"But you do know how. It's easy enough. Treat her as you would a girl in your own class—Elsie Darling, for instance."
"It's not so simple as that. When Elsie Darling came back after five or six years abroad mamma and I drove into town and called on her. She wasn't in, and we left our cards. Later, we invited her to lunch or to dinner. I should be perfectly willing to go through the same formalities with Miss Fay—only she'd think it queer. It would be queer. It would be queer because she hasn't got—what shall I say?—she hasn't got the social machinery for that kind of ceremoniousness. The machinery means the method of approach, and with people who have to live as she does it's the method of approach that presents the difficulty. It's not as easy as it looks."
"Very well, then; let us admit that it's hard. The harder it is the more it's the job for you."
There was an illuminating quality in her smile that atoned for lack of beauty. "Oh, if you put it in that way—"
"I do put it in that way," he declared, with an earnestness toned down by what was almost wistfulness. "There are so many things in which I want help, Lois—and you're the one to help me."
She held out her hand with characteristic frankness. "I'll do anything I can, Thor. Just tell me what you want me to do when you want me to do it—and I'll try."
"Oh, there'll be a lot of things in which we shall have to pull together," he said, as he held her hand. "I want you to remember, if ever any trouble comes, that"—he hesitated for a word that wouldn't say too much for the moment—"that I'll be there."
"Thank you, Thor. That's a great comfort."
She withdrew her hand quietly. Quietly, too, she assured him, as she moved toward the steps, that she would not fail to force herself again on Rosie Fay. "And about that other matter—the one you spoke of first—you'll tell me more by and by, won't you?"
After her capacity for ringing true, his conscientiousness prompted him to let her see that she could feel quite sure of him. "I'll tell you anything I can find out; and one of these days, Lois, I must—I must—say a lot more."
She mounted a step or two without turning away from him. "Oh, well," she said, lightly, as though dismissing a topic of no importance, "there'll be plenty of time."
But her smile was a happy one—so happy that he who smiled rarely smiled back at her from the runabout.
He could scarcely be expected to know as yet that his pleasure was not in any happiness of hers, but in the help she might bring to a little creature whose image had haunted him all the afternoon—a little creature whose desperate flower-like face looked up at him from a background of poinsettias.
On coming to the table that evening Claude begged his mother to excuse him for not having dressed for dinner, on the ground that he had an engagement with Billy Cheever. Mrs. Masterman pardoned him with a gracious inclination of the head that made her diamond ear-rings sparkle. No one in the room could be unaware that she disapproved of Claude's informality. Not only did it shock her personal delicacy to dine with men who concealed their shirt-bosoms under the waistcoats they had worn all day, but it contravened the aims by which during her entire married life she had endeavored to elevate the society around her. She herself was one to whom the refinements were as native as foliage to a tree. "It's all right, Claudie dear; but you do know I like you to dress for the evening, don't you?" Without waiting for the younger son to speak, she continued graciously to the elder: "And you, Thor. What have you been doing with yourself to-day?"
Her polite inclusion of her stepson was meant to start "her men," as she called them, in the kind of conversation in which men were most at ease, that which concerned themselves. Thor replied while consuming his soup in the manner acquired in Parisian and Viennese restaurants frequented by young men:
"Got a patient."
Hastily Claude introduced a subject of his own. "Ought to go and see 'The Champion,' father. Hear it's awfully good. Begins with a prize-fight—"
But the father's attention was given to Thor. "Who've you picked up?"
"Fay's wife—Fay, the gardener."
"Indeed? Have to whistle for your fee."
"Oh, I know that—"
"Thor,please!" Mrs. Masterman begged. "Don't eat so fast."
"If you know it already," the father continued, "I should think you'd have tried to squeak out of it." He said "know it alweady" and "twied to squeak," owing to a difficulty with the letterrwhich gave an appealing, childlike quality to his speech. "If you start in by taking patients who are not going to pay—"
Claude sought another diversion. "What does it matter to Thor? In three months' time he'll be able to pay sick people for coming to him—what?"
"That's not the point," Masterman explained. "A doctor has no right to pauperize people"—he said "pauper-wize people"—"any more than any one else."
"Oh, as to that," Thor said, forcing himself to eat slowly and sit straight in the style commended by his stepmother, "it won't need a doctor to pauperize poor Fay."
"Quite right there," his father agreed. "He's done it himself."
Thor considered the moment a favorable one for making his appeal. "Claude and I have been talking him over—"
"The devil we have!" Claude exclaimed, indignantly.
"What's that?" Masterman's handsome face, which after his day's work was likely to be gray and lifeless, grew sharply interrogative. Time had chiseled it to an incisiveness not incongruous with a lingering air of youth. His hair, mustache, and imperial were but touched with gray. His figure was still lithe and spare. It was the custom to say of him that he looked but the brother of his two strapping sons.
Claude emphasized his annoyance. "Talking him over! I like that! You blow into the office just as I'm ready to come home, and begin cross-questioning me about father's affairs. I tell you I don't know anything about them. If you call that talking him over—well, you're welcome to your own use of terms."
The head of the house busied himself in carving the joint which had been placed before him. "If you want information, Thor, ask me."
"I don't want information, father; and I don't think Claude is fair in saying I cross-questioned him. I only said that I thought he and I ought to do what we could to get you to renew Fay's lease."
"Oh, did you? Then I can save you the trouble, because I'm not going to."
The declaration was so definite that it left Thor with nothing to say. "Poor old Fay has worked pretty hard, hasn't he?" he ventured at last.
"Possibly. So have I."
"But with the difference that you've been prosperous, and he hasn't."
Masterman laughed good-naturedly. "Which is the difference between me and a good many other people. You don't blame me for that?"
"It's not a question of blaming any one, father. I only supposed that among Americans it was the correct thing for the lucky ones to come to the aid of the less fortunate."
"Take it that I'm doing that for Fay when I get him out of an impossible situation."
Thor smiled ruefully. "When you get him out of the frying-pan into the fire?"
"Well," Claude challenged, coming to his father's aid, "the fire's no worse than the frying-pan, and may be a little better."
"I've seen the girl," Mrs. Masterman contributed to the discussion. "She's been in the greenhouse when I've gone to buy flowers. I must say she didn't strike me very favorably." The two brothers exchanged glances without knowing why. "She seemed to me so much—so very much—above her station."
"Whatisher station?" Thor asked, bridling. "Her station's the same as ours, isn't it?"
The father was amused. "The same aswhat?"
"Surely we're all much of a muchness. Most of us were farmers and market-gardeners up to forty or fifty years ago. I've heard," he went on, utilizing the information he had received that afternoon, "that the Thorleys used to hire out to the Fays."
"Oh, the Thorleys!" Mrs. Masterman smiled.
