CHAPTER XV"Every heart vibrates to that iron string."
"Every heart vibrates to that iron string."
And Mary's was vibrating to the iron as she plodded up the trail.
There had been much damage done by the storm. Trees were lying across the muddy path; there were washed-out spots, making it necessary to go out of one's way. But Mary did not notice the obstacles further than to make a wide detour. She was thinking, thinking—patching her bits of knowledge together with surmises provided by her vivid imagination.
Beginning with the day when old Becky, looking for Sister Angela, had stolen into the kitchen at Ridge House and demanded "her," Mary patiently fitted her scraps into a pattern as she patched her wonderful quilts.
"Yes; no!" Then a stolid nodding of the head.
The sunset, bye and bye, and then the early shadows, crept up the trail behind the lonely woman plodding along; they seemed to swallow her, and only her quick breathing marked her going.
"I can pay—at last!" She paused and spoke the words aloud.
"Pay back!"
Through the years since her return to The Gap she had saved and saved to return to Doris Fletcher the money advanced to buy the cabin.
Mary had never accepted it as a gift; the cabin could never be really hers until, by the labour of her hands, she had redeemed it.
What matter that her people called her "close" and mean? She knew what she was about, but in her slow, silent way shehad learned, while she laboured apart, to feel an undying gratitude to the woman who had made everything possible for her.
And now she was taking her place beside them who had been her friends. No longer were they "foreigners." Surely Mary had come to realize that quality was not confined to places; it was in the heart and soul, and if anything threatened it, why, then—— Here Mary drew herself up and raised her face to the stars.
She had tears in her eyes, but her mouth drew in a hard line. She felt a burning curiosity rising in her consciousness. What did it all mean? What had it meant back in Ridge House long ago?
But as the burning rose higher and fiercer Mary battled with it.
It was their secret! They must keep it—even from her! So would she pay though they might never know;mustnever know! She would prove herself worthy of the trust they had placed in her; she would even the score and hold danger, whatever the danger was, back. That should be her part to play!
When Mary reached the clearing on Thunder Peak she stood where Nancy had stood the day before and took in the scene.
Two or three times, after her return to The Gap, she had gone to The Peak and searched among the dirt and rubbish for any trace of old Becky. She had come to believe, at last, that the woman was dead—she had never been seen after the death of Sister Angela.
It was years now since Mary had given a thought to the deserted garden and cabin—the clearing was at the trail's end and no one ever took it, for it led nowhere.
But now, to Mary's astonished eyes, the garden appeared almost as well planted as her own, and from the chimney of the tumble-down cabin a lazy curl of smoke rose. Under the dark pine clump the outlines of a narrow mound could be plainly seen, and beside it lay a spade and a spray of withered azaleas.
Mary's throat was dry and painful. People to whom tears are possible never know the agony, but Mary was used to it.
Presently she walked across the open that lay between the edge of the forest and the cabin and stood by the threshold.
The door hung by one hinge, and through the gap Mary saw old Becky! She had hoped against hope that what she had told Nancy might be true, but she was prepared for the worst.
It seemed incredible that this poor, wretched skeleton by the hearth could be Becky—but Mary knew that it was. Back from her wandering the pitiful creature had come—home!
She had come as Mary herself had come—because the call of the hills never dies, but grows with absence.
"Aunt Becky!"
The crone by the hearth paused in her stirring of corn-meal in a pan, but did not turn.
"Aunt Becky!" And then the old woman staggered to her feet and faced Mary.
Not yet was the fire dead in the deep sockets—from out the caverns the last sparks of life were making the eyes terrible.
"Yo'—Mary Allan!" Contempt, more than fear, rang in the tones. "What yo' spyin' on me for, Mary Allan?"
Mary went inside. She was relieved by the fact that Becky knew her—she had feared that she would find no response. She did not intend to question or argue; she meant to control the situation from the start.
"Hit's in the grave 'long o' Zalie!" Becky was on her defence. "Zalie"—here the befogged brain went under a cloud—"Zalie she come a-looking—but hit's in the grave! I tell yo'-all, hit's in the grave!"
The trembling creature wavered in the firelight. She was filled with fear—but of what, who could tell?
Mary's face underwent a marvellous change—it grew tender, wistful.
"Set, Aunt Becky," she said, compassionately, and gently pushed the woman into a deep rocker covered over with adirty quilt; "set and don't be frightened. I ain't come to hurt yo'—I've come to help."
Becky seemed to shrink.
"Hit's in——" she began, but Mary silenced her.
"No hit ain't in the grave! Zalie she knows it—an' I know it!"
"Where is hit—then?" A cunning crept into Becky's cavernous eyes. "Where is hit?"
