little by little the story came out, delivered with much glee and gusto by the irrepressible Suzanne. That night Phil had found her in the Square she had come to the end of her resources and knew something had to be done at once if she were going to avoid an ignominious return to Norton, Pa., or the sacrifice of her pride to ask for an advance of money. A manager had refused her latest play that day but even as he had done so he had offered her a place in the third company of the musical comedy he was just starting on the road. Suzanne had asked for a night to consider and she had been considering when Phil had interrupted her meditations. In his society, too, she had decided to take the offer. The next day she had become a member of the third company and the next was "on the road."
"Why did you come home? Show bust?"
"Indeed, no. The 'Prettiest Princess' goes on as cheerfully as may be lacking its most charming first row right chorus girl."
"Fired?" still further inquired Phil.
"Nope. Resigned. Came into a fortune and flew back to the Great White Way instanter."
"What kind of a fortune? Anybody died?"
"Thank goodness no. On the contrary. An editor came to life. I've sold a series of stories to the Ultra Urban, two hundred plunks per. 'Melissa on the Road' is the general title, Melissa being, of course, Suzanne, thinly disguised. I thought I might as well make copy out of myself and I did. I've given things so close to the way they really were that every one will swear they are fiction of the most romancy order."
"Are they coming out under your own name?" Barb found breath to ask.
"No. I thought they might begin to appear before I had a chance to explain things, so it seemed better to break the shock, as it were. They are anonymous, which will make them more spicy."
"Good for you!" chuckled Phil. "I'll bet they are spicy all right."
"But the best isn't told. I've written a play--a real play that is going to make the managers sit up on their haunches and beg prettily. And I've got a Star in my crown--I mean in my circle of friends--who wants to play the lead. What do you think of that? Let Broadway stop, look, and listen. Suzanne is coming, Hurray! Hurray!" she chanted. "I'll cause more of a sensation than my predecessor at the bath. Now, tell me the news."
CHAPTER XIX
OH, SUZANNE!
It was not until Phil had gone and Barb and Suzanne were reduced to the intimate kimono and pigtail state that Barb got the full force of the stream of Suzanne's confidences.
"When I think what a fool I was only just last September I could weep, if only it weren't so killingly funny." Suzanne sat up in bed to announce. "I thought because I had a pretty knack of juggling words and a little mother wit I could just walk right in and conquer the literary and dramatic world as easy as anything. The trouble with college is it gives you an over-dose of fine spun theories about life and doesn't teach you a thing about being up against the real article. Maybe it couldn't. I guess we all have to knock that lesson out of the bed rock itself with a chisel or a pick axe. I've tried both ways. I don't know all there is to know yet by a long shot but I know a whole heap more than I did, which is something to be thankful for." And the speaker thumped the pillow with her doubled fist rather as she had thumped Sylvia's hammock cushions the preceding September.
Barb, listening, sighed a little as she wondered if this knowledge of life were as desirable as Suzanne seemed to think. It left one a little tired, she thought, this knowing things.
"I don't know whether you ever guessed," Suzanne rattled on, "how near I was to the end of my rope last November. Phil knew, but he kept my secret, like the good dear he is. By the way, what is the matter with Phil? He looks awfully seedy and sober. Don't know but you do, too, come to think of it. City got on your nerves?"
Suzanne's keen eyes sought her friend's face with an intentness that made the latter turn under pretense of switching off the light.
"Nothing the matter with me," she said cheerfully. "With Phil, of course, it is Sylvia."
"H'm, I suppose so. He certainly looked as jolly as a tombstone when we were talking about her engagement a while ago. Well, why didn't he go in and get her himself? He could have last September easily enough. Anybody could have seen that with half an eye. Gets me why he didn't clinch it that night at Lover's Leap."
Barb made no reply. Even with Suzanne she could not discuss Phil's mischance, especially as Suzanne would be sure to say it served him right. Barb was very pitiful for Phil. She did not want to hear anybody say sharp things about him.
"Go on about yourself," she suggested, getting into bed. "Do you mean you were really hard up, last November?"
"Hard up!" chuckled Suzanne. "My dear, I was not merely badly bent. I was broke. That night I was up here to supper I was as hungry as a wolf. I hadn't been eating much of anything for days."
"Oh, Suzanne! And you never told me!"
"Naturally not. I had made my own bed and I intended to lie on it even if it was a bit rocky. Of course they would have sent me money from home, or Sylvia or any of you would have lent me some. But I wouldn't ask anybody. I set myself to work out my own salvation and I meant to finish up the job."
"You are a wonder, Suzanne! But wasn't the show work dreadful?"
"Not so dreadful as you might think. You have to work like everything, and there is a good deal naturally that you have to shut your eyes and ears to, but it was Life with a capital letter, which was what I was looking for. Heaven knows I got it! Sometimes more than I bargained for." There was a catch in Suzanne's voice which made Barb come a little nearer and put out her hand until it touched her friend's.
"Barbie!" Suzanne's voice was lowered.
"Yes."
"Did you ever think goodness was a sort of relative thing? That some girls are good just negatively because they never have any temptation or opportunity to be anything else?"
"Yes," said Barbara again.
"You don't know what you are really like inside until you suddenly come up against the sharp edges of things. Do you remember when Sylvia said she wanted to get acquainted with herself and I said I knew all about myself. Well, I didn't, that's all. I found out."