"The Mastermans didn't," Archie said, gently. "You won't forget that, my boy. Whatever you may be on any other side, you come from a line of gentlemen on mine. Your grandfather Masterman was one of the best-known old-school physicians in this part of the country. His father before him was a Church of England clergyman in Derbyshire, who migrated to America because he'd become a Unitarian. Sort of idealist. Lot of 'em in those days. Time of Napoleon and Southey and Coleridge and all that. Thought that because America was a so-called republic, or a so-called democracy, he'd find people living for one another, and they were just looking out for number one like every one else. Your Uncle Sim takes after him. Died of a broken heart, I believe, because he didn't find the world made over new. But you see the sort of well-born, high-minded stock you sprang from."
Thor lifted his big frame to an erect position, throwing back his head. "I don't care a fig for what I sprang from, father. I don't even care much for what I am. It strikes me as far more important to see that our old friends and neighbors—who are just as good as we are—don't have to go under when we can keep them up."
"Yes, when we can," Thor's father said, with unperturbed gentleness; "but very often we can't. In a world where every one's swimming for his own dear life, those who can't swim have got to drown."
"But every one is not swimming for his own dear life. Most of us are safe on shore. You and I are, for example. And when we are, it seems to me the least we can do is to fling a life-preserver to the poor chaps who are throwing up their hands and sinking."
Mrs. Masterman rallied her stepson indulgently. "Oh, Thor, how ridiculous you are! How you talk!"
Claude patted his mother's hand. He was still trying to turn attention from bearing too directly on the Fays. "Don't listen to him, mumphy. Beastly socialist, that's what he is. Divide up all the money in the world so that everybody'll have thirty cents, and then tell 'em to go ahead and live regardless. That'd be his way of doing things."
But the father was more just. "Oh no, it wouldn't. Thor's no fool! Has some excellent ideas. A little exaggerated, perhaps, but that'll cure itself in time. Fault of youth. Good fault, too." He turned affectionately to his elder son, "Rather see you that way, my boy, than with an empty head."
Thor fell silent, from a sense of the futility of talking.
At the moment when Claude was excusing himself further, begging to be allowed to run away so as not to keep Billy Cheever waiting, Rosie Fay was noticing with relief that her mother was asleep at last. Thor's sedative had taken effect in what the girl considered the nick of time. Having smoothed the pillow, adjusted the patchwork quilt, and placed the small kerosene hand-lamp on a chair at the foot of the bed, so as to shade it from the sleeper's eyes, she slipped down-stairs.
She wore a long, rough coat. Over her hair she had flung a scarf of some gauzy green stuff that heightened her color. The lamplight, or some inner flame of her own, drew opalescent gleams from her gray-greenish eyes as she descended. She was no longer the desperate, petulant little Rosie of the afternoon. Her face was aglow with an eager life. The difference was that between a blossom wilting for lack of water and the same flower fed by rain.
In the tiny living-room at the foot of the stairs her father was eating the supper she had laid out for him. It was a humble supper, spread on the end of a table covered with a cheap cotton cloth of a red and sky-blue mixture. Jasper Fay, in his shirt-sleeves, munched his cold meat and sipped his tea while he entertained himself with a book propped against a loaf of bread. Another small kerosene hand-lamp threw its light on the printed page and illumined his mild, clear-cut, clean-shaven face.
"She's asleep," Rosie whispered from the doorway. "If she wakes while I'm gone you must give her the second dose. I've left it on the wash-stand."
The man lifted his starry blue eyes. "You going out?"
"I'm only going for a little while."
"Couldn't you have gone earlier?"
"How could I, when I had supper to get—and everything?"
He looked uneasy. "I don't like you to be running round these dark roads, my dear. You've been doing it a good deal lately. Where is it you go?"
"Why, father, what nonsense! Here I am cooped up all day—"
He sighed. "Very well, my dear. I know you haven't much pleasure. But things will be different soon, I hope. The new night fireman seems a good man, and I expect we'll do better now. He'll be here at ten. Were you going far?"
She answered promptly. "Only to Polly Wilson's. She wants me to"—Rosie turned over in her mind the various interests on which Polly Wilson might desire to consult her—"she wants me to see her new dress."
"Very well, my dear, but I hope after this evening you'll be able to do your errands in the daytime. You know how it was with Matt. If he hadn't gone roaming the streets at night—"
Rosie came close to the table. Her face was resolute. "Father, I'm not Matt. I know what I'm doing." She added, with increased determination, "I'm acting for the best."
He was mildly surprised. "Acting for the best in going to see Polly Wilson's new dress?"
She ignored this. "I'm twenty-three, father. I've got to follow my own judgment. If I've a chance I must use it."
"What sort of a chance, my dear?"
"There's nothing to hope for here," she went on, cruelly, "except from what I can do myself. Mother's no good; and Matt's worse than if he was dead. I wish to God he would die—before he comes out. And you know what you are, father."
"I do the best I can, my dear," he said, humbly.
"I know you do; but we can all see what that is. Everybody else is going ahead but us."
"Oh no, they're not, my dear. There are lots that fall behind as bad as we do—and worse."
She shook her head fiercely. "No, not worse. They couldn't. And whatever's to be done, I've got to do it. If I don't—or if I can't—well, we might as well give up. So you mustn't try to stop me, father. I know what I'm doing. It's for your sake and everybody's sake as much as for my own."
He dropped his eyes to his book, in seeming admission that he had no tenable ground on which to meet her in a conflict of wills. "Very well, my dear," he sighed. "If you're going to Polly Wilson's you'd better be off. You'll be home by ten, won't you? I must go then to show the new fireman his way about the place."
Outside it was a windy night, but not a cold one. Shreds of dark cloud scudded across the face of a three-quarters moon, giving it the appearance of traveling through the sky at an incredible rate of speed. In the south wind there was the tang of ocean salt, mingled with the sweeter scents of woodland and withered garden nearer home. There was a crackling of boughs in the old apple-trees, and from the ridge behind the house came the deep, soft, murmurous soughing of pines.
If Rosie lingered on the door-step it was not because she was afraid of the night sounds or of the dark. She was restrained for a minute by a sense of terror at what she was about to do. It was not a new terror. She felt it on every occasion when she went forth to keep this tryst. As she had already said to her father, she knew what she was doing. She was neither so young nor so inexperienced as to be unaware of the element of danger that waited on her steps. No one could have told her better than she could have told herself that the voice of wise counsel would have bidden her stay at home. But if she was not afraid of the night, neither was she irresolute before the undertaking. Being forewarned, she was forearmed. Being forearmed, she could run the risks. Running the risks, she could enjoy the excitement and find solace in the romance.
For it was romance, romance of the sort she had dreamed of and planned for and got herself ready to be equal to, if ever it should come. Somehow, she had always known it would come. She could hardly go back to the time when she did not have this premonition of a lover who would appear like a prince in a fairy-tale and lift her out of her low estate.