"Aunt Becky, no one must know! You want it—that way." Inspiration guided Mary, or was it, perhaps, that iron strain, the strong human strain of her kind that led her true? "Zalie, she done come back; not to look for hit, but to keep you from hit!"
The stroke told. Becky shrank farther in the chair.
"Gawd!" she moaned—"it's that lonely! An' the longin' hurts powerful sharp."
Mary's face twitched. Did she not know?
"But hit!"—she whispered—"don't you love hit strong enough, Aunt Becky, to let hit alone, where hit's happy, not knowing?"
There was something majestic about Mary as she kept her eyes upon the old woman while she pleaded with her.
The past came creeping up on the two women by the ashy hearth—it gave Becky strength; it blinded Mary. In the old woman's memory a picture flashed—the picture that once had hung on the wall of Ridge House!
She folded her bony arms over her bosom and panted:
"Yes—I love hit—well enough!" The last hold was loosening. Then:
"It's powerful lonesome—and the cold and hunger bite cruel hard——"
"Aunt Becky, listen to me!" The woman turned her eyes to the speaker, but her thoughts were far, far away.
"I'll come to you, Gawd hearing me; I'll ward off the cold and hunger. I'll come day after day—if you'll leave hit—where it can't ever know."
Suddenly Becky's face grew sharp and cunning; all thatwas tender and human in her faded—self-preservation rose supreme.
"I'll leave hit, Mary Allen," she cackled, "but if yo' tell that hit ain't in the grave 'long o' Zalie all the devils o' hell will watch out for yo' soul!"
Mary was not listening. She rose and mechanically moved about the disordered room. Like a sleep walker she set the rickety furniture in place; she began to gather scraps of food together—hunting, hunting in corners and cupboards. She made some black coffee—rank and evil-smelling it was—and finally she set the strange meal before the old woman.
Becky eyed the repast as one might who fancied that she dreamed. Cautiously she touched the food with her lean fingers, then she clutched it and ate ravenously, desperately fearing that it might disappear.
Mary looked on in divine pity, swaying to and fro, never speaking nor going near.
She was thinking; thinking on ahead. She would make the cabin clean and whole; she would wash and clothe the poor creature now eating like a hungry wolf; she would feed her. Becky should become—hers!
Then Mary's mouth relaxed. She was appropriating, adjusting. Something of her very own at last! Something that would wait for her, watch for her, depend upon her. Something to work for and live for; something upon whom she might pour forth the hidden riches that had all but perished in her soul.
It was midnight when Mary groped her way from the cabin. Becky was asleep on the miserable bed in the corner; she was breathing softly and evenly like a baby.
Outside, the moonlight lay full upon the open spaces and on the little grave under the pine clump. Mary stood, before entering the woods, and raised her head.
"I'm paying—I'm paying back what—I owe," she murmured, and all the wretched company of her early childhood seemed to hold out imploring hands to her. Her father, her mother, the line of miserable brothers and sisters who never had their chance!
Sister Angela came, too, her cross gleaming, her eyes kind and just. Doris Fletcher and her blessed giving; giving of the marvellous chance at last! And lastly, Nancy, with her beautiful face, Nancy who must not be cheated, Nancy who—trusted her! Nancy whomightbe—but no! Mary ran on. She would not know! She must not!
And so it was that the last of the Allans redeemed the debt and silently found peace for her proud heart.
She was released! She had proven herself, though no one must ever know. It was the not knowing that would mark her highest success.
On the morrow Mary went to Ridge House quite her usual reserved self.
Nancy met her with the brightest of smiles.
"Doctor Martin has gone away, Mary," she explained, "and now I will be terribly busy, but next winter—oh! next winter, Mary, Joan will be with us in the dear old house. A letter came to-day—she is going to take lessons from a very great teacher. Do you remember how Joan could sing, Mary? I shall play for her again and be so happy. It's wonderful how happy one can be, Mary, when one isn't afraid and just goes singing ahead. I cannot sing like Joan, but I can scare away fears!"
Mary regarded the girl with a hungry craving in her eyes over which the lids were drawn to a slit. There was a fierce intentness in the gaze: the look of the runner who has almost reached the goal but hears his pursuers close.
CHAPTER XVI"And they planted their feet on the 'Sun Road'."
"And they planted their feet on the 'Sun Road'."
If the spring has a direct and concentrated effect upon a young man's fancy, it must have equal effect upon a young woman's, else the man's would perish and come to look upon the spring as the lean part of the year. Joan had meant all she said when, in the strength and virtue of her youth, she had drawn herself away from Kenneth Raymond and proudly remarked:
"Certainly not! And I am not afraid."
Both statements were sincere and should have brought her peace and satisfaction. They did neither.