"Suzanne!" Barb's voice had a motherly croon to it.
"Don't be scared. I'm all right. I did get scorched a little, and I know fire now when I see it. Who do you suppose came to my rescue when I was singeing?" And Suzanne mentioned the name of a "Star" all America knows and loves--a Star of the first magnitude.
"There was a big snow storm and we were blocked for a day this side of Kansas City. Her company happened to be on the same train ours was. I dug her Chow out of a snow bank for her and we got acquainted. I guess she saw where I was drifting. Anyway, she pulled me back just in season. Never mind who the man was. He doesn't count any more. He never counted very much. I was just dizzy with life. It all frothed and bubbled and sparkled like champagne, and I was a little drunk with it all maybe. She made me see things. She'd been there. She knew."
Barb nestled closer, but did not speak. Did she not understand? Had life not frothed and bubbled and sparkled for her, too? Did she not know how nearly anything could happen when you felt like that? Especially if the man cared or pretended to care. It had been at once her own safety and torture that in her case the man had not cared.
"I saw her again at Denver," continued Suzanne, "and she told me the kind of a play she wanted. And Barb, just like a flash of lightning it came so quick, I knew I was going to try to write a play for her and I did. And she's seen it and she likes it and she wants me to take it to ----. He's her manager--just as soon as I can and tell him she liked it. And I'm going to, to-morrow. Oh, Barbie! If he should like it. But he won't. I mustn't think he's going to. I'd die if I were sure, I'd be so happy."
And to-morrow Suzanne had taken the play to the great manager and had sent in the Star's card bearing the magic caption, "Introducing Miss Morrison." The caption had worked like a charm, swung open doors and fore-shortened delays. It was an incredibly brief space of time before Suzanne found herself in the most inner of all the offices with a pair of shrewd kindly eyes fixed inquiringly upon her.
The manager had glanced over her manuscript with a swift apprising gaze, then glanced over Suzanne in something of the same manner.
"I'll read this, this afternoon," he promised. "I have the greatest confidence in the judgment of that lady," with a nod at the card which lay among the litter on his desk. "If she says this is good, I have no doubt it is. At any rate, we will hope for the best. Lord knows we are looking for something good. I'll telephone you to-morrow if you will leave me your number and address. By the way--" he frowned a little. "Haven't I seen you before somewhere, Miss Morrison?"
Suzanne twinkled.
"I've brought you three plays--all impossible," she said.
"Indeed! Let us hope this one--" he glanced at the manuscript--"will be at least--probable."
"It is more than that," said Suzanne. "It is a dead sure thing. Read it. You will see." And with that parting shot Suzanne withdrew, leaving the manager grinning at her effrontery.
But the next day when the great manager sought to communicate with Suzanne over the telephone, Suzanne, white and silent, was packing to take the next train for Norton, Pa.
A telegram had been sent to Salt Lake City in her aunt's care and followed her back to New York. The telegram had said: "Mother very sick. Come home at once."
"It is Mr. ----" said Miss Murray from the telephone. "Will you speak to him, Suzanne?"
"No," said Suzanne curtly. "Tell him I'm out of town. Tell him anything. I don't care."
Thus did the Nemesis of Suzanne's joyous tilting with the universe overtake her. At the moment when victory seemed well within her hands life had struck back. Like the star of the seer's vision, the star of her ambition fell burning into the waters.
"And the name of the star is called wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood and many died of the waters because they were made bitter."
At the station in Norton, Roger Minot waited with his car to meet Suzanne--a crushed anguished Suzanne, her pertness and her prettiness equally in eclipse. She could only put out her hand to him with a little moan and gasp "Mother?"
"She is holding her own. There is hope--at least a little," he told her. "When did you start?"
"From New York?"
"From Salt Lake City?"
"I haven't been in Salt Lake City for days. I got to New York yesterday. I didn't know. I didn't know. Oh, Roger, it's dreadful! I've been so selfish--so everything that is horrid."
Roger Minot looked straight ahead of him and said nothing. Perhaps he knew it was for the good of Suzanne's soul to taste the whole acrid cup of her remorse.
But as they neared the parsonage his heart was smitten with pity. Suzanne looked so wan and grief-stricken and subdued, so utterly unlike the Suzanne he knew, all sparkles and ripples and laughter, like a little shallow stream running along through sunshine. The hand which was not busy at the wheel closed over Suzanne's.
"Don't give up, little girl. Maybe it will come out right, after all. Anyway, remember I'm right here if you need me."
Suzanne uttered a sound which was a little bit like a sob. When, indeed, had Roger not been right there when she needed him? though she had treated him as the very dust beneath her feet. Dear Roger! And with an impulse of penitent tenderness she gave back the pressure of his hand.
And then in a moment they were at home, where the chairs still stood stiff and angular against the wall, though up there in a quiet room above the hand that had put them in their places lay very still and white. Suzanne's mother was very sick indeed. It was she, after all, and not her willful little daughter that had pulled the family out of its comfortable rut and cast a sad spell of differentness upon the household. Suzanne had stayed away but sickness had come in and another darker guest waited outside the door, his shadow already on the threshold. Poor Suzanne! The waters were made bitter, indeed, at the falling of her star.