And he had come. He had come late on an afternoon in the preceding summer, when she was picking wild raspberries in the wood above Duck Rock. It was a lonely spot in which she could reasonably have expected to be undisturbed. She was picking the berries fast and deftly, because the fruitman who passed in the morning would give her a dollar for her harvest. Was it the dollar, or was it the sweet, wandering, summer air? Was it the mingled perfumes of vine and fruit and soft loam loosened as she crept among the brambles, or was it the shimmer of the waning sunlight or the whir of the wings of birds or the note of a hermit-thrush in some still depth of the woodland ever so far away? Or was it only because she was young and invincibly happy at times, in spite of a sore heart, that she sang to herself as her nimble fingers secured the juicy, delicate red things and dropped them into the pan?
He came like Pan, or a faun, or any other woodland thing, with no sound of his approach, not even that of oaten pipes. When she raised her eyes he was standing in a patch of bracken. She had been stooping to gather the fruit that clustered on a long, low, spiny stem. The words on her lips had been:
At least be pity to me shownIf love it may na be—
At least be pity to me shownIf love it may na be—
but her voice trailed away faintly on the last syllable, for on looking up he was before her. He wore white flannels, and a Panama hat of which the brim was roguishly pulled down in front to shade his eyes.
He was smiling unabashed, and yet with a friendliness that made it impossible for her to take offense. "Isn't it Rosie?" he asked, without moving from where he stood in the patch of trampled bracken. "I'm Claude. Don't you remember me?"
A Delphic nymph who had been addressed by Apollo, in the seclusion of some sacred grove, could hardly have felt more joyous or more dumb. Rosie Fay did not know in what kind of words to answer the glistening being who had spoken to her with this fine familiarity. Later, in the silence of the night, she blushed with shame to think of the figure she must have cut, standing speechless before him, the pan of red raspberries in her hands, her raspberry-red lips apart in amazement, and her eyes gleaming and wide with awe.
She remained vague as to what she answered in the end. It was confusedly to the effect that though she remembered him well enough, she supposed that he had long ago forgotten one so insignificant as herself. Presently he was beside her, dropping raspberries into her pan, while they laughed together as in those early days when they had picked peas by her father's permission in Grandpa Thorley's garden.
Their second meeting was accidental—if it was accidental that each had come to the same spot, at the same hour, on the following day, in the hope of finding the other. The third meeting was also on the same spot, but by appointment, in secret, and at night! Claude had been careful to impress on her the disaster that would ensue if their romance were discovered.
But Rosie Fay knew what she was doing. She repeated that statement often to herself. Had she really been a Delphic nymph, or even a young lady of the best society, she might have given herself without reserve to the rapture of her idyl; but her circumstances were peculiar. Rosie was obliged to be practical, to look ahead. A fairy prince was not only a romantic dream in her dreary life, but an agency to be utilized. The least self-seeking of drowning maids might expect the hero on the bank to pull her out of the water. The very fact that she recognized in Claude a tendency to dally with her on the brink instead of landing her in a place of safety compelled her to be the more astute.
But she was not so astute as to be inaccessible to the sense of terror that assailed her every time she went to meet him. It was the fright of one accustomed to walk on earth when seized and borne into the air. Claude's voice over the telephone, as she had heard it that afternoon, was like the call to adventures at once enthralling and appalling, in which she found it hard to keep her head. She kept it only by saying to herself: "I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. My father is ruined; my brother is in jail. But I love this man and he loves me. If he marries me—"
But Rosie's thoughts broke off abruptly there. They broke off because they reached a point beyond which imagination would not carry her. If he marries me! The supposition led her where all was blurred and roseate and golden, like the mists around the Happy Isles. Rosie could not forecast the conditions that would be hers as the wife of Claude Masterman. She only knew that she would be transported into an atmosphere of money, and money she had learned by sore experience to be the sovereign palliative of care. Love was much to poor Rosie, but relief from anxiety was more. It had to be so, since both love and light are secondary blessings to the tired creature whose first need is rest. It was for rest that Claude Masterman stood primarily in her mind. He was a fairy prince, of course; he was a lover who might have satisfied any girl's aspirations. But before everything else he was a hero and a savior, a being in whose vast potentialities, both social and financial, she could find refuge and lie down at last.
It needed but this bright thought to brace her. She clasped her hands to her breast; she lifted her eyes to the swimming moon; she drew deep breaths of the sweet, strong air; she appealed to all the supporting forces she knew anything about. A minute later she was speeding through the darkness.
Between the greenhouses, of which the glass gleamed dimly in the moonlight, Rosie followed a path that straggled down the slope of her father's land to the new boulevard round the pond. The boulevard here swept inland about the base of Duck Rock, in order to leave that wooded bluff an inviolate feature of the landscape. So inviolate had it been that during the months since Rosie had picked wild raspberries in its boskage the park commissioners had seized on it as a spot to be subdued by winding paths and restful benches. To make it the more civilized and inviting they had placed one of the arc-lamps that now garlanded the circuit of the pond just where it would guide the feet of lovers into the alluring shade. Rosie was glad of this friendly light before engaging on the rough path up the bluff under the skeleton-like trees. She was not afraid; she was only nervous, and the light gave her confidence.
But to-night, as she emerged on the broad boulevard from the weedy outskirts of her father's garden, the clatter of horse-hoofs startled her into drawing back. She would have got herself altogether out of sight had there been anything at hand in the nature of a shrub high enough to conceal her. As it was she could only shrink to the extreme edge of the roadside, hoping that the rider, whoever he was, would pass without seeing her. This he might have done had not the bay mare Delia, unaccustomed to the sight of young ladies roaming alone at night, thought it the part of propriety to shy.
"Whoa, Delia! whoa! What's the matter? Steady, old girl! steady!" There was a flash of the quick, penetrating eyes around the circle made by the arc-light. "Why, hello, Rosie! 'Pon my soul! Look scared as a stray kitten. Where you going?"
Rosie could only reply that she wasn't going anywhere. She was just—out.
"Well, it's a fine night. Everybody seems to be out. Just met Claude."
The girl was unable to repress a startled "Oh!" though she bit her tongue at the self-betrayal.
Uncle Sim laughed merrily. "Don't wonder you're frightened—pretty girl like you. Devil of a fellow, Claude thinks he is. Suppose you don't know him. Ah, well, that wouldn't make any difference to him, if he was to run across you. I'll tell you what! You come along with me." Chuckling to himself, he slipped from Delia's back, preparing to lead the mare and accompany the girl on foot. "We'll go round by the Old Village and up Schoolhouse Lane. The walk'll do you good. You'll sleep better after it. Come along now, and tell me about your mother as we go. Did my nephew, Thor, come to see her? What did he give her? Did she take it? Did it make her sleep?"
But Rosie shrank away from him with the eyes of a terrified animal. "Oh no, Dr. Masterman! Please! I don't want to take that long walk. I'll go back up the path—the way I came. I just ran out to—to—"
He looked at her with suspicious kindliness. "Will you promise me you'll go back the way you came?"
"Yes, yes; I will."
"Then that's all right. It's an awful dangerous road, Rosie. Tramps—and everything. But if you'll go straight back up the path I'll be easy in my mind about you." He watched her while she retreated. "Good night!" he called.