Raymond had, apparently, taken her at her word, and sought other places in which to appease his hunger, and Joan turned to Patricia, for Sylvia was called out of town.
That dream of a frieze that had long smouldered in Sylvia's soul had broken bounds and a rich man, erecting a summer home on the Massachusetts coast, having seen some of Sylvia's work, had invited her down to "talk over" the frieze idea.
"And he'll let me do it!" Sylvia had confided breathlessly to Joan as she packed her suitcase. "I can always tell when a thing is going to come true. Now if I had shown him sketches he might not have taken me—but when I cantalkmy pictures all along the walls of his big, sunny room it will be another matter.
"Blue background"—Sylvia was forgetting Joan as she rambled on, punching and jamming her clothing into the case—"and a bit of a story running through the frieze—a kind of sea-nymph search for the Holy Grail—stretching from the door backtothe door. Can't you see it, Joan?"
Joan could not. She was seeing something else. Something daily becoming visualized. A seeking, yearning desire issuing from her soul and trying to find—what?
"You'll have Pat here?" suddenly asked Sylvia. "I'd rather have someone besides Pat, but the others are either away or worse than Pat. You're good for Pat if she isn't for you. You sort of stiffen her up—she told me so. Pat needs whalebone. When her purse gets flat her morals dwindle; mine always get scared stiff. I'll write twice a week, Joan, my lamb, Sunday and Wednesday. I'll be back before long."
And off Sylvia went with her heavy bag and her light heart, and Joan called Patricia up on the telephone.
"All right," Patricia responded, "but if I get homesick for these rooms, I must be free to come."
"Of course," Joan agreed.
Patricia was in a dangerous mood and Joan was vividly alive to impressions.
Patricia was writing verses as a bird carols—just letting them pour out. She was selling them, too, and running out to New Jersey to talk over with Mr. Burke the publication of a book.
"I cannot see," Patricia had said to Sylvia, "why one should feel it necessary to stick to hot, smelly offices when a library, looking out over acres of country, is at one's disposal."
"Is Mrs. Burke there?"
Sylvia had a terrible way of stepping on toes when she was making her point.
"Certainly!" Patricia flung back—it happened that the lady was there for a brief time—"though," Patricia went on, "she doesn't sit on the arm of my chair while styles of paper are considered. You're low-minded, Syl."
Patricia looked so high-minded just then that everyone laughed at Sylvia's expense.
And Joan, because she was young as the year was, kept remembering the eyes, and feeling the touch of Kenneth Raymond. There were no words to explain her mood, butshe remembered the sound of his voice—and she wanted to see him again!
She believed her emotions were grounded upon the fact that she knew a good deal about Raymond—more than he suspected. He was of Aunt Doris's safe and clean world. He was only dipping into a pool outside of his own legitimate preserves to touch, as he thought, a lily that should not be there!
Raymond had suggested this to Joan. He fancied, from his conservative limitations, that the Brier Bush was rather a dubious pool!
"If he only knew!" Joan thought, and was glad that he did not. How humdrum it all would have been had he known! As it was, the wonderful feeling she had was laid upon a very safe foundation—not even Aunt Doris or Sylvia could object—and she would tell them all about it some day, and it would be part of the free, happy life and a proof that no harm can come where one understands the situation and has high motives.
But Raymond did not come to the Brier Bush, and so Joan had to conclude that he had not that unnamable emotion which was taking her appetite away, and he was forgetting, perhaps, all about that line that ran in the palms of both of them!
As a matter of fact, Raymond was trying very diligently to do just that thing. He worked hard and paid extra attention to Mrs. Tweksbury.
"My boy!" Emily Tweksbury urged, "come up to Maine with me for the summer, you look peaked."
Raymond laughed.
"How about business?" he said.
"Of course," Mrs. Tweksbury replied, "no one appreciates more than I do, Ken, your moral fibre. It's a big thing for you to create a business if for no other reason than to give employment to less fortunate young men; but you have other responsibilities. Your position, your fortune, they make demands. I'm not one to underestimate the leisure class; I know the old joke about tramps being the only leisure classin America; it's a silly joke, but it ought to make us think. After a bit, if we don't look out, the leisure class, here, will be all women. They'll dominate art and poetry and society—and I must say I like a goodteam. I never cared for too much of any one thing. Ken?"
"Yes, Aunt Emily."
"I want you to marry and have—a place."
"A place, Aunt Emily?" Raymond looked puzzled.
"Yes. Make a stand for American aristocracy—though of course you must call it by another name. You're a clean, splendid chap—I know all about you. I've watched apart and prayed over you in my closet. You see your father and I made a ghastly mess of our lives, but we kept to the code—for your sake. We left your path clear, thank God!"
