XXV.—The Robeson Will
When people are busy and happy the years may go by like a dream. So the months rolled around and brought little Tony past the third anniversary of his birth, and into another summer of lusty development. Except to the growing child, however, time seemed to bring slight changes to the little home under whose roof he grew. The mistress thereof lost no charm either for her husband or her friends—Anthony indeed insisted that she grew younger; certainly, as time taught her new lessons without laying hands upon her beauty, she gained attractiveness in every way.
“You look as much like a girl as ever,” Anthony said to her one morning, as dressed for a trip into town she came out upon the porch where he and little Tony were frolicing together.
“You had ever a sweetly blarneying tongue,” said she, and bestowed a parting caress impartially upon both the personsbefore her. “I feel a bit guilty at making a nursemaid of you for even one morning of your vacation, but——”
“That’s all right. Do your errands with an easy conscience. I’ll enjoy looking after the boy, and am rather glad your usual little maid is away. That’s one thing my vacation is for—to get upon a basis of mutual understanding and confidence with my son. We see too little of each other.”
So Juliet caught the early car, and left the two male Robesons together, father and son, waving good-bye to her from the porch. When she was out of sight the elder Robeson turned to the younger.
“Now, son,” he said, “I’m going to mow the lawn. What are you going to do?”
“I is going to mow lawn, too,” announced Tony, Junior, with decision.
“All right, sir. Here we are. Get in front of me and mind you push hard. That’s the stuff!”
All went joyously for ten minutes. Then little Tony wriggled out from between his father’s arms and went over to the porch step. He sat down and crossed two fat legs. He leaned his head upon his hand, his elbow on his knee, and watched withserious eyes the progress of the lawn-mower three times across before he said wistfully:
“Favver, I wis’ you’d p’ay wiv me.”
“When I get this job done perhaps I will,” said Anthony, and made the grass fly merrily. Presently he put away the lawn-mower, and stood looking down at the sturdy little figure in the blue Russian blouse. “What do you want to play?” he asked. Tony’s face lit up.
“Le’s play fire-endjun,” he proposed enthusiastically.
“Where shall we play the fire is?”
“Le’s have weal fire,” said Tony eagerly.
“Real fire? Well, I don’t know about that, son,” his father responded doubtfully. “Young persons of three are not considered old enough to play with the real thing. Won’t make believe do just as well?”
“No, no—weal fire,” repeated the child. “Le’s put it out wiv sqi’yt watto. P’ease, favver—p’ease!”
“Sqi’wt watto,” repeated Anthony, laughing. “What do you mean by——? Oh, I see——” as Tony demonstrated his meaning by running to the garden hose which remained attached to a hydrant behind the house. “Well, son—if I letyou have a real fire and put it out with real water, will you promise me never to try anything of that sort by yourself?”
Tony walked over to his father and laid a little brown fist in Anthony’s. “Aw wight,” he said solemnly. Anthony looked down at the clasped hands and smiled at the serious uplifted face. “Is that the way mother teaches you to promise her?” he asked, with interest.
Tony nodded. “Aw wight,” he said. “Come on. Le’s make fire!”
The fire was made, out of a packing-box brought up from the cellar. It burned realistically down by the orchard, and was only discovered by chance when Anthony Robeson, Junior, happened to glance that way.
“Fire!—fire!” he shouted, and alarmed the fire company, who, as fire companies should be, were ready to start on the instant. The hose-cart, propelled by a pair of stout legs, made a gallant dash down the edge of the garden, followed by the hook-and-ladder company, their equipment just three feet long. It took energetic and skilful work to quench the conflagration, which raged furiously and made plenty of goodblack smoke. The fire chief rushed dramatically about, ordering his men with ringing commands. Once he stubbed his bare toe and fell, and for a moment it looked as though he must cry, but like the brave fellow that he was he smothered his pain behind an uplifted elbow, and in a moment was again in the thick of the fray. His men obeyed him with admirable promptitude, although, contrary to the usual custom of fire chiefs, he himself took hold of the hose and poured its volume upon the blazing structure.
When the fire was out the chief, breathless, his blue blouse bearing the marks of the encounter with flood and flame, sat down upon the overturned hose-cart and beamed upon his company.
“Vat was awful nice fire,” he said. “Le’s have anuver.”
“Another? Oh, no,” protested the company, hastily. “No more of that just now. Pick up your hook-and-ladder wagon and put it back where it belongs. I’ll see to the hose.”
Anthony gently displaced the fire chief and rolled away the hose. Then he looked back down the garden and saw his sonpoking among the ruins of the fire. “Come here, Tony,” he called, “and bring the hook-and-ladder.”
Tony came slowly, but without the toy wagon. Anthony stood still. When the boy reached him he said, “Why didn’t you bring the hook-and-ladder cart?”
“’Cause I’m ve chief,” Tony responded gravely. “My mens’ll bring ve cart.”
“Your men aren’t there. You’ll have to bring it yourself.”
Tony shook his head. “I’m ve chief,” he repeated, and looked his father in the eye. Anthony understood. It was not the first time. There were moments in one’s experience with Anthony Robeson, Junior, when one seemed to encounter a deadlock in the child’s will. Reasoning and commands were apt at such times to be alike futile. The odd thing about it was that it was impossible to predict when these moments were at hand. They arose without warning, when the boy was apparently in the best of tempers, and they did not seem to be the result of any previous mismanagement on the part of those in authority over him.