"Good night," came her voice from half-way up the garden.
She was obliged to wait in the shadow of an outlying hothouse till the sound of Delia's hoofs, clattering off toward the Old Village, died away on the night. She crept back again, cautiously. Cautiously, too, she stole across the boulevard and into the wood. Once there, she flew up the path with the frantic eagerness of a hare. She was afraid Claude might have come and gone. She was afraid of the incident with old Sim. What did he mean? Did he mean anything? If he betrayed Claude at home, would it keep the latter from meeting her? She had no great confidence in Claude's ability to withstand authority. She had no great confidence in anything, not even in his love, or in her own. The love was true enough; it was ardently, desperately true; but would it bear the strain that could so easily be put upon it? She felt herself swept by an immense longing to be sure.
She had so many subjects to think of and to dread that she forgot to be frightened as she sped up the bluff. It was only on reaching the summit and discovering that Claude wasn't there that she was seized by fear. There was a bench beside her—a round bench circling the trunk of an oak-tree—and she sank upon it.
The crunching of footsteps told her some one was coming up the slope. In all probability it was Claude; but it might be a stranger, or even an animal. The crunching continued, measured, slow. She would have fled if there had been any way of fleeing without encountering the object of her alarm. The regular beat of the footsteps growing heavier and nearer through the darkness rendered her almost hysterical. When at last Claude's figure emerged into the moonlight, his erect slenderness defined against the sky, she threw herself, sobbing, into his arms.
It was not the least of Claude's attractions that he was so tender with women swept by crises of emotion. Where Thor would have stood helpless, or prescribed a mild sedative, Claude pressed the agitated creature to his breast and let her weep.
When her sobs had subsided to a convulsive clinging to him without tears, he explained his delay in arriving by his meeting with Uncle Sim. They were seated on the bench by this time, his arms about her, her face close to his.
"Awful nuisance, he is. Regular Paul Pry. Can't keep anything from him. Scours the country night and day like the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. Never know when you'll meet him."
"I met him, too," Rosie said, getting some control of her voice.
"The deuce you did! Did he speak to you? Did he say anything about me?"
"He said he'd seen you."
"Is that all?"
She weighed the possible disadvantages of saying too much, coming to the conclusion that she had better tell him more. "No, it isn't quite all. He seemed to—warn me against you."
"Oh, the devil!" In his start he loosened his embrace, but grasped her to him again. "What's he up to now?"
"Do you think he's up to anything?"
"What else did he say? Tell me all you can think of."
She narrated the brief incident.
"Will it make any difference to us?" she ventured to ask.
"It'll make a difference to us if he blabs to father. Of course!"
"What sort of difference, Claude?"
"The sort of difference it makes when there's the devil to pay."
She clasped him to her the more closely. "Does that mean that we shouldn't be able to see each other any more?"
The question being beyond him, Claude smothered it under a selection of those fond epithets in which his vocabulary was large. In the very process of enjoying them Rosie was rallying her strength. She was still clasping him as she withdrew her head slightly, looking up at him through the moonlight.
"Claude, I want to ask you something."
With his hand on the knot of her hair, he pressed her face once more against his. "Yes, yes, darling. Ask me anything. Yes, yes, yes, yes."
She broke in on his purring with the words, "Are we engaged?"
The purring ceased. Without relaxing his embrace he remained passive, like a man listening. "What makes you ask me that?"
"It's what people generally are when they're—when they're like us, isn't it?"
Brushing his lips over the velvet of her cheeks, he began to purr again. "No one was ever like us, darling. No one ever will be. Don't worry your little head with what doesn't matter."
"But it does matter to me, Claude. I want to know where I am."
"Where you are, dearie. You're here with me. Isn't that enough?"
"It's enough for now, Claude, but—"
"And isn't what's enough for now all we've got to think of?"
"No, Claude dearest. A girl isn't like a man—"
"Oh yes, she is, when she loves. And you love me, don't you, dearie? You love me just a little. Say you love me—just a little—a very little—"
"Oh, Claude, my darling, my darling, you know I love you. You're all I've got in the world—"
"And you're all I've got, my little Rosie. Nothing else counts when I'm with you—"
"But when you're not with me, Claude? What then? What am I to think when you're away from me? What am I to be?"
"Be just as you are. Be just as you've always been since the day I first saw you—"
"Yes, yes, Claude; but you don't understand. If any one were to find out that I came here to meet you like this—"
"No one must find out, dear. We must keep that mum."
"But if they did, Claude, it wouldn't matter to you at all—"
"Oh, wouldn't it, though? Father'd make it matter, I can tell you."
"Yes, but you wouldn't be disgraced. I should be. Don't you see? No one would ever believe—"
"Oh, what does it matter what any one believes. Let them all go hang."
"We can't let them all go hang. You can't let your father go hang, and I can't let mine. Do you know what my father would do to me if he knew where I am now? He'd kill me."
"Oh, rot, Rosie!"
"No, no, Claude; I'm telling you the truth. He's that sort. You wouldn't think it, but he is. He's one of those mild, dreamy men who, when they're enraged—which isn't often—don't know where to stop. If he thought I'd done wrong he'd put a knife into me, just like that." She struck her clenched hand against his heart. "When Matt was arrested—"
He tore himself from her suddenly. The sensitive part of him had been touched. "Oh, Lord, Rosie, don't let's go into that. I hate that business. I try to forget it."
"No one can forget it who remembers me."
"Oh yes, they can.Ican—when you don't drag it up. What's the use, Rosie? Why not be happy for the few hours every now and then that we can get together? What's got into you?" He changed his tone. "You hurt me, Rosie, you hurt me. You talk as if you didn't trust me. You seem to have suspicions, to be making schemes—"
"Oh, Claude! For God's sake!" Rosie, too, was touched on the quick, perhaps by some truth in the accusation.
He kissed her ardently. "I know, dear; I know. I know it's all right—that you don't mean anything. Kiss me. Tell me you won't do it any more—that you won't hurt the man who adores you. What does anything else matter? You and I are everything there is in the world. Don't let us talk. When we've got each other—"
Rosie gave it up, for the present at any rate. She began to perceive dimly that they had different conceptions of love. For her, love was engagement and marriage, with the material concomitants the two states implied. But for Claude love was something else. It was something she didn't understand, except that it was indifferent to the orderly procession by which her own ambitions climbed. He loved her; of that she was sure. But he loved her for her face, her mouth, her eyes, her hair, the color of her skin, her roughened little hands, her lithe little body. Of nothing else in her was he able to take cognizance. Her hard life and her heart-breaking struggles were conditions he hadn't the eyes to see. He was aware of them, of course, but he could detach her from them. He could detach her from them for the minutes she spent with him, but he could see her go back to them and make no attempt to follow her in sympathy.
But he loved her beauty. There was that palliating fact. After all, Rosie was a woman, and here was the supreme tribute to her womanhood. It was not everything, and yet it was the thing enchanting. It was the kind of tribute any woman in the world would have put before social rescue or moral elevation, and Rosie was like the rest. She could be lulled by Claude's endearments as a child is lulled by a cradle-song. With this music in her ears doubts were stilled and misgivings quieted and ambitions overruled. Return to the world of care and calculation followed only on Claude's words uttered just as they were parting.
"And you'd better be on your guard against Thor. So long as he's going to your house you mustn't give anything away."
Dressed for going out, Mrs. Willoughby was buttoning her gloves as she stood in the square hall hung with tapestries of a late Gobelins period and adorned with a cabinet in the style of Buhl flanked by two decorative Regency chairs. Her gaze followed the action of her fingers or wandered now and then inquiringly up the stairway.
Her broad, low figure, wide about the hips, tapered toward the feet in lines suggestive of a spinning-top. She was proud of her feet, which were small and shapely, and approved of a fashion in skirts that permitted them to be displayed. Being less proud of her eyes, she also approved of a style of hat which allowed the low, sloping brim, worn slantwise across the brows, to conceal one of them.
"You're surely not going in that rag!"
The protest was called forth by Lois's appearance in a walking-costume on the stairs.
"But, mamma, I'm not going at all. I told you so."
"Told me so! What's the good of telling me so? There'll be loads of men there—simply loads. Goodness me! Lois, if you're ever going to know any men at all—"
"I know all the men I want to know."
"You don't know all the men you want to know, and if you do I should be ashamed to say it. A girl who's had all your advantages and doesn't make more show! What on earth are you doing that you don't want to come?"
Lois hesitated, but she was too frank for concealments. "I'm going to see a girl Thor Masterman wants me to look after. He thinks I may be able to help her."
The mother subsided. "Oh, well—if it's that!" She added, so as not to seem to hint too much: "I always like you to do what you can toward uplift. I'll take you as far as the Old Village, if you're going that way."
There had been a time when such concessions at the mention of Thor Masterman would have irritated Lois more than any violence of opposition; but that time was passing. She could hardly complain if others saw what was daily becoming more patent to herself. She could complain of it the less since she found it difficult to conceal her happiness. It was a happiness that softened the pangs of care and removed to a distance the conditions incidental to her father's habits and impending financial ruin.
Nevertheless, the conditions were there, and had to be confronted. She made, in fact, a timid effort to confront them as she sat beside her mother in the admirably fitted limousine.
"Mother, what are we going to do about papa?"
Mrs. Willoughby's indignant rising to the occasion could be felt like an electric wave. "Do about him? Do about what?"
"About the way he is."
"The way he is? What on earth are you talking about?"
"I mean the way he comes home."
"He comes home very tired, if that's what you're trying to say. Any man who works as they work him at that office—"
"Do you think it's work?"
"No, I don't think it's work. I call it slavery. It's enough to put a man in his grave. I've seen him come home so that he could hardly speak; and if you've done the same you may know that he's simply tired enough to die."
Lois tried to come indirectly to her point by saying, "Thor Masterman has been bringing him home lately."
"Oh, well; I suppose Thor knows he doesn't lose anything by that move."
Lois ignored the remark to say, "Thor seems worried."
The mother's alertness was that of a ruffled, bellicose bird defending its mate. "If Thor's worried about your father, he can spare himself the trouble. He can leave that to me. I'll take care of him. What he needs is rest. When everything is settled I mean to take him away. Of course we can't gothiswinter. If we could we should go to Egypt—he and I. But we can't. We know that. We make the sacrifice."
These discreet allusions, too, Lois thought it best to let pass in silence. "It wasn't altogether about papa that Thor was worried. He seems anxious about money."
Bessie tossed her head. "That may easily be. If your father takes our money out of the firm, as he threatens to do, the Mastermans will be—well, I don't know where."
The girl felt it right to go a step further. "He seemed to hint—he didn't say it in so many words—that perhaps papa wouldn't have so very much to take out."
This was dismissed lightly. "Then he doesn't know what's he talking about. Archie's frightfully close in those things, I must say. He's never let either of the boys know anything about the business. He won't even let me. But your father knows. If Thor thinks for a minute the money isn't nearly all ours he may come in for a rude awakening."
Reassured by this firmness of tone, Lois began to take heart. Getting out at the Old Village, she continued her way on foot, and found Rosie among the azaleas and poinsettias.
Thor Masterman met her an hour later, as she returned homeward. He knew where she had been as soon as he saw her turn the corner at which the road descends the hill, recognizing with a curious pang her promptness in carrying out his errand. The pang was a surprise to him—the beginning of a series of revelations on the subject of himself.
Her desire to please him had never before this instant caused him anything but satisfaction. It had been but the response to his desire to please her. He had not been blind to the goal to which this mutual good-will would lead them, but he had quite made up his mind that she would make him as good a wife as any one. As a preliminary to marriage he had weighed the possibility of falling ardently in love, coming at last to the conclusion that he was not susceptible to that passion.
His long-standing intention to marry Lois Willoughby was based on the fact that besides being sympathetic to him she was plain and lonely. If the motive hadn't taken full possession of his heart it was because the state of being plain and lonely had never seemed to him the worst of calamities, by any means. The worst of calamities, that for which no patience was sufficient, that for which there was no excuse, that which kings, presidents, emperors, parliaments, congresses, embassies, and armies should combine their energies to prevent, was to be poor. He was entirely of Mrs. Fay's opinion, that with money ill-health and unhappiness were details. You could bear them both. You could bear being lonely; you could bear being plain. Consequently, the menace that now threatened Lois Willoughby's fortunes strengthened her claim on him; but all at once he felt, as he saw her descend the hill, that the claim might make complications.
Was it because she was plain? Curious that he had never attached importance to that fact before! But it blinded him now to her graceful carriage as well as to the way she had of holding her head with a noble, independent poise that made her a woman of distinction.
She was smiling with an air at once intimate and triumphant. "I think I've won in the first encounter, at any rate."
In his wincing there was the surprise of a man who in a moment of expansion has made a sacred confidence only to find it crop up lightly in subsequent conversation. He was obliged to employ some self-control in order to say, with a manner sufficiently offhand, "What happened?"
She told of making her approaches under the plea of buying potted plants. A cold reception had given way before her persistent friendliness, while there had been complete capitulation on the tender of an invitation to County Street to tea. The visit had been difficult to manage, but amusing, and a little pitiful.
To the details that were difficult or pitiful he could listen with calm, but he was inwardly indignant that Lois should find anything in her meeting with Rosie that lent itself to humor. He knew that humor. The superior were fond of indulging in it at the expense of the less fortunate. Even Lois Willoughby had not escaped that taint of class. Fearing to wound her by some impatient word, he made zeal in his round of duties the excuse for an abrupt good-by.
But zeal in his round of duties changed to zeal of another kind as with set face and long, swinging stride he hurried up the hill. The plans he had been maturing for the psychological treatment of Mrs. Fay melted into eagerness to know how the poor little thing had taken Lois's advances. He was disappointed, therefore, that Rosie should receive him coldly.
Within twenty-four hours his imagination had created between them something with the flavor of a friendship. He had been thinking of her so incessantly that it was disconcerting to perceive that apparently she had not been thinking of him at all. He was the doctor to her, and no more. She continued to direct Antonio, the Italian, who was opening a crate of closely packed azalea-plants, while she discussed the effect of his sedative on her mother. Her manner was dry and business-like; her replies to his questions brief and to the point.
But professional duty being done, he endeavored to raise the personal issue. "What did you mean yesterday when you said that you couldn't play fair, but that you'd play as fair as you could?"
She turned from her contemplation of the stooping Antonio's back. "Did I say that?"
He hardly heeded the question in the pleasure he got from this glimpse of her green eyes. "You said that—or something very much like it."
His uncertainty gave her the chance to correct that which, in the light of Claude's warning, might prove to have been an indiscretion. "I'm sure I can't imagine. You must have—misunderstood me."
He pursued the topic not because he cared, but in order to make her look at him again. "Oh no, I didn't. Don't you remember? It was after you said that there was one thing that might happen—"
She was sure of her indiscretion now. He might even be setting a snare for her. Dr. Sim Masterman might have withdrawn from her mother's case in order to put the one brother on the other's tracks. If Claude was right in his suspicions, there was reasonable ground for alarm. She said, with assumed indifference: "Oh, that! That was nothing. Just a fancy."
He still talked for the sake of talking, attaching no importance to her replies. "Was it a fancy when you said that I would be one of the people opposed to it—if it happened?"
"Well, yes. But you'd only be one among a lot." She shifted to firmer ground. "I wasn't thinking of you in particular—or of any one in particular."
"Were you thinking of anythingin particular?"
The question threw her back on straight denial. "N-no; not exactly; just a fancy."
"But I shouldn't be opposed to it, whatever it is—if it was to your advantage."
His persistence deepened her distrust. A man whom she had seen only once before would hardly display such an interest in her and her affairs unless he had a motive, especially when that man was a Masterman. She took refuge in her task with the azaleas. "No, not there, Antonio. Put them there—like this—I'll show you."
The necessity for giving Antonio practical demonstration taking her to the other side of the hothouse, Thor felt himself obliged to go. He went with the greater regret since he had been unable to sound her on the subject of Lois Willoughby's advances, though her skill in eluding him heightened his respect. His disdain for the small arts of coquetry being as sincere as his scorn of snobbery, he counted it to her credit that she eluded him at all. There would be plenty of opportunities for speech with her. During them he hoped to win her confidence by degrees.
In the bedroom up-stairs, where the mother was again seated in her upholstered arm-chair with the quilt across her knees, he endeavored to put into practice his idea of mental therapeutics. He began by speaking of Matt, using the terms that would most effectively challenge her attention. "When he comes back, you know, we must make him forget that he's ever worn stripes."
She eyed him sternly. "What'd be the good of his forgetting it? He'll have done it, just the same."
"Some of us have done worse than that, and yet—"
"And yet we didn't get into Colcord for them. But that's what counts. You can do what you like as long as you ain't put in jail. Look at your father—"
"So when he comes home—" he interrupted, craftily.
She leaned forward, throwing the quilt from her knees. "See here," she asked, confidentially, "how would you feel if you saw your son coming up out of hell?"
"How should I feel? I should be glad he was coming up instead of going down. You would, too, wouldn't you? And now that he's coming up we must keep him up. That's the point. So many poor chaps that have been in his position feel that because they've once been down they've got to stay down. We must make him see that he's come back among friends—and you must tell us what to do. You must give your mind to it and think it out. He's your boy—so it's your duty to take the lead."
Her cold eye rested on him as if she were giving his words consideration. "Why don't you ask your father to take the lead? He sent him to Colcord."
Thor got no further than this during the hour he spent with her, seeing that Uncle Sim had been right in describing the case as one for ingenuity—and something more. Questioning himself as to what this something more could be, he brought up the subject tentatively with Jasper Fay, whom he met on leaving the house. Thor himself stood on the door-step, while Fay, who wore gardening overalls, confronted him from the withered grass-plot that ended in a leafless hedge of bridal-veil.
"She's never been a religious woman at all, has she?"
Fay answered with a distant smile. "She did go in for religion at one time, sir; but I guess she found it slim diet. It got to seem to her like Thomas Carlyle's hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed. After that she quit."
"I had an idea that you belonged to the First Church and were Dr. Hilary's parishioners."
Fay explained. "Dr. Hilary married us, but we haven't troubled the church much since. I never took any interest in the Christian religion to begin with; and when I looked into it I found it even more fallacious than I supposed." To account for this advanced position on the part of a simple market-gardener he added, "I've been a good deal of a reader."
Thor spoke slowly and after meditation. "It isn't so much a question of its being fallacious as of its capacity for producing results."
Fay turned partially round toward the south, where a haze hung above the city. His tone was infused with a mild bitterness. "Don't we see the results it can produce—over there?"
"That's right, too." Thor was so much in sympathy with this point of view that he hardly knew how to go on. "And yet some of us doctors are beginning to suspect that there may be a power in Christianity—a purely psychological power, you understand—that hasn't been used for what it's worth."
Fay nodded. He had been following this current of contemporary thought. "Yes, Dr. Thor. So I hear. Just as, I dare say, you haven't found out all the uses of opium."
"Well, opium is good in its place, you know."
"I suppose so." He lifted his starry eyes with their mystic, visionary rapture fully on the young physician. "And yet I remember how George Eliot prayed that when her troubles came she might get along without being drugged by that stuff—meaning the Christian religion, sir—and I guess I'd kind o' like that me and mine should do the same."
Thor dropped the subject and went his way. As far as he had opinions of his own, they would have been similar to Fay's had he not within a year or two heard of sufficiently authenticated cases in which sick spirits or disordered nerves had yielded to spiritual counsels after the doctor had had no success. He had been so little impressed with these instances that he might not have allowed his speculations with regard to Mrs. Fay to go beyond the fleeting thought, only for the fact that on passing through the Square he met Reuben Hilary. In general he was content to touch his hat to the old gentleman and go on; but to-day, urged by an impulse too vague to take accurate account of, he stopped with respectful greetings.
"I've just been to see an old parishioner of yours, sir," he said, when the preliminaries of neighborly conversation had received their due.
"Have you, now?" was the non-committal response, delivered with a North-of-Ireland intonation.
"Mrs. Fay—wife of Fay, the gardener. I can't say she's ill," Thor went on, feeling his way, "but she's mentally upset." He decided to plunge into the subject boldly, smiling with that mingling of frankness and perplexity which people found appealing because of its conscientiousness. "And I've been wondering, Dr. Hilary, if you couldn't help her."
"Have you, now? And what would you be wanting me to do?"
Thor reflected as to the exact line to take, while the kindly eyes covered him with their shrewd, humorous twinkle. "You see," Thor tried to explain, "that if she could get the idea that there's any other stand to take toward trouble than that of kicking against it, she might be in a fair way to get better. At present she's like a prisoner who dashes his head against a stone wall, not seeing that there's a window by which he might make his escape."
There was renewed twinkling in the merry eyes. "But if there's a window, why don't you point it out to her?"
Thor grinned. "Because, sir, I don't see it myself."
"T't, t't! Don't you, then? And how do you know it's there?"
Thor continued to grin. "To be frank with you, sir, I don't believe it is there. But if you can make her believe it is—"
"That is, you want me to deceive the poor creature."
"Oh no, sir," Thor protested. "You wouldn't be deceiving her because you do believe it."
"So that I'd only be deceiving her to the extent that I'm deceived myself."
"You're too many for me," Thor laughed again, preparing to move on. "I didn't know but that if you gave her what are called the consolations of religion—that's the right phrase, isn't it—"
"There is such a phrase. But you can'tgivepeople the consolations of religion; they've got to find them for themselves. If they won't do that, there's no power in heaven or earth that can force consolation upon them."
"But religion undertakes to do something, doesn't it?"
The old man shook his head. "Nothing whatever—no more than air undertakes that you shall breathe it, or water that you shall drink it, or fire that you shall warm yourself at its blaze."
Thor mused. When he spoke it was as if summing up the preceding remarks. "So that you can't do anything, sir, for my friend, Mrs. Fay?"
"Nothing whatever, me dear Thor—but help her to do something for herself."
"Very well, sir. Will you try that?"
"Sure, I'll try it. I'm too proud of the Word of God to thrust it where it isn't wanted—margaritas ante porcos, if you've Latin enough for that—but when any one asks for it as earnestly as you, me dear Thor—"
Having won what he asked, Thor shook the old man's hand and thanked him, after which he hurried off to the garage to take out his runabout and bring Lois's father home from town.
As November and December passed and the new year came in, small happenings began to remind Thorley Masterman that he was soon to inherit money. It was a fact which he himself could scarcely credit. Perhaps because he was not imaginative the condition of being thirty years of age continued to seem remote even when he was within six weeks of that goal.
He was first impressed with the rapidity of his approach to it on a morning when he came late to breakfast, finding at his plate a long envelope, bearing in its upper left-hand corner the request that in the event of non-delivery it should be returned to the office of Darling & Darling, at 27, Commonwealth Row. A glance, which he couldn't help reading, passed round the table as he took it up. It was not new to him that among the other members of the household, closely as they were united, there was a sense of vague injustice because he was coming into money and they were not.
The communication was brief, stating no more than the fact that in view of the transfer of the estate which would take place a few weeks later, Mr. William Darling, the sole trustee, would be glad to see the heir on a day in the near future, to submit to him the list of investments and other properties that were to make up his inheritance. Thor saw his grandfather's money, so long a fairy prospect, as likely to become a matter of solid cash. The change in his position would be considerable.
As yet, however, his position remained that of a son in his father's family, and, in obedience to what he knew was expected of him, he read the note aloud. Though there was an absence of comment, his stepmother, in passing him his coffee, murmured, caressingly, "Dear old Thor."
"Dear old Thor," Claude mimicked, "will soon be able to do everything he pleases."
Mrs. Masterman smiled. It was her mission to conciliate. "And what will that be?"
"I know what it won't be," Claude said, scornfully. "It won't be anything that has to do with a pretty girl."
Thor flushed. It was one of the minutes at which Claude's taunts gave him all he could do to contain himself. As far as his younger brother was concerned, he meant well by him. It had always been his intention that his first use of Grandpa Thorley's money should be in supplementing Claude's meager personal resources and helping him to keep on his feet. He could be patient with him, too—patient under all sorts of stinging gibes and double-edged compliments—patient for weeks, for months—patient right up to the minute when something touched him too keenly on the quick, and his wrath broke out with a fury he knew to be dangerous. It was so dangerous as to make him afraid—afraid for Claude, and more afraid for himself. There had been youthful quarrels between them from which he had come away pale with terror, not at what he had done, but at what he might have done had he not maintained some measure of self-control.
The memory of such occasions kept him quiet now, though the irony of Claude's speech cut so much deeper than any one could suspect. "Won't be anything that has to do with a pretty girl!" Good God! When he was beginning to feel his soul rent in the struggle between love and honor! It was like something sprung on him—that had caught him unawares. There were days when the suffering was so keen that he wondered if there was no way of lawfully giving in. After all, he had never asked Lois Willoughby to marry him. There had never been more between them than an unspoken intention in his mind which had somehow communicated itself to hers. But that was not a pledge. If he were to marry some one else, she couldn't reproach him by so much as a syllable.
It was not often that he was tempted to reason thus, but Claude's sarcasm brought up the question more squarely than it had ever raised itself before. It was exactly the sort of subject on which, had it concerned any one else, Thor would have turned for light to Lois herself. In being debarred from her counsels, he felt strangely at a loss. While he said to himself that after all these years there was but one thing for him to do, he was curious as to the view other people might take of such a situation. It was because of this need, and with Claude's sneer ringing in his heart, that later in the day he sprang the question on Dearlove. Dearlove was the derelict English butler whom Thor had picked out of the gutter and put in charge of his office so that he might have another chance. He had been summoned into his master's presence to explain the subsidence in the contents of a bottle of cognac that Thor kept at the office for emergency cases and had neglected to put under lock and key.
"That was a full bottle a month ago," Thor declared, holding the accusing object up to the light.
"Was it, sir?" Dearlove asked, dismally. He stood in his habitual attitude, his arms crossed on his stomach, his hands thrust, monklike, into his sleeves.
"And I've only taken one glass out of it—the day that young fellow fell off his bicycle."
Dearlove eyed the bottle piteously. "'Aven't you, sir? Perhaps you took more out that day than you thought."
But Thor broke in with what was really on his mind. "Look here, Dearlove! What would you say to a man who was in love with one woman if he married another?"
Dearlove was so astonished as to be for a minute at a loss for speech. "What'd I say to him, sir? I'd say, what did he do it for? If it was—"
"Yes, Dearlove?" Thor encouraged. "If it was for—what?"
"Well, sir, if he'd got money with her, like—well, that'd be one thing."
"But if he didn't? If it was a case in which money didn't matter?"
Dearlove shook his head. "I never 'eard of no such case as that, sir."
Thor grew interested in the sheerly human aspects of the subject. Romance was so novel to him that he wondered if every one came under its spell at some time—if there was no exception, not even Dearlove. He leaned across the desk, his hands clasped upon it.
"Now, Dearlove, suppose it was your own case, and—"
"Oh, me, sir! I'm no example to no one—not with Brightstone 'anging on to me the way she does. I can't look friendly at so much as a kitten without Brightstone—"
"Now here's the situation, Dearlove," Thor interrupted, while the ex-butler listened, his head judicially inclined to one side: "Suppose a man—a patient of mine, let us say—meant to marry one young lady, and let her see it. And suppose, later, he fell very much in love with another young lady—"
"He'd 'ave to ease the first one off a bit, wouldn't he, sir?"
"You think he ought to."
"I think he'd 'ave to, sir, unless he wanted to be sued for breach."
"It's the question of duty I'm thinking of, Dearlove."
"Ain't it his dooty to marry the one he's in love with, sir? Doesn't the Good Book say as 'ow fallin' in love"—Dearlove blushed becomingly—"as 'ow fallin' in love is the way God A'mighty means to fertilize the earth with people? Doesn't the Good Book say that, sir?"
"Perhaps it does. I believe it's the kind of primitive subject it's likely to take up."
"So that there's that to be thought of, sir. They say the children not born o' love matches ain't always strong." He added, as he shuffled toward the door, "We never had no little ones, Brightstone and me—only a very small one that died a few hours after it was born."
Thor was not convinced by this reasoning, but he was happier than before. Such expressions of opinion, which would probably be indorsed by nine people out of ten, assured him that he might follow the urging of his heart and yet not be a dastard.
He felt on stronger ground, therefore, when he talked with Fay one afternoon in the week following. "Suppose my father doesn't renew the lease—what would happen to you?"
Fay raised himself from the act of doing something to a head of lettuce which was unfolding its petals like a great green rose. His eyes had the visionary look that marked his inability to come down to the practical. "Well, sir, I don't rightly know."
"But you've thought of it, haven't you?"
"Not exactly thought of it. He's said he wouldn't two or three times already, and then changed his mind."
"Would it do you any good if he did? Aren't you fighting a losing battle, anyhow?"
"That's not wholly the way I judge, Dr. Thor. Neither the losing battle nor the winning one can be told from the balance-sheet. The success or failure of a man's work is chiefly in himself."
Thor studied this, gazing down the level of soft verdure to the end of the greenhouse in which they stood. "I can see how that might be in one way, but—"
"It's the way I mostly think of, sir. Every man has his own habit of mind, hasn't he? I agree with the great prophet Thomas Carlyle when he says"—he brought out the words with a mild pomposity—"when he says that a certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells in us which only our works can render articulate. He speaks of the folly of the precept 'Know thyself' till we've made it 'Know what thou canst work at.' I can work at this, Dr. Thor; I couldn't work at anything else. I know that making both ends meet is an important part of it, of course—"
"But to you it isn't themostimportant part of it."
Fay's eyes wandered to the other greenhouse in which lettuce grew, to the hothouse full of flowers, and out over the forcing-beds of violets. "No, Dr. Thor; not the most important part of it—to me. I've created all this. I love it. It's my life. It's myself. And if—"
"And if my father doesn't renew the lease—?"
"Then I shall be done for. It won't be just going bankrupt in the money sense; it'll be everything else—blasted." He subjoined, dreamily: "I don't know what would happen to me after that. I'd be—I'd be equal to committing crimes."
Thor couldn't remember ever having seen tears on an elderly man's cheeks before. He took a turn down half the length of the greenhouse and back again. "Look here, Fay," he said, in the tone of one making a resolution, "supposing my father would givemea lease of the place?"
"You, Dr. Thor?"
"Yes, me. Would you work it for me?"
Fay reflected long, while Thor watched the play of light and shadow over the mild, mobile face. "It wouldn't be my own place any more, would it, sir?"
"No, I suppose it wouldn't—not strictly. But it would be the next best thing. It would be better than—"
"It would be better than being turned out." He reflected further. "Was you thinking of taking it over as an investment, sir?"
Not having considered this side of his idea, Thor sought for a natural, spontaneous answer, and was not long in finding one. "I want to be identified with the village industries, because I'm going into politics."
"Oh, are you, sir? I didn't know you was that way inclined."
"I'm not," Thor explained, when they had moved from the greenhouse into the yard. "I only feel that we people of the old stock hang out of politics too much and that I ought to pitch in and make one more. So you get my idea, Fay. It'll give me standing to hold a bit of property like this, even if it's only on lease."
There was no need for further explanations. Fay consented, not cheerfully, but with a certain saddened and yet grateful resignation, of which the expression was cut short by a cheery, ringing voice from the gateway:
"Hello, Mr. Fay! Hello, Dr. Thor! Whoa, Maud, whoa! Stand, will you? What you thinking of?"
The response to this greeting came from both men simultaneously, each making it according to his capacity for heartiness. "Hello, Jim!" They emphasized the welcome by unconsciously advancing to meet the tall, stalwart young Irishman of the third generation on American soil who came toward them with the long, loose limbs and swinging stride inherited from an ancestry bred to tramping the hills of Connemara. A pair of twinkling eyes and a mouth that was always on the point of breaking into a smile when it was not actually smiling tempered the peasant shrewdness of a face that got further softening, and a touch of superiority, from a carefully tended young mustache.
Thor and Jim Breen had been on friendly terms ever since they were boys; but the case was not exceptional, since the latter was on similar terms with every one in the village. From childhood upward he had been a local character, chiefly because of a breezy self-respect that was as free from self-consciousness as from self-importance. There was no one to whom he wasn't polite, but there had never been any one of whom he was afraid. "Hello, Mr. Masterman!" "Hello, Dr. Hilary!" "Hello, Father Ryan!" "Hello Dr. Sim!" had been his form of greeting ever since he had begun swaggering around the village, with head up and face alert, at the age of five. No one had ever been found to resent this cheerful familiarity, not even Archie Masterman.
As a man in whom friendliness was a primary instinct, Jim Breen never entered a trolley-car nor turned a street corner without speaking or nodding to every one he knew. Never did he visit a neighboring town without calling on, or calling up, every one he could claim as an acquaintance. He was always on hand for fires, for fights, for fallen horses, for first-aid in accidents, for ball-games, for the outings of Boy Scouts, and for village theatricals and dances. There were rumors that he was sometimes "wild," but the wildness being confined to his incursions into the city—which generally took place after dark—it was not sufficiently in evidence to shock the home community. It was a matter of common knowledge that he used, in village phrase, "to go with" Rosie Fay—the breaking of the friendship being attributed by some of the well-informed to his reported wildness, and by others to differences in religion. As Thor had been absent in Europe during this episode, and was without the native suspicion that would have connected the two names, he took Jim's arrival pleasantly.
Having finished his bit of business, which concerned an order for azaleas too large for his father to meet, and in which Mr. Fay might find it to his advantage to combine, Jim turned blithely toward Thor. "Hear about the town meeting, Dr. Thor?—what old Billy Taylor said about the new bridge? What do you think of that for nerve? Tell you what, there's some things in this town needs clearing up."
The statement bringing out Thor's own intention to run as a candidate for office at the next election, Jim expressed his interest in the vernacular of the hour, "What do you know about that?" Further discussion of politics ending in Jim's pledging his support to his boyhood's friend, Thor shook hands with an encouraging sense of being embarked on a public career, and went forward to visit his patient in the house.