"Yes, Aunt Emily—I've thanked God for that, too, in what stands formycloset."
"What stands for your closet, Ken? I've always wanted to know what takes the place of women's sanctuaries in the lives of men."
Raymond plunged his hands into his pockets—he and Mrs. Tweksbury had just finished breakfast, and the dining room of the old-fashioned house opened, as it should, to the east.
"Oh! I don't know that I can tell you, Aunt Emily," Raymond fidgeted. "Fellows are beginning to think a bit more about the clean places in women's lives. I reckon that we haven't so much an idea about sanctuaries of ours as that we are cultivating an honest-to-God determination to keep from making wrecks of women's shrines. I know this sounds blithering, but, you see, a decent chap wants to ask some girl to give him a better thing than forgiveness when the time comes. He wants to cut out the excuse business. He doesn't want women like you to be ashamed of him—when they come where they have to call things by their right names."
"Ken, I don't believe you're in good form. You'd much better come up to Maine!"
Emily Tweksbury looked as if she wanted to cry; her expression was so comical that Raymond laughed aloud.
"I'll come in August," he said at last. "I'll take the whole month and frivol with you."
Mrs. Tweksbury was, however, not through with what she had to say. She looked at the big, handsome fellow across the room and he seemed suddenly to become very young and helpless, very much needing guidance, and yet she knew how he would resent any such interference in his life.
"What's on your mind, Aunt Emily?"
Raymond had turned the tables—he smiled down upon the old lady with the masterful tenderness of youth.
"Let's have it, dear."
Mrs. Tweksbury resorted to subterfuge.
"Well, having you off my hands," she said, smiling as if she really meant what she said, "I am thinking of Doris Fletcher!"
"Do I know her?" Raymond tried to think.
"No. She left New York just about the time you came to me. She's a wonderful woman, always was. Has a passion for helping others live their lives—she's never had time to live her own."
"Bad business." Raymond shook his head.
"Oh! I don't know, boy. The older I grow the more inclined I am to believe that it is only by helping others live that one lives himself."
This was trite and did not get anywhere, so Mrs. Tweksbury plunged a trifle.
"Doris Fletcher is going to bring her niece out next winter; wants me to help launch her."
Raymond made no response to this. He was not apt to be suspicious, but he waited.
"She has twin nieces. Her younger sister died at their birth—she made a sad marriage, poor girl, and the father of her children seems to have been blotted off the map. The Fletchers were always silent and proud. I greatly fear one of the twins takes after her obliterated parent, for Doris rarely mentions her—it is always Nancy who is on exhibition; the other girl is doing that abominable thing—securing hereconomic freedom, whatever that may mean. Doris has tried to make me understand, but how girls as rich as those girls are going to be can want to go out and support themselves I do not understand—it's thieving. Nothing less. Taking bread from women who haven't money."
Mrs. Tweksbury sniffed scornfully and Raymond laughed. He wasn't interested.
Mrs. Tweksbury saw she was losing ground and made a third attempt.
"But this Nancy seems another matter. I remember her, off and on. I was often away when the Fletchers were home, and the girls were at school a good many years, but this Nancy is the sort of child that one doesn't forget. She's lovely—very fair—and exquisite. Her poor mother was always charming, and I imagine Doris Fletcher means to see that Nancy gets into no such snarl as poor Meredith's—Meredith was Doris's sister. Ken——!"
"Yes'm!" Raymond was looking at his watch.
"I wish you'd lend a hand next winter with this Nancy Thornton."
Raymond gave a guffaw and came around to Mrs. Tweksbury.
"You're about as opaque," he said, "as crystal. Of course I'll lend a hand, Aunt Emily—lendone, but don't count upon anything more. I—I do not want to marry—at least not for many years. My father and mother did not leave a keen desire in me for marriage."
"Oh! Ken, can't you forget?"
"I haven't yet, Aunt Emily, but I'm not a conceited ass; your Miss Nancy would probably think me a dub; girls don't fly at my head, but I'm safe as a watchdog and errand boy—so I'll fit in, Aunt Emily."
He bent and kissed her.
A week later the old house was draped and covered with ghostly linen and every homelike touch eliminated according to the sacred rites of the old régime; and man, that most domestic of all animals, was left to the contemplation of a smothered ideal—the ideal of home.
Mrs. Tweksbury, with two servants, started by motor for Maine.
"I may not be progressive in some ways," she proudly declared, "but a motor car keeps one from much that is best avoided—crowds, noise, and confusion. And I always insist that I am progressive where progress is worth while."