Of one point Anthony, Senior, was sure.The child, like all children, and possibly more than most, possessed a vivid imagination. When he announced himself to be a fire chief, there could be no question that he believed himself to be for the time that which he pretended to be. His father understood, therefore, that to make progress with the boy it was necessary to get back to the standpoint of reality before commands could be expected to take hold. So he sat down on a rustic seat near Juliet’s roses and spoke in a pleasantly matter-of-fact way.
“Yes, you’ve been a fire chief, son, and a good one. That was a great game. But the game is over now, and you’re not a fire chief any more. You’re Tony Robeson, and the little hook-and-ladder cart is your plaything. Father wants you to bring it here and put it in its place in the house. It looks a little bit like rain, and the cart mustn’t be left out to get wet. See?”
But Tony still shook his head. “My men’ll put it in,” he said, with calmness undisturbed.
“You haven’t any men. You played there were some, but the play is over andthere aren’t any men. If you don’t put the cart in it may get wet.”
“I’m ve chief,” said little Tony. “Chiefs don’t draw carts.”
“When they’ve turned back to little boys they do. You’ve turned back to a little boy.”
“No, I hasn’t,” said Tony, and his eyes met his father’s unflinchingly. “I’s going to be a chief all ve time.”
The argument seemed unanswerable. Anthony considered swiftly what to do. He studied the grave brown eyes an instant in silence, their beauty and the inflexibility in their depths appealing to him with equal force. He loved the tough little will. He recognised it as his own—the same powerful quality which had brought him thus far on the road to fortune after being landed at the furthermost end from the goal. He would not for worlds deal with his son’s will in any but the way which should seem to him wisest.
He rose from his seat. He spoke quietly but with force. “Very well,” he said. “If you’re still a fire chief, of course you’re too big to play. I’m much obliged to you for putting out my fire. But now that it’sout I don’t want your hook-and-ladder in my garden any longer. When your men take it away I shall be glad. But of course we can’t play any more till you stop being a fire chief and the hook-and-ladder is back in its corner in the nursery. Good-bye. When you are ready to be Tony Robeson again, you’ll find me in my den.”
He smiled at his son and walked away. Tony watched him go. Tony’s hands were clasped behind his back, his legs planted wide apart.
Anthony, Senior, found it difficult to remain in the den. He was obliged to keep track of a small figure in a blue blouse from whichever of the various windows commanded the doings of that young person. He perceived that the fire chief was still holding dominion over the scene.
At the end of an hour small footsteps were heard approaching. Anthony looked up from the letter he was attempting to write. “Favver, may I have a bread and butter?” asked a pleasant voice. Anthony turned about in his chair.
“Is the hook-and-ladder in the nursery?” he inquired gravely.
Tony shook his head.
“Oh, then you are still the fire chief. Fire chiefs go to the hotel for their bread and butter. I haven’t any bread and butter for the fire chief.”
He turned back to his desk. The small figure in the doorway stood still a moment, then the footsteps were heard retreating. Five minutes later, Anthony, looking out, saw Tony careering about the garden on a hobby-horse.
“Obstinate little duffer,” he said affectionately to himself. “He’s playing go to the hotel, I suppose. Perhaps when that imagination of his gets to work at hypothetical bread and butter he’ll find the reality preferable to the fancy.”
In a short time Anthony again reconnoitred. The garden was empty. He looked out at the front of the house. No small figure in blue was to be seen. He went out and took a turn about the place. He called the boy; there was no response. From past experience and from the statements of Juliet and the young girls of the neighbourhood, whom, at various times, she was in the habit of engaging to assist her in the oversight of the child at his play, he knew that Tony had a trick ofgetting himself out of sight in an incredibly brief space of time.
“As a fire chief he may consider himself free to do what he pleases,” said Anthony to himself, and set about a thorough search of the place, having no doubt that at any moment he should come upon the boy carrying out the details of his imaginary vocation. After a time he went back into the house and scoured it from top to bottom. And when, even here, there was to be discovered no trace of the child, he began to feel a slight uneasiness.
There was no source of immediate danger to a stray child in the neighbourhood, of which he was aware, except the electric line, and little Tony had never manifested the slightest inclination to approach this by himself. There were no open ponds, no traps of any kind for the incautious feet of a three-year-old. Everybody knew Tony, and everybody admired and loved him, so that, as Anthony took up his hat and started upon a more extended search, he had no doubt whatever of finding the runaway without delay.
In a very short time it became a rousing of the neighbourhood. It was Saturday,and all the children who knew Tony were at hand. They were soon eagerly searching for him near and far, without finding the slightest trace of his passing. Anthony, now thoroughly alarmed, telephoned in every direction, warned every police station in the city, and took every possible step for the discovery of the child. It occurred to him with tremendous force that the boy might have been stolen. Such things did happen. It seemed almost the only way to account for such a sudden and mysterious disappearance.