But, alone in the still house, Raymond felt as if a linen cover also enshrouded him—he lost his appetite and took to lying at night with his hands clasped under his head—thinking! Thinking, he called it—but he was only drifting. He was abdicating thought. He got so that he could see himself as if detached from himself——
"And a dub of a chap, too, I look to myself," he reflected, ambiguously. "I wonder just what stuff is in me, anyway? I've been trained to the limit, and I have a decent idea about most things, but I wonder if I could pull it off, if I were up against it like some other fellows who have rowed their own boats? Having had Dad and Aunt Emily in my blood, has given me a twist, and the money has tied the knot. I don't know really what's in me—in the rough—and thereisa rough in every fellow—maybe it's sand and maybe it's plain dirt."
This was all as wild and vague as anything Patricia or Joan could evolve. It came of the season and the everlasting youth of life.
"I'm going to talk over the rot with that little white thing down at the Brier Bush," Raymond declared one night to that self of his that stood off on inspection; "what's the harm? She's got the occult bug, and I'm keen about it just now. No one will be the worse for me having the talk—she's all right and that veil of hers leaves us a lot freer to speak out than face to face would." And then Raymond switched on the lights and read certain books that held him rigid until he heard the milkman in the street below.
In those nights Raymond learned to know that sounds have shades, as objects have. Below, following, encompassing there were vague, haunting echoes. Even the rattling of milk cans had them; the steps of the watchman; the wind of early morning that stirs the darkness!
And then in the end Raymond did quite another thing from what he had planned. He left the office one day at four-thirty and walked uptown. He paced the block on which the Brier Bush was situated until he began to feel conscious—then he walked around the block, always hurrying until he came in sight of the tea room. He felt that all the summer inhabitants of the city were drinking tea there that afternoon, and he began to curse them for their folly.
It was five-forty-five when Joan came down the steps.
Raymond knew her at once by her walk. He had always noted that swing of hers under her white robe. He did not believe another girl in the world moved in just that way—it was like the laugh that belonged with it. Indifferent, pleading, sweet, and brave—a bit daring, too. Joan was all in white now. A trim linen suit; white stockings and shoes; a white silk hat with a wide bow of white—Patricia kept her touch on Joan's wardrobe.
Raymond waited until the girl before him had pulled on her long gloves and reached the corner of Fifth Avenue, then he walked rapidly and overtook her. He feared that he was leaping; he felt crude and rough; but he had never been simpler and more sincere in his life. The elemental was overpowering him, that was all.
"Good afternoon!" he blurted into Joan's astonished ears; "where are you going?"
Joan turned and confronted him, not in alarm, but utter rout. Naturally there was but one course for a girl to take at such a juncture—but Joan did not take it. Her elementals were alert, too, and she, too, had reached the stage when sounds know shades, and above any cautious appeal was the fear of sending this man adrift again.
"I wonder"—Raymond spoke hurriedly; he wanted to drive that startled look out of the golden eyes—"I wonder if you're the sort that knows truth when she sees it—even if it has to cover itself with the rags of things that aren't truth?"
At this Joan laughed.
"I am afraid the heat has affected you," was what she said, gently.
"Well, anyway, you're not afraid of me!" Raymond saw that her eyes had grown steady.
"Oh! no. I'm not afraid of you. I'm not often afraid of anything."
"I thought that. You wouldn't be doing that stunt at the Brier Bush if you were the scary kind." Raymond accompanied his step to Joan's as naturally as if she had permitted him to do so.
"I don't see why you speak as you do of my business," Joan interjected. "It's how one interprets what one does that matters. I make a very good income of what you term my stunt. Perhaps you're accustomed to girls who use such means—wrongfully."
Joan felt quite proud of her small sting, but Raymond broke in joyously:
"You're mighty clever; you've struck on just what I mean. See here, you don't know me and I don't know you——" At this Joan turned her face away. "And I'm jolly glad we don't. It makes it all easier. I know very little about girls—I dance with them and things like that when I have to, but as a class I never cottoned to them much, nor they to me. I know the ugly names tacked to things that might be innocent and happy enough. Now your business—it could be a cover for something rather different——?"
"But it isn't!" Joan broke in, hotly.
"I'm sure of that, but hear me out. There's something about you that—that's got me. I can't forget you. I only want to know what you care to give—the part that escapes the disguise that you wear! I want to talk to you. I bet we have a lot to say to each other. Don't you see it would be like fencing behind a shield? But how can we make this out unless we utilize chances that might, if people were not decent and honest, be wrong? I know I'm getting all snarled up—but I'm trying to make youunderstand."
"You're not doing it very well." Joan was sweetly composed.
"Now suppose you and I were introduced—you with your veil off—that would be all right, wouldn't it?"
Raymond was collecting his scattered wits.
"Presumably. Yes—it would," Joan returned.
"And then we could have all the talks we wanted to, couldn't we?"
"Within proper limitations," Joan nodded, comically prim under the circumstances.
"But for reasons best known to you," Raymond went on, slowly, "you want to keep the shield up? All right. But then if we want the talks——"
"I don't want them!" Joan's voice shook. Poor, lonely little thing, she wanted exactly that!
"I bet that's not true!" ventured Raymond. Then suddenly:
"Why do you laugh as you do?"
"What's the matter with my laugh?"
"I don't know. It's old and it's awfully kiddish—it's rather upsetting. I keep remembering it as I always shall your face now that I have seen it!"
Truth can take care of itself if it has half a chance. It was beginning to grip Joan through the mists that shrouded her—mists that life has evolved for the protection of those who might never be able to distinguish between the wolf in sheep's skin and sheep in wolf hide.
Joan knew the ancient code of propriety, but she knew, also, the ring of truth and she was young and lonely. She knew she ought not to be playing with wild animals, but she was also sure in the deepest and most sincere parts of her brain that the man beside her, strange as it might seem, was really a very nice and well-behaved domestic animal and was making rather a comical exhibition of himself in the skin of the beast of prey.
"You haven't told me where you are going," Raymond said, presently.
"Home!" The one word had the dreary, empty sound that it could not help having when Joan considered the studio with Sylvia gone and Patricia an uncertain element.
"Are you?" Raymond asked, lamely. One had to say something or turn back. Joan felt like crying. Then suddenly Raymond said:
"I wish you'd come and have dinner with me, and I'm not going to excuse myself or explain anything. I know I'm using all the worn-out tricks of fellows that are anything but decent; but I know that you know—though how you do I'm blest ifIknow—but I know that you understand. The thing's too big for me. I've just got to risk it! I'm lonely and I bet you are; we've got to eat—why not eat together?"
The words sounded like explosives, and Joan mentally dodged, but at the end felt that she knew all there was to know and she caught her breath and said very slowly:
"I'm going to be quite as honest as you are. I will have dinner with you because I'm as lonely as can be; my people, like yours, are out of town, and Idounderstand though I cannot say just how I do. One thing I want you to promise: You will never, under any circumstances, try to find out more about me than I freely give. Now or—ever! When I disappear, I want really to be safe from intrusion."
Raymond promised, and so they set out on the Sun Road.
CHAPTER XVII"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own."
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own."
The trouble with the Sun Road is this: one is apt to be blinded by the glare.
In their solitude, the solitude of a big city, Raymond and Joan trod the shining way with high courage.
This was romance in an age when romance was supposed to be dead! Here they were, they two, nameless—for they decided upon remaining so—living according to their own codes; feeling more and more secure, as time passed, that they were safe and were wisely enjoying what so easily might have been lost had they been limited in faith.
"It's the line in our hands!" Raymond declared. "It means something, all right. Think what we must have missed had we been unjust to each other and ourselves."
Joan nodded.
The sun and the dust of the pleasant highway had blinded her completely by the end of a week.
Patricia was a missing quantity most of the time. Patricia had taken to the Sun Road, also, but with her eyes wide open. If Patricia ever turned aside it would be because she knew the danger, not because she did not.
She never explained her absences nor her private affairs to Joan. When she did appear at Sylvia's studio she was quiet and nervous.
"It's the heat," she explained. "I'm not hot, but I cannot get enough air to breathe."
Meanwhile, Sylvia was basking in success and cool breezes on theMassachusettscoast. Her letters had the tang of the sea.
And Raymond was always on hand, now, at the dinner hour. He was like a boy, and took great pride in his knowledge of just the right places to eat. Quiet, but not too quiet; good food, and, occasionally, good music, and if the night was not too hot, a dance with Joan which set his very soul to keeping time.
"Gee!" he said, after their first dance; "I wonder what you are, anyway? Do you do everything—to perfection?"
Joan twinkled.
"Every man must decide that for himself," she replied with a charming turn of her head.
"Every—man?" Raymond's face fell.
"Certainly. You don't think you are the only man, do you?"
"Well, the only one left in town."
Raymond gave a little laugh and changed the subject. He had no intention of getting behind his companion's screen. With a wider conception of his path, he more diligently kept to the middle.
After the first fortnight he even went so far as to arrange for business engagements, now and then, in order to keep his brain clear.
Joan always met these empty spaces in her days with a keen sense of loss which she hid completely from Raymond.
His business demands were offset by her skilfully timed escapes from the Brier Bush. She would either be too early or too late for Raymond, and so while he paid homage to his code, Joan appeared to make the code unnecessary.