Before it seemed possible two hours had slipped past. And now, on every car which whirled by the corner, Anthony began to expect Juliet. He dreaded yet longed to see her. He turned cold at the thought of telling her the situation, yet at the same time he felt as if she might have some sort of a solution ready which nobody else had thought of. And while, still searching over and over the entire ground, he kept watch of the arriving cars, he saw his wife suddenly appear. He went to meet her.
“What is it?” she said, the instant her eye met his.
“I think it’s all right, dear,” he told her, as quietly as he could, “but somehow we can’t find Tony. He disappeared during five minutes when I was in the house—too short a time for him to have got very far away, but—we can’t find him. Do you think he may be hiding? Does he ever hide himself so effectually as that?”
The bright colour in her face had slipped out of it on the instant, for he could not keep the anxiety out of his voice. But she said no word of reproach, nor did she lose command of herself in any way.
“How long has he been gone?” she asked, going straight toward the house, Anthony close behind her.
“I think—I am afraid—nearly two hours. I will tell you what happened. It is possible something I said is responsible for all this, though I don’t know.”
She was going swiftly about the house, as he told her the story of his attempt to teach the boy a lesson, and she was listening closely to every word as she examined for herself each nook and corner. She disclosed several possible hiding places of which Anthony had not thought, explaining that Tony knew them all and sometimes betookhimself to them in the course of various games. The two came out upon the porch, and Juliet stood still, thinking.
“You have done everything to intercept him, if he should really have—got far away?”
“Everything I can think of, except start out myself. I am ready to do that, if you think best.”
“Not until I have gone over the neighbourhood myself. I don’t believe he is far away—I believe he is near. He may have heard every call you and the children have made, and wouldn’t answer. If by any chance his pride has been a little hurt, he is very likely to do this sort of thing. Wait—have you looked—I wonder if the children know——”
She was off without stopping to explain, through the garden and down the old willow-bordered path by the brook. Anthony followed. “I’ve been down here a dozen times,” he called. “The brook is too shallow to hurt him, and he’s certainly not anywhere on it within a mile. The children have been all over the ground.”
But Juliet did not pause. She ran along the path for some distance, then turnedabruptly at a point where an abandoned lot filled with stumps joined the area by the brook. She made her swift way among these stumps, Anthony following, his hope rising as he noted the directness of his wife’s aim. At the biggest stump she came to a standstill, carefully swung out-ward like a door a great slab of bark, and disclosed a hollow. The sunlight streamed in upon a little heap of blue, and a tangled brown mass of hair. Anthony Robeson, Junior, lay fast asleep in his cunningly devised retreat.
Without a word his father stood looking down at the boy’s flushed cheeks. Then he turned to Juliet, standing beside him, smiling through the tears which had not come until the anxiety was past. His own eyes were wet.
“That was a bad scare,” he said softly. “Thank God it’s over.”
Then he stooped and gently lifted the fire chief and carried him home without waking him. Twenty children flocked joyfully from all about to see, and hushed their shouts of congratulation at Juliet’s smiling warning.
Anthony went alone down the gardento the place where the hook-and-ladder cart had stood. It was still there. He stood and looked at it, his eyes very tender but his lips firm. “The little chap didn’t give in,” he said to himself. “It’s going to be hard to make him, but for the sake of the Robeson will I think we’ll have to take up the job where we left it. I’d mightily like to flunk the whole business now, but I should be a pretty weak sort of a beggar if I did.”
When little Tony had wakened from his nap, and had been washed and brushed and fed, and made fresh in a clean frock, his mother brought him to his father.
“Is this Tony Robeson?” Anthony asked soberly. Tony considered for a moment, then shook his head.
“I’s ve fire chief,” he said, with polite stubbornness.
“Have your men put away the hook-and-ladder cart?”
“No, favver.”
“Are they going to do it?”
“I didn’t tell vem to.”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t want to.”
“Listen, son,” said Anthony. “I couldmake the fire chief put away the cart. I’m stronger than he is, you know. I could make him walk out to where it lies in the garden, and I could make his hands pick it up and carry it into the house, and then it would be done.—Don’t you think I could?”
Tony considered. “Es, I fink ’ou could,” he admitted. Evidently the question was one he could reflect upon from the standpoint of the outsider.
“But I don’t want to do that. I want Tony Robeson to put the cart away because his father asks him to do it. Don’t you think he ought to do that?”
“I isn’t Tony Robeson, I’se ve fire chief.”
“Were you the fire chief when you woke up, and mother washed you and dressed you and gave you your lunch? I don’t think she thought you were. If you had been the fire chief she would have left you to take care of yourself.”
Tony thought about it. “I dess I’se Tony wiv muvver,” he said.
“Then you aren’t Tony with me?”
The thick locks shook vehemently in the sir with the negative response. “I said Iwas ve fire chief, and I’se got tobeve fire chief,” he reiterated.
Without question it was a battle of wills. But Anthony’s mind was made up. For lack of time to deal with them previous similar issues had been dodged in various ways, compromises had been effected. It was plain that argument and reasoning, the wiles of the affectionately wise adversary who does not want to bring the matter to a direct conflict, had been tried. Anthony could see no way out except to dominate the child by the force of his own resolute character. It was not the way by which he wanted to obtain the mastery, but it was becoming plain to him that, in this case, at least, it was the only way left.