And the weather became hotter and moister and the moral and physical fibre of the city-bound became limper.
After a week of not seeing each other Joan and Raymond made up for lost time by galloping instead of trotting along.
"Stevenson and O. Henry couldn't beat this adventure of ours," Raymond exclaimed one evening, wiping the moisture from his forehead. "And I bet thousands of folks would think better of one another if——"
"If—they had the line in their hands," Joan broke in; "but they haven't, you know!"
"Exactly."
Just then Raymond made a bad break. He asked Joan if she did not trust him well enough to give him her telephone number.
"Something might occur," he said, "business pops up unexpectedly. I hate to lose a chance of seeing you—and I hate to wait on street corners."
"I am sorry," Joan replied, "but that would spoil everything."
Raymond flushed. It was just such plunges as this that made him recoil.
"I understand," he replied, coolly; "I had hoped that you could trust me."
"It is not a matter of trust. It's keeping to the bargain."
There was nothing more to say. But, quite naturally, several days elapsed before they saw each other again.
Fierce, broiling days without even the debilitating moisture to ease the suffering citizens.
Joan, alone in the dark, hot studio, thought of Doris and Nancy and wondered!
"Of course, what I am doing would be horrid if I didn't know all abouthim," and then Joan tossed about. "Some day—it will be such a lark to tell them—and think of his surprise when he—knows! I'll see him with all barriers down next winter," for at this time Joan had written and accepted all Doris's plans for her. She was to study music determinedly—she had a proud little bank account—and she would live at the old house and revel in Nancy's social triumphs.
And Raymond, in his shrouded house, had his restless hours and with greater reason, for he was playing utterly in the dark and had to acknowledge to his grim, off-standing self that, except for the fact that he was in the dark, he would not dare play the very amusing game he was playing.
"If she is masquerading," Raymond beat about with his conscience, "it's the biggest lark ever, and she and I will have many a good laugh over it."
"But if she—isn't?" demanded the shadowy self.
"Well, if she isn't, she jolly well knows how to take care of herself! Besides, I'm not going to hurt her. Why, in thunder, can't two fellow creatures enjoy innocent things without having evil suggestions?"
"They can!" thundered the Other Self, "but this isn't innocent—at least it is dangerous."
"Oh! be hanged!" Raymond flung back and the Shadow sank into oblivion.
Left to himself—one of his selves—Raymond resorted to sentiment.
"Of course we both know—under what might be—whatis. She's like Kipling's girl in the Brushwood Boy."
But that did not take in the Other Self in the least. It laughed.
When July came the heat settled down in earnest on the panting city.
"Aren't you going to take any vacation?" asked Raymond. He and Joan were sauntering up Fifth Avenue to a certain haven in a backyard where the fountain played and the birds sang.
"No. I'm going to stay in town and let Miss Gordon have her outing. The Brier Bush is too young to be left alone this year. Next year it will be my turn."
"I'm afraid you'll wilt," Raymond looked at the blooming creature beside him. "Funny, isn't it, how things turn out? I expected to go in August to—to that lady with whom you first saw me" (Joan looked divinely innocent); "but only yesterday she informed me that she had resolved to go abroad, and asked if it would make any difference to me. She's like that. Her procedure resembles jumping off a diving plank."
"Well, does it make any difference?" Joan asked.
"You bet it does! It makes me free to stay in town."
"I'm afraid you'll wilt," Joan twinkled.
"We must take precautions against that." Raymond looked deadly in earnest.
The meetings of these two were now set, like clear jewels in the round of common days. They were not too frequent and they were always managed like chance happenings.Always there was a sense of surprise, a thrill of unbelievable good luck attending them; but there was, also, a growing sense of assurance and understanding.
"I wonder," Joan said once, pressing hard against the shield that protected them, "I wonder if you and I would have played so delightfully had we been—well—introduced! Miss Jones and Mr. Black."
"No!" Raymond burst in positively. "Miss Jones would have been enveloped in the things expected of Miss Jones, and Mr. Black would have been kept busy—keeping off the grass!"
"Aren't you ever afraid," Joan mused on, "that some day we'll suddenly come across each other when our shields are left behind in—in the secret tower?"
"I try not to think of it," Raymond leaned toward the girl; "but if we did we'd know each other a lot better than most girls and fellows are ever allowed to know each other," he said.
"Do you think so?" Joan looked wistfully at him. "You see this isn't real; it's play, and I'm afraid Miss Jones and Mr. Black would be awfully suspicious of each other—just on account of the play."
"And so—we'll make sure that shields are always in commission," Raymond reassured her. "In this small world of ours we cannot run any risks with Miss Jones and Mr. Black. They have no part here."