His face grew stern all at once, his eyes, though still kind, met his son’s with determination. “Tony,” he said very gravely—and there was a new quality in his tone to which the child was not accustomed—“You are not the fire chief now. You are Tony Robeson.I shall not let you be the fire chief any longer.Do you understand?”
There was no threat in the words, only a decisiveness of the sort before whichmen give way, because they see that there is no alternative. Tony stared into his father’s eyes curiously. His own grew big with wonder, with something which was not alarm, but akin to it. He gazed and gazed, as if fascinated. Anthony’s look held his; the man’s powerful eyes did not flinch—neither did the boy’s. It is possible that both pulses quickened a beat.
Little Tony drew his eyes away at last, turned and started for the door. Silently Anthony watched him as he reached for the knob, turned again, and looked back at his father. On the very threshold the child stood still and stared back. His brown eyes filled, his red lips quivered. The stern face which watched his melted into a winning smile, and Anthony held out his arms. An instant longer, and his son had run across the floor and flung himself into them.
When the childish storm of tears had quieted, and several big hugs had been exchanged, Anthony set the boy down upon the floor and took his hand. Silently the two walked out of the house and down the garden. The hook-and-ladder cart stoodpatiently waiting, just where it had waited all day. Little Tony ran to it and picked it up. Over his exquisite face broke the first smile that had been seen there since the earliest disregarded command of the morning.
“Ve fire chief’s gone,” he said. “He was a bad fire chief.”
So together the man and the boy escorted the hook-and-ladder cart to the nursery, and backed it carefully into its stall, between the milk wagon and the automobile. Then the child went to his play. But the man drew a long breath.
“I would rather manage a hundred striking workmen,” he said to himself with emphasis.
XXVI.—On Guard
While little Tony had been growing, waxing strong and sturdy: while Juliet had been tending and training him, learning, as every mother does, more than she could impart: Anthony, in his place, had not stood still. The strength and determination he had from the first hour put into his daily work had begun to tell. His position in a great mercantile establishment had steadily advanced as he had made himself more and more indispensable to its heads.
Cathcart, the successful architect, began to talk about a new home for the man into whose hands Henderson and Henderson were putting large interests to manage for them, and whose salary, he asserted, must now justify, indeed call for, life under more ideal surroundings than the little home in the unfashionable suburb which poverty had at first made necessary.
“Let me draw some plans for you,” urged Cathcart, one evening in June, whenhe had run out to see his friend. Juliet was by chance away, and Cathcart took advantage of this to call Anthony’s attention, in a politely frank fashion, to the shortcomings of his present residence. “It’s all right in its way,” he said, standing upon a corner of the lawn with Anthony, and surveying the house critically. “Mrs. Robeson certainly deserves full credit for the admirable way in which she restored the old house and added just the changes in keeping with its possibilities. I’ve always said it couldn’t have been better done, with the means you’ve told me you were able to put at her disposal. But the place is too small for you now.”
“I don’t think we feel it so,” said Anthony tentatively, strolling beside Cathcart along the edge of the lawn, his hands in his pockets, lifting friendly eyes at the little house. “Since we put in the bathroom—that small room off the upper hall, you know—and added the nursery and den, we’re very comfortable. The furnace keeps us warm as toast, and we’re soon to have the water system out here, so we won’t have to depend upon our present expedients.I’m fond of the place, and I’m confident Mrs. Robeson is devoted to it.”
“I can understand that,” agreed Cathcart. “Of course, the spot where you began life together will always have its charm for you both—in fact the sentiment of the matter may blind you to the real inadequacies of the place for a man in your position.”
“My position isn’t so stable that I want to build a marble palace on it yet,” said Anthony, a humorous twinkle in his eye. He enjoyed watching another man manœuvre for his favourable hearing of a scheme. It was an art in which he was himself accomplished; it was one of the points of his value to Henderson and Henderson.
“Everybody knows that you’re in a fair way to become head man with the Hendersons,” said Cathcart, “and everybody also knows that you might as well have struck a gold-mine. It’s superb, the way you have come into the confidence of those old conservatives.”
“That’s all well enough; but I don’t see that it entails upon me the duty of laying out all I’ve saved on a new house. Iknow what you fellows are—when you begin to draw plans your love of the ideal runs away with the other man’s pocketbook.”
“Not at all,” declared Cathcart. “Particularly when he’s a friend and you understand just what he can afford to do.”
“Why don’t you talk about enlarging the old house? That’s much more likely to appeal to my desires.”
The two had reached the back of the house and were close by the kitchen windows. Cathcart reached up and took hold of a sill. With a strong hand he wrenched and pounded about the window, until he succeeded in showing that it was old and uncertain.
“That’s why,” he said, dusting his hand with his handkerchief. “The house is old—fairly rotten in places. The minute you began to enlarge it in any ambitious way you’d find it would be cheaper to tear it down and begin again. But the site, Robeson—the site isn’t desirable. The place is respectable enough, but it has no future. The good building is all going south, not north, of the city. You don’t want to spend a lot of money here—you couldn’t sell out except at a loss.”
“Your arguments are good, very good,” admitted Anthony; “so good that I’d like to put you on your mettle to draw me a set of plans for just the sort of thing you think I ought to have—or Mrs. Robeson ought to have, for she’s the one to be considered. Anything will do for me. I’ll let you do this—on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“That you also do your level best to demonstrate to me what a clever man and an artist of your proportions could make out of this house, provided he really wanted to show the extent of his ability. Now, that’s fair. If you really care to convince me you won’t fool with this proposition, you’ll make a study of the one problem as thoroughly as you do of the other, and let me decide the case on its merits. If I thought you weren’t giving the old house a fair chance I should take up its cause out of pure affection.”
He smiled at Cathcart’s discontented face with so brilliant a good humour that the architect cleared up.
“By Jove, Robeson,” he said, “I think I see what endears you to the Hendersons. I wouldn’t have said you could have inducedme to try my hand at the old house, but I’ll be hanged if I don’t follow your instructions to the letter—and win out, too.”
“Good,” said Anthony. “And don’t mention it to my wife. We’ll keep it for a surprise; and I promise you when the time comes I won’t prejudice her in any way.”
Cathcart drew out a notebook and pencil and entered some memoranda on the spot, while Anthony, coming up on the piazza of the dining-room, laid upon the old Dutch house-door a hand which seemed to caress it. He was wondering if by any possible magic Cathcart could create, in the rarest abode in the world, a new door which he should ever care to enter as he now cared to enter this.
“I think,” said Juliet decidedly, “you’re wrong about it.”
“And I know,” returned Anthony with emphasis, “that you are.”
The two faced each other. They were walking through a short stretch of woodland, which lay as yet untouched by the hand of suburban property owners. Itwas a favourite ground for the diversions of the Robesons, when they had not time to spend in getting farther away. They had been strolling through it now, in the early June evening, discussing a matter relative to the investment of a certain moderate sum of money which had come into Anthony’s hands. It developed that their ideas about it differed radically.
“It’s not safe to do as you propose,” said Juliet.
“To do what you propose would be only one better than tying it up in an old stocking—or putting it away in the coffee pot. It’s essentially a woman’s plan—no man would do it the honour of considering it a moment.”
Juliet flushed brilliantly. Even in Anthony’s cheek the colour rose a little. Their eyes met with a challenge.
“Very well,” said Juliet proudly. “I’ll offer no more woman’s plans. Invest the money as you like. Then, when you’ve lost it——”
Anthony’s eyes flashed. “When I’ve lost it——” he began, and turned away with a gesture of impatience. Then hestopped short. “That isn’t like you,” he said.
Juliet stared at him an instant. Then she shut her lips together and walked on in silence. Anthony shut his lips together also. It was not their habit to indulge in sharp altercation. While both had decided ideas about things, both were also much too well bred to be willing to allow differences of opinion—which must arise as inevitably as two human beings live under the same roof—to degenerate into the deplorable thing commonly referred to as a quarrel.
When they had proceeded a few rods Juliet turned abruptly off from the path and picked up from the ground a slender straight stick, evidently cut and trimmed by some boy and then thrown aside. She looked about her and after some search found another, of similar size, untrimmed. She held out the latter to Anthony. He accepted it with a look of surprise. Then she walked into the path in front of him, stood stiff and straight, her small heels together, and made him the fencer’s salute. “On guard!” she cried.
His lips relaxing, Anthony grasped hisstick and fell into position. A moment more and two accomplished fencers were engaged in close combat.
Juliet happened to be wearing a trim linen skirt of short walking length, which impeded her movements as slightly as anything not strictly adapted to the exercise could do. Although her fencing lessons were some years past, the paraphernalia belonging both to herself and Anthony were in the house, and an occasional bout with the masks and foils was a means of exercise and diversion which both thoroughly enjoyed. Although Juliet was no match for the superior skill and endurance of her husband, she was nevertheless no mean antagonist, and her alertness of eye and hand usually gave him sufficient to do to make the encounter a stimulating one.
On the present occasion Anthony, challenged to combat with his coat and cuffs on, and wielding the more awkward weapon of the two impromptu foils, found himself distinctly at a disadvantage. Moreover, he was at the moment not precisely in the mood for fun, and he began to defend himself with a somewhat lazy indifference. After a minute or two, however, he discoveredthat his adversary’s slightly ruffled temper was inspiring her hand and wrist to distinctly effective work, and he found himself forced to look to his methods.
Attack and parade, disengagement and thrust—the battle was waged over the uneven ground of the wood. And presently Anthony discovered that the richly glowing face opposite his was a smiling one. The absurdity of the match struck him irresistibly and he smiled in return. He tripped a little over an obtruding oak-root, and Juliet took advantage of her opportunity to press him hard. He fended off the attack and himself assumed the aggressive. An instant more and he had disarmed her and had thrown his own stick flying after hers. Both were laughing heartily enough.
“Forgive the trick,” cried Anthony. “A man must disarm his wife when she becomes his enemy.”
Breathless, Juliet sank upon a small knoll, her hand at her side. “If I’d been dressed for it—” she panted.
“You need coaching on your time thrusts, but you gave me plenty to do as it was,” Anthony admitted. “More than that,you’ve presented me with a chance to recover my equilibrium. I was hot inside before. Now it’s all on the outside.”
He looked down at her affectionately. She smiled back. “I was crosser than sticks,” she said. “I really can’t imagine why, now. I apologise.”
“So do I.” He threw himself down on the ground at her feet, lay flat on his back, his clasped hands behind his head, and gazed up into the tree-tops.
“I’ll take your advice into careful consideration,” said he.
“I know you won’t do anything rash,” said she, and they both laughed again.
“How much more diplomatic that sort of talk is,” he observed. “Why do we ever allow ourselves to use any other?”
“Because we are human, I suppose.” Juliet was putting a mass of waving brown hair, disordered by the fight, into shape again. “It isn’t nice. We don’t do it often. To-night you came home tired, and found a wife who had been entertaining people from town all the afternoon. But it’s all right now, isn’t it?”
She bent forward, and Anthony took her outstretched hand in his own and gaveit a grip which made it sting. He began to whistle cheerfully.
“Should we be happier if we never disagreed?” she asked thoughtfully.
The whistle stopped. “Jupiter, no! I want a thinking being to talk things over with, not a mental pincushion.”
“Thank you.—Isn’t it lovely here?”
“Delightful.—Julie, do you know we’ll have been married five years next September?”
“It doesn’t seem possible.”
“I shouldn’t know it, to look at you,” he observed. He rolled upon his left side and regarded her from under intent brows. “You haven’t grown a day older.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“It’s meant for one. Do you know you’re a beauty?”
“I never was one and never shall be,” she answered laughing, but she could not object to the obvious sincerity of his opinion as he delivered it.
“You’re near enough to satisfy me. I’d rather have your good looks than all the—Well, I sat in front of a newly married pair on the way home to-night—that fellow Scrivener and his bride.She’swhatpeople call a raving beauty, I suppose. I wouldn’t have her in the house at a dollar an hour. She’s a whiner. Had him doing something to satisfy her whim every minute. I heard him trying to tell her about something that interested him, but she couldn’t take time from herself to listen. His voice had a note of fatigue in it, already, or I’m not Robeson. I tell you, Juliet—that’s the sort of thing that makes a bachelor vow to stay single, and he can’t be blamed.”
“Suppose a bachelor had overheard us half an hour ago?”
“I’m glad none did—but if he had it wouldn’t have disgusted him the way the other sort of thing did me to-day. A brisk little altercation is nothing, with unlimited hours of friendliness and understanding before and after. But a perpetual drizzle of fault finding and exactions—would make a fellow go hang himself. Mrs. Robeson, do you know, you’re a very exceptional young person?”
“In what way, sir?”
“Whatever you do, you never nag. I’ve an awful suspicion that Judith Carey nags. You know how to let a man alonewhen he’s in the mood for being alone. She never does. Carey had me out there not long ago, for what he called a quiet, confidential talk on some business matters. We went into what is supposed to be his private room and shut the door. Probably she came to that door not less than twelve times during that two hours. She called Carey away on every sort of pretext. Once she got him to do a stroke of work for her that took up at least ten minutes neither of us could spare. And she looked like a thundercloud every time I caught a glimpse of her face. Cæsar!—think of having to live with that sort of person. No wonder Carey looks old before his time.”
“It’s certainly unfortunate. But I’m not an exception, Tony. There are plenty of women who know when to keep out of the way.”
“Well, then, they’re erratic on some other line, that’s all. You’re absolutely the only thoroughly sweet and sane woman I know.”
“My dear boy! Remember how snappish I was just this evening.”
“I was grouchy enough to match it. I tell you, Julie—the women who don’t talk you to death on every subject, importantor trivial, bore you with idiotic questions or impertinence about your affairs. How do I know so much about ’em? My dear, dozens of them come into the office every day, and Mr. Henderson has acquired a habit lately of turning them all over to me. I earn a double salary every hour I spend that way—wish I could put in a demand for it. Speaking of salaries, dear”—Anthony suddenly sat up—“I’ve no right to be grouchy, for I’m promised another advance next month.”
“Splendid!” She put out her hand, and the two shook hands vigorously again, like the pair of comrades they were.
“Juliet,” said her husband, watching her face closely. “It’s been a happy five years, hasn’t it?”
“A happy five years, Tony.”
“Do you mean it?” He smiled at her. “You’ve never been sorry?” Then he got to his feet and held out his hand again to help her up. “The mortal combat we engaged in gave you a magnificent colour,” he commented, and passed affectionate fingers across the smooth cheek near his shoulder. “Sweetheart——” he drew her into his arms—“I may fence with you oncein a while with sharp words for weapons, but—do you know how I love you?”
“I wonder why?”
“It’s strange, isn’t it?—after all these years. To be really up-to-date, we should long since have become interested each in some other——”
A hand came gently but effectually upon his mouth. He kissed the hand. “No, I won’t say it. It’s a cynical philosophy, and I’ll not take its language on my lips—not with my wife in my arms, giving the lie to that sort of thing. Julie, we’re not sentimentalists because we still care——”
“Who thinks we are?”
“Plenty of envious skeptics, I’ll wager. I see it in their green-eyed glances. They can’t believe it’s genuine. Dear—is it genuine? Look up, and tell me.”
She looked up, and seeing his heart in his eyes, met his deep caress with a tenderness which told him more than she could have put into the words she suddenly found it impossible to speak.
XXVII.—Lockwood Pays a Call
“Did you know Roger Barnes was back?” asked Wayne Carey of Anthony Robeson, on the evening of the twenty-fifth of June, as the two met on the street corner from which Anthony was to take his car. Electrics ran within a few rods of his home now, but they ran only at fifteen-minute intervals and were difficult to catch.
“No. To stay this time, I hope?”
“Off again to-morrow. Never saw such a fellow—restless as a fish. Been working all winter in Vienna—off to-morrow on the Overland Limited to sail Saturday for Hongkong. Goes to do a special operation on the Emperor’s brother or some swell of the sort. He’s been doing some mighty slick operating, according to the medical review I ran across in a throat specialist’s office.”
“I must see him. Where is he?”
“At your house now, more than likely. Said he’d got to see you, and if you haven’t seen him yet you’re sure to before he goesto-morrow night. By the way, Anthony, do you know what we heard lately about Rachel Redding—Huntington? That she wasn’t married to Huntington till the night he died, almost three years ago.”
Anthony stared.
“Guess it’s straight, too,” pursued Carey. “Queer she should have kept it all this time. Didn’t Juliet hear from her at all?”
“Only once or twice, I believe.”
“Her father and mother both died last winter.”
“Are you sure?”
“The man who told me was a traveller. Said she and Huntington’s mother were coming back to live East again. He was an Eastern man himself—knew Huntington, and got interested when he heard the name out in Arizona. ‘Alexander Huntington‘s’ rather an uncommon name, you know. But what could have been her motive for keeping everything so still?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Anthony, and let Carey talk on by himself till the car came. He was unwilling to discuss Rachel Redding’s affairs on a street corner even with Wayne Carey, because she was Juliet’s friend. But he had an idea as to whyRachel had been so reserved about herself. There were three men in the East whose interest in Huntington’s life or death had not been an altogether unbiased one. He could understand that the girl would not be eager to declare herself free to them, though the fact of Huntington’s death had reached them soon after its occurrence. But this other fact—that she had married him only at the last moment—it was obvious that the sort of girl Rachel Redding was would never make capital out of that strange occurrence, whatever its explanation might be. That Roger Barnes knew nothing of it he was quite certain.
He missed Juliet from the corner where she and the boy usually met him, and hurrying on to the house came upon his wife just as she was leaving.
“Oh, I didn’t realise I was late, dear,” she said, while Anthony swung his little son up to his shoulder, eliciting triumphant shouts as a reward. “Tony, Rachel is here.”
“Rachel?”
“Hush—yes; she’s upstairs, and her window is open. Walk down the orchard with me and I’ll tell you. Her coming, anhour ago, was what made me forget the time.”
“Carey was talking about her this afternoon,” said Anthony, strolling by her side and carrying on a frolic with the boy at the same time. “He’d just heard a singular thing—that she wasn’t married to Huntington till the very night he died.”
“She told me. She’s going away to-night, she insists; but I shall not let her. No, Mr. Huntington wouldn’t let her marry him. After they went away he said he wouldn’t take her unless he got well. Tony, he was a fine character; in our sympathy for Roger Barnes we haven’t appreciated him. It was only at the last that he let her do it. She found out how happy it would make him then, and she would have it so.”
“I’m glad she did—poor fellow. Juliet, Roger Barnes is in town.”
“Really?” Juliet stopped, her breath catching. “Oh, Tony——”
“Came day before yesterday—leaves to-morrow night for Hongkong.”
“Tony!”
Anthony looked down at her, smiling. “There’s a situation for you. Can you beexpected to keep your friendly hands off that possibility?”
“He won’t go away without coming to see us?”
“Most certainly not.”
“Then he will naturally come to-night.”
“It’s more than probable.”
“Tony, I won’t be trying to manage fate—that’s what the doctor calls it—if I keep Rachel here until after——”
“Until after the Overland Limited leaves for San Francisco? Well, fate needs a little assistance once in a while. I think you may legitimately persuade Rachel to stay, if you can. What is her hurry, anyway?”
“I can’t find out, except that I imagine she’s afraid of meeting one of the men she most assuredly would meet if they knew she had come. She thinks Roger Barnes is in Vienna still.”
“She does? Ye gods! I think my knees will begin to tremble if I see their meeting imminent. Come, son, let’s try a race to the house. I’ll give you to the big, crooked apple tree. One—two—three—go!”
Juliet followed more slowly, thinking busily. Rachel had been very decided aboutgoing back into the city that night. Mrs. Huntington, Senior, was with friends, who had begged her daughter’s acceptance of their hospitality, and for the elder woman’s sake she had acquiesced. Rachel was a keeper of promises, Juliet knew. And to tell her of the probability of the doctor’s appearance would be a doubtful means of securing her detention. But if, for any reason, the doctor should fail to appear—Juliet made up her mind that she would give fate her chance until nine o’clock that night. If by that time Barnes had not come——
Juliet looked on eagerly while Anthony greeted Rachel. Her friend had never seemed to her so lovely as now, in her simple black gown, accentuating, as it did, the deep tone of her hair and eyes. Her face had gained in colour and contour in the Arizona climate—its tints were richer. The delicacy of her features was not changed, but their beauty was greater.
“You’ve lived much outdoors, I see,” said Anthony, when dinner was over and the three had gone out upon the porch, “and it’s been good for you.”
“I’ve even slept outdoors,” Rachel told them, “fully half the year; and ridden horseback every day. I can’t quite think how the electrics are going to seem in place of my gallop on Scot. The people on the ranch where we were have simply made me do the things they did. The owner was a dear old gentleman; he gave me Scot. He wanted to send him after me; but nurses have small use for horses, I believe,” she ended, smiling.
“That’s the plan, is it?”
“Yes. It’s what I can do best, I think. I am to enter the training-school the first of July, at the Larchmont Memorial Hospital.”
“I’ll wager tremendous odds you don’t,” thought Anthony, “in spite of that confident tone. If Roger Barnes looks in to-night it’s all up with your plans—or make a bigger fight than even you can do. A man who can’t stay in his own town because you are out of it——”
He was sitting—purposely—where he faced the road. He had considerately offered Rachel a chair with her back to the highway. Juliet was swinging lightly in the hammock behind the vines. Anthony,talking on about Arizona and the Larchmont Memorial, kept an eye on the approach to the house from the corner where visitors always left the car. His watch was rewarded at length by the sight of a figure rapidly turning the corner and making straight for the house.
“Now we’re in for it,” he thought. “From now on the question with Juliet and me will be how we can most gracefully efface ourselves without seeming to do it. If I remember this young person correctly she’s a little difficult to leave unchaperoned against her will.”
Out of the corner of his eye he kept track of the approaching figure. It was coming on at a great pace, and in the twilight could be seen looming taller and taller as it crossed the road and turned in across the lawn, making a short cut according to Barnes’s own fashion, so that the coming footsteps were noiseless, even to the moment when the figure reached the porch itself.
“Now for it,” thought Anthony, feeling as if the curtain were about to ascend on the fourth act of a play, when the third had ended amidst all possible excitement.
“I found the roses blooming just as theyused to do, at the side of the house”—Rachel’s warm, contralto voice was answering a question from Juliet—“only so untended. I think I shall have to come out again before I begin my work, to look after them.”
Anthony did not turn as the step he had been watching for sounded upon the porch. To save his life he could not help keeping his eyes upon Rachel’s face. Rachel herself looked up with the air of the visitor who does not know the guests of the house, and the expression Anthony saw upon her face showed only the slightest possible surprise—certainly no other feeling.
Juliet rose. “Ah, Mr. Lockwood,” she said, with a cordiality, sincere little person though she was, Anthony knew for once she did not feel. “In the dusk I couldn’t be quite sure.”
Lockwood’s eyes instantly turned to Rachel. That he had known in some way whom he was to see was evident from a most unusual agitation in his manner.
“Mrs.—Huntington,” he got out somehow, taking her hand, and staring eagerly down into her face, “I heard you werehome, and I hoped to find you here. I—you are—I am extremely glad——”
Half an hour later Anthony came upon his wife in the darkness of the dining-room. “Oh, you shouldn’t have left them when I was away,” she said. “Little Tony cried out and I had to go. I know Rachel doesn’t want to be left with him to-night.”
“Angels and chaperons defend us,” muttered Anthony. “I can’t stand it forever to feel a man wanting to kill me for staying by him through a meeting like this, after three years. I didn’t know but Lockwood would attempt to throw me off my own porch. Give him a chance—he hasn’t any, anyhow.”
“It’s after nine,” whispered Juliet.
“I know it. Roger’s taking a terrible risk.”
“He doesn’t know she’s here. But I thought he cared enough for us to——”
“That’s what I’ve been so sure of. He’s probably been detained by some case. He’s getting so distinguished, the minute he sets foot in town now the folks with things the matter with them begin to block his path.I hope she knows what she throws over her shoulder if she refuses him now.”
“I don’t see that she’s going to have a chance to refuse him,” mourned Juliet. “Do you think he’d ever forgive us if we let him get away without knowing she was here?”
“Lockwood found it out, somehow. Carey’s safe to tell him if he sees him—and he’s pretty sure to, at Roger’s club.”
“You couldn’t telephone?”
“Where? If he can he’ll come here, if only to get news of her. She’s never let him write to her, has she?”
“He told me she hadn’t when he was here last fall. And she didn’t know where he was.”
“Fellow-conspirator,” whispered Anthony, “we’ll give fate her chance to-night. If she bungles the game we’ll take it into our own hands to-morrow. But I’ve a feeling I’d like to let it happen by itself, if it will.”
When Lockwood had gone—which was not until eleven o’clock, in spite of the way his hosts remained in his vicinity—Rachel stood still upon the porch smiling a little wearily at Juliet.
“My staying all night has been settled for me,” she said. “There was no way to go.”
“Luckily for us,” Juliet answered. “Sit here a little longer, dear. It’s such a perfect night, and I know we shall see little enough of you when you get at work.”
Rachel dropped into the hammock. “I should like to lie here all night,” she said, “and watch the stars until I go to sleep. I’ve done that so many, many nights from under a tent flap.”
All at once she looked up, her eyes widening. Upon the porch step stood a strong figure—as unlike Lockwood’s gracefully slender one as possible. A man’s eyes were gazing steadily down into hers—determined gray eyes, with a light in them. The two faces were plainly visible to each other in the radiance from the open door.