"No, they haven't!" Joan leaned back. That subtle weakness was touching her; the aftermath of strained imagination. She was often homesick for Doris and Nancy—she was getting afraid that she might not be able to find her way back to them when the time came to go.
"Poor little girl!" Raymond was saying over the table, and his words fitted into the tune the fountain sang—it was the same tune the fountain sang in the sunken room of long ago; all fountains, Joan had grown to think, sang the same lovely, drippy song.
"I wonder just how brave and free a little girl it is?"
Joan screwed up her lips.
"Limitless," she whispered, daringly.
"You're played out, child!" Raymond went on; "there are blue shadows under your eyes. I wish you'd let me do something for you."
"You are doing something," the words came slowly, caressingly; "you're making a hard time very beautiful; you're making me believe—in—in fairies, or what stands for fairies, nowadays; you're making me trust myself and for ever after when—when I slip back where I belong—I'm going to remember, and be—so glad! You see, I know, now, that in the world of grown-ups youcanmake things come true."
"Where you belong?" Raymond gripped his hands close. "Just where do you belong?Areyou Miss Jones or are you the sweet nameless thing that I am looking at?"
"Oh! I'm Miss Jones!" Joan sat up promptly, "and I'm going to make sure that Miss Jones doesn't get hurt while I play with her."
And as she spoke Joan was thinking of the ugly interpretation of this beautiful play which Patricia would give. Patricia couldn't make things come true because she never tried hard enough.
"I wonder"—and the fountain made Joan dizzy as she listened to Raymond—"I wonder, now since I'm to stay in town, if you'd let me bring my car in? We'd have some great old rides. We'd cool off and have picnics by roadsides and—and get the best of this blasted heat."
"I think it would be heavenly!" Joan saw, already, cool woods and felt the refreshing air on her face.
Raymond was taken aback. He had expected protest.
But the car materialized and so did the picnics and the cool breezes on young, unafraid faces.
At each new venture reassurance waxed stronger—things could be made true in the world; it was only children who failed, in spite of tradition.
Just at this time Sylvia came to town radiating success and happiness.
The result was disastrous. There are times when one cannot endure the prosperity of his friends! Had Sylviacome back with her banners trailing, Joan and Patricia would have rallied to her standard, but she was cool, crisp, and her eyes were fixed upon a successful future.
She was going to do, not only the frieze, but a dozen other things. People whom she had met had been impressed. Things were coming her way with a vengeance. One order was in the Far West—a glorified cabin in a canyon.
"I'm to do all the interior decorating," Sylvia bubbled; "a little out of my line, but they feel I can do it. And"—here the girl looked blissful—"it will be near enough for my John to come and take a vacation."
Patricia and Joan, at that moment, knew the resentment of the unattached woman for the protected one. Sylvia appeared the child of the gods while they were merely permitted to sit at the gates and envy her triumphs.
"I suppose," Patricia burst in, "that this means the end?"
"End?" Sylvia looked puzzled.
"Yes. Plain John will gobble you, Art and all. But your duties here——" Patricia with a tragic gesture pointed to Joan. "What of Miss Lamb, not to mention me?"
Sylvia looked serious.
"Joan is to study music next winter," she said; "haven't you told Pat, Joan?"
Joan shook her head. She had almost forgotten it herself.
"And live with her people," Sylvia went on and then, noticing Patricia's pale little face, she burst forth:
"Pat, take that offer from Chicago that you've been thinking about! It's a big thing—designing for that firm. It will make you independent, leave you time to scribble, and give you a change. Pat, do be sensible."
Patricia drew herself up. She felt that she was being disposed of simply to get her out of the way. She resented it and she was hurt.
"I do not have to decide just now," she said, coldly; "and don't fuss about me, Syl. Now that you and Joan are provided for I can jog along at my own free will, and no one will have to pay but me!"
"Pat!" Joan broke in, "you and I will stick together. And it's all right about Syl. What is this one life for, anyway, if it does not leave us free? Syl, marry your John—your art won't suffer! Pat, where I go you go next winter."
But Patricia lighted a cigarette, and while the smoke issued from her pretty little nose she sighed.
What happened was this: Patricia shopped and sewed for Sylvia and made her radiantly ready for her trip West. And Joan, feeling the break final, although she did not admit it, forsook her own pleasures while she helped Patricia and clung to Sylvia.
"Pat has sublet her rooms," she confided to Sylvia one day, "and is coming here until our lease is up; so you are foot-loose, my precious Syl, and God bless you!"
In August Sylvia departed and Joan and Patricia set up housekeeping together. But at the end of the first week, and the beginning of a new hot spell, Joan found a note on her pillow one night when she came in, exhausted: