Ted swallowed hard and pulled his forelock in genuine perturbation.
"Good Lord, Larry!" he blurted. "I—"
His brother held up an imperious warning hand.
"I said 'forget it.' Don't make me want to dump you now, after coming through the rest."
Ted saluted promptly.
"Ay, ay, sir! It's forgot. Only perhaps you'll let me apologize again, underscored, now I understand. Honest, I'm no end sorry, Larry."
The other nodded acceptance of the underscored apology and again silence had its way.
As they landed Ted fastened the canoe and for a moment the two brothers stood side by side in the starlight. Larry put out his hand. Ted took it. Their eyes met, said more than any words could have expressed.
"Thank you, Ted. You've been great—helped a lot."
Larry's voice was a little unsteady, his eyes were full of trouble and shame.
"Ought to, after starting the conflagration," said Ted. "I'll attend to the general explanations. You go to Ruth."
More than one person had wondered at the mysterious disappearance of the two Holidays. It is quite usual, and far from unexpected, when two young persons of the opposite sex drift off somewhere under the stars on a summer night without giving any particular account of themselves; but one scarcely looks for that sort of social—or unsocial—eccentricity from two youths, especially two brothers. Nobody but Ruth and Tony, and possibly shrewd-eyed Sue, suspected a quarrel, but everybody was curious and ready to burst into interrogation upon the simultaneous return of the two young men which was quite as sudden as their vanishing had been.
"Larry and I had a wager up," announced Ted to Sue in a perfectly clear, distinct voice which carried across the length of the small hall now that the music was silent. "He said he could paddle down to the point, current against him, faster than I could paddle back, current with me. We took a notion to try it out tonight. Please forgive us, Susanna, my dear. A Holiday is a creature of impulse you know."
Sue made a little face at the speaker. She was quite sure he was lying about the wager, but she was a good hostess and played up to his game.
"You don't deserve to be forgiven, either of you," she sniffed. "Especially Larry who never comes to parties and when he does has to go off and do a silly thing like that. Who won though? I will ask that." She smiled at Ted and he grinned back.
"Larry, of course. Give me a dance, Sue. I've got my second wind."
"Bless Ted!" thought Tony, listening to her brother's glib excuses. "Thank goodness he can lie like that. Larry never could." And as her eyes met Ted's a moment later when they passed each other in the maze of dancers he murmured "All right" in her ear and she was well content. Bless Ted, indeed!
Meanwhile Larry had gone, as Ted bade him, straight to Ruth. He bent over her tired little white face, an agony of remorse in his own.
"Ruth, forgive me. I'll never forgive myself."
"Don't, Larry. It is I who ought to be sorry and I am—oh so sorry—you don't know. Ted didn't mean any harm. I ought not to have let him do it. It was my fault."
"There was nobody at fault except me and my fool temper. I am desperately ashamed of myself Ruth. I've left you all alone all this time and I promised I wouldn't. You'll never trust me again and I don't deserve to be trusted. It doesn't do any good to say I am sorry. It can't undo what I did. I didn't dare stay and that's the fact. I didn't know what I'd do to Ted if he got in my way. I felt—murderous."
"Larry!"
"I know it sounds awful. It is awful. It is an old battle. I thought I'd won it, but I haven't. Don't look so scared though. Nothing happened. Ted came after me like the corking big-hearted kid he is and brought me to, in half the time I could have done it for myself. It is thanks to him I'm here now. But never mind that. It is only you that matters. Shall I take you home? I don't deserve it, but if you will let me it will show you forgive me a little bit anyway," he finished humbly.
"Don't look so dreadfully unhappy, Larry. It is over now, and of course I forgive you if you think there is anything to forgive. I'm so thankful you didn't quarrel with Ted. I was awfully worried and so was Tony. She watched the door every minute till you came back."
"I suppose so," groaned Larry. "I made one horrible mess of everything for you all. Are you ready to go?"
"I'd like to dance with you once first, Larry, if—if you would like to."
"Would I like to!" Larry's face lost its mantle of gloom, was sudden sunshine all over. "Will you really dance with me—after the rotten way I've behaved?"
"Of course, I will. I wanted to all the time, but I was afraid. But when Ted made me it all came back and I loved it, only it was you I wanted to dance with most. You know that, don't you, Larry, dear?" The last word was very low, scarcely more than a breath, but Larry heard it and it nearly undid him. A flood of long-pent endearments trembled on his lips. But Ruth held up a hand of warning.
"Don't, Larry. We mustn't spoil it. We've got to remember the ring."
"Damn the ring!" he exploded. "I beg your pardon." Larry was genuinely shocked at his own bad manners. "I don't know why I'm such a brute tonight. Let's dance."
And to the delight and relief of the younger Holidays, Larry and Ruth joined the dancers.
The dance over, they made their farewells. Larry guided Ruth down the slope, his arm around her ostensibly for her support, and helped her into the canoe. Once more they floated off over the quiet water, under the quiet stars. But their young hearts were anything but quiet. Their love was no longer an unacknowledged thing. Neither knew just what was to be done with it; but there it was in full sight, as both admitted in joy and trepidation and silence.
As Larry held open the door for her to step inside the quiet hall he bent over the girl a moment, taking both her hands in his. Then he drew away abruptly and bolted into the living room, leaving her to grope her way up stairs in the dark alone.
"I wonder," she murmured to herself later as she stood before her mirror shaking out her rippling golden locks from their confining net. "I wonder if it would have been so terrible if he had kissed me just that once. Sometimes I wish he weren't quite so—so Holidayish."
The next evening Doctor Holiday listened to a rather elaborate argument on the part of his older nephew in favor of the latter's leaving Dunbury immediately in pursuit of his specialist training that he had planned to go in for eventually.
"You are no longer contented here with me—with us?" questioned the older man when the younger had ended his exposition.
Larry's quick ear caught the faint hurt in his uncle's voice and hastened to deny the inference.
"It isn't that, Uncle Phil. I am perfectly satisfied—happier here with you that I would be anywhere else in the world. You have been wonderful to me. I am not such an ungrateful idiot as not to understand and appreciate what a start it has given me to have you and your name and work behind me. Only—maybe I've been under your wing long enough. Maybe I ought to stand on my feet."
Doctor Holiday studied the troubled young face opposite him. He was fairly certain that he wasn't getting the whole or the chief reasons which were behind this sudden proposition.
"Do you wish to go at once?" he asked. "Or will the first of the year be soon enough."
Larry flushed and fell to fumbling with a paper knife that lay on the desk.
"I—I meant to go right away," he stammered.
"Why?"
Larry was silent.
"I judge the evidence isn't all in," remarked the older doctor a little drily. "Am I going to hear the rest of it—the real reason for your decision to go just now?"
Still silence on Larry's part, the old obstinate set to his lips.
"Very well then. Suppose I take my turn. I think you haven't quite all the evidence yourself. Do you know Granny is dying?"
The paper knife fell with a click to the floor.
"Uncle Phil! No, I didn't know. Of course I knew it was coming but you mean—soon?"
"Yes, Larry, I mean soon. How soon no one can tell, but I should say three months would be too long to allow."
The boy brushed his hand across his eyes. He loved Granny. He had always seemed to understand her better than the others had and had been himself always the favorite. Moreover he was bound to her by a peculiar tie, having once saved her life, conquering his boyish fear to do so. It was hard to realize she was really going, that no one could save her now.
"I didn't know," he said again in a low voice.
"Ted will go back to college. I shall let Tony go to New York to study as she wishes, just as you had your chance. It isn't exactly the time for you to desert us, my boy."
"I won't, Uncle Phil. I'll stay."
"Thank you, son. I felt sure you wouldn't fail us. You never have. But I wish you felt as if you could tell me the other reason or reasons for going which you are keeping back. If it is they are stronger than the one I have given you for staying it is only fair that I should have them."
Larry's eyes fell. A slow flush swept his face, ran up to his very hair.
"My boy, is it Ruth?"
The gray eyes lifted, met the older man's grave gaze unfalteringly.
"Yes, Uncle Phil, it is Ruth. I thought you must have seen it before this. It seemed as if I were giving myself away, everything I did or didn't do."
"I have thought of it occasionally, but dismissed the idea as too fantastic. It hasn't been so obvious as it seemed to you no doubt. You have not made love to her?"
"Not in so many words. I might just as well have though. She knows. If it weren't for the ring—well, I think she would care too."
"I am very sorry, Larry. It looks like a bad business all round. Yet I can't see that you have much to blame yourself for. I withdraw my objections to your going away. If it seems best to you to go I haven't a word to say."
"I don't know whether it is best or not. I go round and round in circles trying to work it out. It seems cowardly to run away from it, particularly if I am needed here. A man ought not to pull up stakes just because things get a little hard. Besides Ruth would think she had driven me away. I know she would go herself if she guessed I was even thinking of going. And I couldn't stand that. I'd go to the north pole myself and stay forever before I would send her away from you all. I was so grateful to you for asking her to stay and making her feel she was needed. She was awfully touched and pleased. She told me last night."
The senior doctor considered, thought back to his talk with Ruth. Poor child! So that was what she had been trying to tell him. She had thought she ought to go away on Larry's account, just as he was thinking he ought to go on hers. Poor hapless youngsters caught in the mesh of circumstances! It was certainly a knotty problem.
"It isn't easy to say what is right and best to do," he said after a moment. "It is something you will have to decide for yourself. When you came to me you had decided it was best to go, had you not? Was there a specially urgent reason?"
Larry flushed again and related briefly the last night's unhappy incident.
"I'm horribly ashamed of the way I acted," he finished. "And the whole thing showed me I couldn't count on my self-control as I thought I could. I couldn't sleep last night, and I thought perhaps maybe the thing to do was to get out quick before I did any real damage. It doesn't matter about me. It is Ruth."
"Do you think you can stay on and keep a steady head for her sake and for ours?"
"I can, Uncle Phil. It is up to me to stick and I'll do it. Uncle Phil, how long must a woman in Ruth's position wait before she can legally marry?"
"Ruth's position is so unique that I doubt if there is any legal precedent for it. Ordinarily when the husband fails to put in appearance and the presumption is he is no longer living, the woman is considered free in the eyes of the law, after a certain number of years, varying I believe, in different states. With Ruth the affair doesn't seem to be a case of law at all. She is in a position which requires the utmost protection from those who love her as we do. The obligation is moral rather than legal. I wouldn't let my mind run on the marrying aspects of the case at present my boy."
"I—Uncle Phil, sometimes I think I'll just marry her anyway and let the rest of it take care of itself. There isn't any proof she is married—not the slightest shadow of proof," Larry argued with sudden heat.
His uncle's eyebrows went up. "Steady, Larry. A wedding ring is usually considered presumptive evidence of marriage."
"I don't care," flashed the boy, the tension of the past weeks suddenly snapping. "She loves me. I don't see what right anything has to come between us. What is a wedding ceremony when a man and woman belong to each other as we belong? Hanged if I don't think I'd be justified in marrying her tomorrow! There is nothing but a ring to prevent."
"There is a good deal more than a ring to prevent," said Doctor Holiday with some sternness. "What if you did do just that and her husband appeared in two months or six?"
"I don't believe she has a husband. If she had he would have come after her before this. We've waited. He's had time."
"You have waited scarcely two months, Larry. That is hardly enough time upon which to base finalities."
"What of it? I'm half crazy sometimes over the whole thing. I can't see things straight. I don't want to. I don't want anything but Ruth, whether she is married or not. I want her. Some day I'll ask her to go off with me and she will go. She will do anything I ask."
"Hold on, Larry lad. You are saying things you don't mean. You are the last man in the world to take advantage of a girl's defenseless position and her love for you to gratify your own selfish desires and perhaps wreck her life and your own."
Larry bit his lip, wheeled and went over to the window, staring out into the night. At last he turned back, white, but master of himself again.
"I beg your pardon, Uncle Phil. You are right. I was talking like a fool. Of course I'll do nothing of the kind. I won't do anything to harm Ruth anyway. I won't even make love to her—if I can help it," he qualified in a little lower tone.
"If you can't you had better go at once," said his uncle still a bit sternly. Then more gently. "I know you don't want to play the cad, Larry."
"I won't, Uncle Phil. I promise."
"Very well. I am satisfied with your word. Remember I am ready to help any way and if it gets too hard I'll make it easy at any time for you to go. But in the mean time we won't talk about it. The least said the better."
Larry nodded his assent to that and suddenly switched to another subject, asking his uncle what he knew about this Alan Massey with whom Tony was having such an extensive correspondence.
His uncle admitted that he didn't know much of anything about him, except that he was the inheritor of the rather famous Massey property and an artist of some repute.
"He has plenty of repute of other kinds," said Larry. "He is a thorough-going rotter, I infer. I made some inquiries from a chap who knows him. He has gone the pace and then some. It makes me sick to have Tony mixed up with a chap like that."
"You haven't said anything to her yourself?"
"No. Don't dare. It would only make it worse for me to tackle her. Neither she nor Ted will stand any interference from me. We are a cranky lot I am afraid. We all have what Dad used to call the family devil. So far as I know you are the only person on record that can manage him."
And Larry smiled rather shame-facedly at his uncle.
"I am afraid you will all three have to learn to manage your own particular familiar. Devils are rather personal property, Larry."
"Don't I know it? I got into mighty close range with mine last night, and just now for that matter. Anyway I am not prepared to do any preaching at anybody at present; but I would be awfully grateful to you if you will speak to Tony. Somebody has to. And you can do it a million times better than anyone else."
"Very well. I will see what I can do." And thus quietly Doctor Holiday accepted another burden on his broad shoulders.
The next day he found Tony on the porch reading one of the long letters which came to her so frequently in the now familiar, dashing script.
"Got a minute for me, niece o' mine?" he asked.
Tony slid Alan's letter back into its envelope and smiled up at her uncle.
"Dozens of them, nice uncle," she answered.
"It is getting well along in the summer and high time we decided a few things. Do you still want to go in for the stage business in the fall?"
"I want to very much, Uncle Phil, if you think it isn't too much like deserting Granny and the rest of you."
"No, you have earned it. I want you to go. I don't suppose because you haven't talked about Hempel's offer that it means you have forgotten it?"
"Indeed, I haven't forgotten it. For myself I would much rather get straight on the stage if I could and learn by doing it, but you would prefer to have me go to a regular dramatic school, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, Tony, I would. A year of preparation isn't a bit too much to get your bearings in before you take the grand plunge. I want you to be very sure that the stage is what you really want."
"I am sure of that already. I've been sure for ages. But I am perfectly willing to do the thing any way you want and I am more grateful than I can tell you that you are on my side about it. Are you going to tell Granny? It will about break her heart I am afraid." Tony's eyes were troubled. She did hate to hurt Granny; but on the other hand she couldn't wait forever to begin.
She did not see the shadow that crept over her uncle's face. Well he knew that long before Tony was before the footlights, Granny would be where prejudices and misunderstandings were no more; but he had no wish to mar the girl's happiness by betraying the truth just now.
"I think we are justified in indulging in a little camouflage there," he said. "We will tell Granny you are going to study art. Art covers a multitude of sins," he added with a lightness he was far from feeling. "One thing more, my dear. I have waited a good while to hear something about the young man who writes these voluminous letters."' He nodded at the envelope in Tony's lap. "I like his writing; but I should like to know something about him,—himself."
Tony flushed and averted her eyes for a moment. Then she looked up frankly.
"I haven't said anything because I didn't know what to say. He is AlanMassey, the artist. I met him at Carlotta's. He wants to marry me."
"But you have not already accepted him?"
"No, I couldn't. He—he isn't the kind of man you would want me to marry. He is trying to be, for my sake though. I think he will succeed. I told him if he wanted to ask me again next summer I would tell him what my answer would be."
"He is on probation then?"
"Yes."
"And you care for him?"
"I—think so."
"You don't know it?"
"No, Uncle Phil. I don't. He cares so much for me—so terribly much. And I don't know whether I care enough or not. I should have to care a great deal to overlook what he has been and done. Maybe it wasn't anything but midsummer madness and his wonderful dancing. We danced almost every night until I sent him away. And when we danced we seemed to be just one person. Aside from his dancing he fascinated me. I couldn't forget him or ignore him. He was—is—different from any man I ever knew. I feel differently about him from what I ever felt about any other man. Maybe it is love. Maybe it isn't. I—I thought it was last month."
Doctor Holiday shook his head dubiously.
"And you are not so sure now?" he questioned.
"Not always," admitted Tony. "I didn't want to love him. I fought it with all my might. I didn't want to be bothered with love. I wanted to be happy and free and make a great success of my work. But after Alan came all those things didn't seem to matter. I am afraid it goes rather deep, Uncle Phil. Sometimes I think he means more to me than even you and Larry and Ted do. It is strange. It isn't kind or loyal or decent. But that is the way it is. I have to be honest, even if it hurts."
Her dark eyes were wistful and beseeched forgiveness as they sought her uncle's. He did not speak and she went on swiftly, earnestly.
"Please don't ask me to break off with him, Uncle Phil. I couldn't do it, not only because I care for him too much, but because it would be cruel to him. He has gotten out of his dark forest. I don't want to drive him back into it. And that is what it would mean if I deserted him now. I have to go on, no matter what you or Larry or any one thinks about it."
She had risen now and stood before her uncle earnestly pleading her lover's cause and her own.
"It isn't fair to condemn a man forever because he has made mistakes back in the past. We don't any of us know what we would have been like if things had been different. Larry and Ted are fine. I am proud of their clean record. It would be horrible if people said things about either of them such as they say about Alan. But Larry and Ted have every reason to be fine. They have had you and Dad and Grandfather Holiday and the rest of them to go by. They have lived all their lives in the Holiday tradition of what a man should be. Alan has had nobody, nothing. Nobody ever helped him to see the difference between right and wrong and why it mattered which you chose. He does see now. He is trying to begin all over again and begin right. And I'm going to stand by him. I have to—even if I have to go against you, Uncle Phil."
There was a quiver—almost a sob in Tony's voice Her uncle drew her into his arms.
"All right, little girl. It is not an easy thing to swallow. I hate to have your shining whiteness touch pitch even for a minute. No, wait, dear. I am not going to condemn your lover. If he is sincerely in earnest in trying to clean the slate, I have only respect for the effort. You are right about much of it. We can none of us afford to do over much judging. We are all sinners, more or less. And there are a million things to be taken into consideration before we may dare to sit in judgment upon any human being. It takes a God to do that. I am not going to ask you to give him up, or to stop writing or even seeing him. But I do want you to go slow. Marriage is a solemn thing. Don't wreck your life from pity or mistaken devotion. Better a heart-ache now than a life-long regret. Let your lover prove himself just as you have set him to do. A woman can't save a man. He has to save himself. But if he will save himself for love of her the chances are he will stay saved and his love is the real thing. I shall accept your decision. I shan't fight it in any way, whatever it is. All I ask is that you will wait the full year before you make any definite promise of marriage."
"I will," said Tony. "I meant to do that any way. I am not such a foolish child as maybe you have been thinking I was. I am pretty much grown up, Uncle Phil. And I have plenty of sense. It I hadn't—I should be married to Alan this minute."
He smiled a little sadly at that.
"Youth! Youth! Yes, Tony, I believe you have sense. Maybe I have under-estimated it. Any way I thank the good Lord for it. No more secrets? Everything clear?"
He lifted her face in his hands and looked down into her eyes with tender searching.
"Not a secret. I am very glad to have you know. We all feel better the moment we dump all our woes on you," she sighed.
He smiled and stroked her hair.
"I had much rather be a dumping ground than be shut out of the confidence of any one of you. That hurts. We all have to stand by Larry, just now. Not in words but in—well, we'll call it moral support. The poor lad needs it."
"Oh, Uncle Phil! Did he tell you or did you guess?"
"A little of both. The boy is in a bad hole, Tony. But he will keep out of the worst of the bog. He has grit and chivalry enough to pull through somehow. And maybe before many weeks the mystery will be cleared for better or worse. We can only hope for the best and hold on tight to Larry, and Ruth too, till they are out of the woods."
Philip Lambert was rather taken by surprise when Harrison Cressy appeared at the store one day late in August, announcing that he had come to talk business and practically commanding the young man to lunch with him that noon. It was Saturday and Phil had little time for idle conjecture, but he did wonder every now and then that morning what business Carlotta's father could possibly have with himself, and if by any chance Carlotta had sent him.
Later, seated in the dining-room of the Eagle Hotel, Dunbury's one hostelry, it seemed to Phil that his host was distinctly nervous, with considerably less than his usual brusque, dogmatic poise of manner.
Having left soup the waiter shuffled away with the congenital air of discouragement which belongs to his class, and Harrison Cressy got down to business in regard both to the soup and his mission in Dunbury. He was starting a branch brokerage concern in a small city just out of Boston. He needed a smart young man to put at the head of it. The smart young man would get a salary of five thousand a year, plus his commissions to start with. If he made good the salary would go up in proportion. In fact the sky would be the limit. He offered the post to Philip Lambert.
Phil laid down his soup spoon and stared at his companion. After a moment he remarked that it was rather unusual, to say the least, to offer a salary like that to an utter greenhorn in a business as technical as brokerage, and that he was afraid he was not in the least fitted for the position in question.
"That is my look out," snapped Mr. Cressy. "Do I look like a born fool, Philip Lambert? You don't suppose I am jumping in the dark do you? I have gone to some pains to look up your record in college. I found out you made good no matter what you attempted, on the gridiron, in the classroom, everywhere else. I've been picking men for years and I've gone on the principle that a man who makes good in one place will make good in another if he has sufficient incentive."
"I suppose the five thousand is to be considered in the light of an incentive," said Phil.
"It is five times the incentive and more than I had when I started out," grunted his host. "What more do you want?"
"Nothing. I don't want so much. I couldn't earn it. And in any case I cannot consider any change at present. I have gone in with my father."
"So I understood. But that is not a hard and fast arrangement. A young man like you has to look ahead. Your father won't stand in the way of your bettering yourself." Harrison Cressy spoke with conviction. Well he might. Though Philip had not known it his companion had spent an hour in earnest conversation with his father that morning. Harrison Cressy knew his ground there.
"Go ahead, Mr. Cressy," Stewart Lambert had said at the close of the interview. "You have my full permission to offer the position to the boy and he has my full permission to accept it. He is free to go tomorrow if he cares to. If it is for his happiness it is what his mother and I want."
But the younger Lambert was yet to be reckoned with.
"It is a hard and fast arrangement so far as I am concerned," he said quietly now. "Dad can fire me. I shan't fire myself."
Mr. Cressy made a savage lunge at a fly that had ventured to light on the sugar bowl, not knowing it was for the time being Millionaire Cressy's sugar bowl. He hated being balked, even temporarily. He had supposed the hardest sledding would be over when he had won the father's consent. He had authentic inside information that the son had stakes other than financial. He counted on youth's imperious urge to happiness. The lad had done without Carlotta for two months now. It had seemed probable he would be more amenable to reason in August than he had been in June. But it did not look like it just now.
"You are a darn fool, my young man," he gnarled.
"Very likely," said Phil Lambert, with the same quietness which had marked his father's speech earlier in the day. "If you had a son, Mr. Cressy, wouldn't you want him to be the same kind of a darn fool? Would you expect him to take French leave the first time somebody offered him more money?"
Harrison Cressy snorted, beckoned to the waiter his face purple with rage. Why in blankety blank blank et cetera, et cetera, didn't he bring the fish? Did he think they were there for the season? Philip did not know he had probed an old wound. The one great disappointment of Harrison Cressy's career was the fact that he had no son, or had had one for such a brief space of hours that he scarcely counted except as a pathetic might-have-been And even as Phil had said, so he would have wanted his son to behave. The boy was a man, every inch of him, just such a man as Harrison Gressy had coveted for his own.
"Hang the money part." he snapped back at Phil, after the interlude with the harrassed waiter. "Let's drop it."
"With all my heart," agreed Phil. "Considering the money part hanged what is left to the offer? Carlotta?"
Mr. Cressy dropped his fork with a resounding clatter to the floor and swore muttered monotonous oaths at the waiter for not being instantaneously on the spot to replace the implement.
"Young man," he said to Phil. "You are too devilish smart. Carlotta—is why I am here."
"So I imagined. Did she send you?"
"Great Scott, no! My life wouldn't be worth a brass nickel if she knew I was here."
"I am glad she didn't. I wouldn't like Carlotta to think I could be—bribed."
"She didn't. Carlotta has perfectly clear impressions as to where you stand. She gives you entire credit for being the blind, stubborn, pigheaded jack-ass that you are."
Phil grinned faintly at this accumulation of epithets, but his blue eyes had no mirth in them. The interview was beginning to be something of a strain. He wished it were over.
"That's good," he said. "Apparently we all know where we all stand. I have no illusions about Carlotta's view-point either. There is no reason I should have. I got it first hand."
"Don't be an idiot," ordered Mr. Cressy. "A woman can have as many view-points as there are days in the year, counting Sundays double. You have no more idea this minute where Carlotta stands than—than I have," he finished ignominiously, wiping his perspiring forehead with an imported linen handkerchief.
"Do you mind telling me just why you are here, if Carlotta didn't send you? I don't flatter myself you automatically selected me for your new post without some rather definite reason behind it."
"I came because I had a notion you were the best man for another job—a job that makes the whole brokerage business look like a game of jack-straws—the job of marrying my daughter Carlotta."
Phil stared. He had not expected Mr. Cressy to take this position. He had been ready enough to believe Carlotta's prophecy that her parent would raise a merry little row if she announced to him her intention of marrying that obscure individual, Philip Lambert, of Dunbury, Massachusetts. He thought that particular way of behavior on the parent's part not only probable but more or less justifiable, all things considered. He saw no reason now why Mr. Cressy should feel otherwise.
Harrison Cressy drained a deep draught of water, once more wiped his highly shining brow and leaned forward over the table toward his puzzled guest.
"You see, Philip," he went on using the young man's first name for the first time. "Carlotta is in love with you."
Philip flushed and his frank eyes betrayed that this, though not entirely new news, was not unwelcome to hear.
"In fact," continued Carlotta's father grimly, "she is so much in love with you she is going to marry another man."
The light went out of Phil's eyes at that, but he said nothing to this any more than he had to the preceding statement. He waited for the other man to get at what he wanted to say.
"I can't stand Carlotta's being miserable. I never could. It is why I am here, to see if I can't fix up a deal with you to straighten things out. I am in your hands, boy, at your mercy. I have the reputation of being hard as shingle nails. I'm soft as putty where the girl is concerned. It kills me by inches to have her unhappy."
"Is she—very unhappy?" Phil's voice was sober. He thought that he too was soft as putty, or softer where Carlotta was concerned. It made him sick all over to think of her being unhappy.
"She is—damnably unhappy." Harrison Cressy blew his nose with a sound as of a trumpet. "Here you," he bellowed at the waiter who was timidly approaching. "Is that our steak at last? Bring it here, quick and don't jibber. Are you deaf and dumb as well as paralyzed?"
The host attacked the steak with ferocity, slammed a generous section on a plate and fairly threw it at the young man opposite. Phil wasn't interested in steak. He scarcely looked at it. His eyes were on Mr. Cressy, his thoughts were on that gentleman's only daughter.
"I am sorry she is unhappy," he said. "I don't know how much you know about it all; but since you know so much I assume you also know that I care for Carlotta just as much as she cares for me, possibly more. I would marry her tomorrow if I could."
"For the Lord Harry's sake, do it then. I'll put up the money."
Phil's face hardened.
"That is precisely the rock that Carlotta and I split on, Mr. Cressy. She wanted to have you put up the money. I love Carlotta but I don't love her enough to let her or you—buy me."
The old man and the young faced each other across the table. There was a deadlock between them and both knew it.
"But this offer I've made you is a bona fide one. You'll make good. You will be worth the five thousand and more in no time. I know your kind. I told you I was a good picker. It isn't a question of buying. Can the movie stuff. It's a fair give and take."
"I have refused your offer, Mr. Cressy."
"You refused it before you knew Carlotta was eating her heart out for you. Doesn't that make any difference to you, my lad? You said you loved her," reproachfully.
A huge blue-bottle fly buzzed past the table, passed on to the window where it fluttered about aimlessly, bumping itself against the pane here and there. Mechanically Phil watched its gyrations. It was one of the hardest moments of his life.
"In one way it makes a great difference, Mr. Cressy," he answered slowly. "It breaks my heart to have her unhappy. But it wouldn't make her happy to have me do something I know isn't right or fair or wise. I know Carlotta. Maybe I know her better than you do; I know she doesn't want me that way."
"But you can't expect her to live in a hole like this, on a yearly income that is probably less than she spends in one month just for nothing much."
"I don't expect it," explained Phil patiently. "I've never blamedCarlotta for deciding against it. But there is no use going over it all.She and I had it out together. It is our affair, not yours, Mr. Cressy."
"Philip Lambert, did you ever see Carlotta cry?"
Phil winced. The shot went home.
"No. I'd hate to," he admitted.
"You would," seconded Harrison Cressy. "I hated it like the devil myself.She cried all over my new dress suit the other night."
Phil's heart was one gigantic ache. The thought of Carlotta in tears was almost unbearable. Carlotta—his Carlotta—was all sunshine and laughter.
"It was like this," went on Carlotta's parent. "Her aunt told me she was going to marry young Lathrop—old skin-flint tea-and-coffee Lathrop's son. I couldn't quite stomach it. The fellow's an ass, an unobjectionable ass, it is true, but with all the ear marks. I tackled Carlotta about it. She said she wasn't engaged but might be any minute. I said some fool thing about wanting her to be happy, and the next thing I knew she was in my arms crying like anything. I haven't seen her cry since she was a little tot. She has laughed her way through life always up to now. I couldn't bear it. I can't bear it now, even remembering it. I squeezed the story out of her, drop at a time, till I got pretty much the whole bucket full. I tell you, Phil Lambert, you've got to give in. I can't have her heart broken. You can't have her heart broken. God, man, it's your funeral too."
Phil felt very much as if it were his own funeral. But he did not speak. He couldn't. The other forged on, his big, mumbling bass mingled with the buzz of the blue-bottle in the window.
"I made up my mind something had to be done and done quick. I wasn't going to have my little girl run her head into the noose by marrying Lathrop when it was you she loved. I got busy, made inquiries about you as I said. I had to before I offered you the job naturally, but it was more than that. I had to find out whether you were the kind of man I wanted my Carlotta to marry. I found out, and came up here to put the proposition to you. I talked to your father first, by the way, and got his consent to go ahead with my plans."
"You went to my father!" There was concern and a trace of indignation inPhil's voice.
"Naturally I was playing to win. I had to hold all the trumps. I wanted your father on my side—had to have him in fact. He came without a murmur. He is a good sport. Said all he wanted was your happiness, same as all I wanted was Carlotta's. We quite understood each other."
Phil sat silent with down cast eyes on his almost untasted salad. He couldn't bear to think of his father's being attacked like that, hit with a lightning bolt out of a clear sky. The more he thought about it the more he resented it. Of course Dad would agree. He was a good sport as Mr. Cressy said. Rut that didn't make the thing any easier or more justifiable.
"Your father is willing. I want it. Carlotta wants it. You want it, yourself. Lord, boy, be honest. You know you do. You'll never regret giving in. Remember it is for Carlotta's happiness we are both looking for." There was an almost pleading note in Harrison Cressy's voice—a note few men had heard. He was more used to command than to sue for what he desired.
Phil rose from the table. His face was a little white as he stood there, tall, quiet, perfectly master of himself and the situation. Even before the young man spoke Harrison Cressy knew he had failed.
"I am sorry, Mr. Cressy. If Carlotta wants happiness with me I am afraid she will have to come to Dunbury."
"You won't reconsider?"
"There is nothing to reconsider. There never was any question. I am sorry you even raised one in Dad's mind. You shouldn't have gone to him in the first place. You should have come to me. It was for me to settle."
"Highty, tighty!" fumed the exasperated magnate. "People don't tell me what I should and should not do. They do what I tell 'em."
"I don't," said Philip Lambert in much the same tone he had once said to Carlotta, "You can't have this." "I am sorry, Mr. Cressy. I don't want to be rude, or unkind or obstinate; but there are some things no man can decide for me. And there are some things I won't do even to win Carlotta."
Harrison Cressy's head drooped for a moment. He was beaten for once—beaten by a lad of twenty-three whose will was quite as strong as his own. The worst of it was he had never liked any young man in his life so well as he liked Philip Lambert at this minute, never so coveted any thing for his daughter Carlotta as he coveted her marriage with Philip Lambert.
"That is final, I suppose," he asked after a moment, looking up at the young man.
"Absolutely, Mr. Cressy. I am sorry."
Harrison Cressy lumbered to his feet.
"I am sorry too," he said, "damnably sorry for Carlotta and for myself. Will you shake hands with me, Philip? It is good to meet a man now and then."
Left to himself, Harrison Cressy discovered to his annoyance that there was no train out of Dunbury for two hours. That was the worst of these little one-horse towns. You might as well be dead as alive in 'em. By the time he had smoked his after-dinner cigar he felt as if he might as well be dead himself. He felt suddenly heavy, old, almost decrepit, though that morning when he had left Boston he had considered himself in the prime of life and vigor. Hang it! He was sixty-nine. A man was about done for at sixty-nine, all but ready to turn into his grave. And he without son or grandson. Lord! What a swindle life was anyway!
Well, there was no use sitting still groaning. He would get up and take a little walk until train time. Maybe it was his liver that made him feel so confoundedly rotten and no count. A little exercise would do him good.
Absentmindedly he noted, as he strolled down the elm-shaded streets, the neatness of the lawns, the gay flower beds, the hammocks and swings out under the trees as if people really lived out of doors here. There were animate evidences of the fact everywhere. Children played here and there in shady spaces under big trees. Pretty girls on wide, hospitable-looking porches chatted and drank lemonade and knitted. A lithe, red-haired lass in white played tennis on a smooth dirt court with a tall, clean looking youth. As Mr. Cressy passed the girl cried out, "Love all" and the millionaire smiled. It occurred to him it was not so hard to love all in a village like this. It was only in cities that you hated your neighbor and did him first lest you be done yourself.
He hadn't been loose in a country town like this for years. He had almost forgotten what they were like when you didn't shoot through them in a motor car, rushing always to get somewhere else. His casual saunter down the quiet street was oddly soothing to his nerves, awoke happy, yet half-sad memories.
He had met and loved Carlotta's mother in a country town. The lilacs had been in bloom and the orioles had stood sponsor for his first Sunday call. They had become engaged by the time the asters were out. The next lilac time they had been married. A third spring and the little Carlotta had come. They had both been disappointed at its not being a boy, but the little girl was a wonder, with hair as gold as buttercups, eyes like wood violets and a laugh that lilted and gurgled like the little brook down in the meadow.
And then, two years later, the boy had come, come and drifted off to some far place. It had been a bitter blow to Rose as well as to Harrison Cressy, especially as they said there never could be any more children. Rose grew frail, did not rally or regain her strength. They advised a sanitarium in the Adirondacks for her. She had gone, but it had been of no use. By the time they brought in the first gentians Rose had drifted off after her little son. Carlotta and her father were alone.
By this time Harrison Cressy had begun to show the authentic Midas touch. Only the little Carlotta stood between him and sheer, sordid money grubbing. And even she was an excuse for the getting of always more and more wealth. He told himself Carlotta should be a veritable princess, should go always clad in the finest, have of the best, be surrounded always by the most beautiful. She should know only joy and light and laughter.
Thinking these thoughts, Carlotta's father sighed. For now at last Carlotta wanted something he could not give her, was learning after twenty-two years of cloudless joy the bitter way of tears. Why hadn't that stubborn boy surrendered?
For that matter why didn't Carlotta surrender? This was a new idea to Harrison Cressy. All the time he had been talking to Philip Lambert he had been seeing Carlotta only in relation to Crest House and the Beacon Street mansion. But just now he had been recalling her mother under very different associations. Rose had been content with a tiny little cottage set in a green yard gay with bright old fashioned flowers. He and Rose had nested as happily as the orioles in the maples, especially after the gold-haired baby came. Was Carlotta so different from Rose? Was her happiness such a different kind of thing? Were women not pretty much alike at heart? Did they not want about the same things?
Carlotta loved this lad of hers as Rose had loved himself. Was it her own father who was cheating her out of happiness because he had taught her to believe that money and limousines and great houses and many servants and silken robes are happiness? If he had talked to her of other things, told her about her mother and the happy old days among the lilacs and orioles, with little but love to nest with, couldn't he have made her see things more truly, shown her that love was the main thing, that money could not buy happiness? One could not buy much of anything that was worth buying Harrison Cressy thought. One could purchase only the worthless. That was the everlasting failure of money.
He remembered the boy's, "I love Carlotta. But I don't love her enough to let her or you buy me." It was true. Neither he nor his daughter had been able to purchase the lad's integrity, his good faith, his ideals. And Harrison Cressy was thankful from the bottom of his heart that it was so.
He turned his steps back to the village and as he did so an oriole flashed out of the shrubbery near him, and passed like a flame out of sight among the trees. This was a good sign. Orioles had nested every year in the maple tree by the little white house where Carlotta had been born. Carlotta herself had always loved them. "Pretty, pretty, birdie!" she had been wont to call out. "Come, daddy, let's follow him and see where he goes."
He would go home and tell Carlotta all this, make her see that her happiness was in her own hands. No, it was the boy's story. If Carlotta would not follow the orioles and her own heart for Philip Lambert she would not for any argument of his.
By this time a distant puff of smoke gave evidence that the Boston train was already on its way, leaving Harrison Cressy in Dunbury. Not that he cared. He had business still to transact ere he departed, a new battle to fight. He walked with the firm elastic step of a youth back to town. What did it matter if you were sixty-nine when the best things of life were still ahead of you?
Accordingly Phil was a second time that day surprised by the unheralded arrival of Carlotta's father, a rather dusty, weary and limp-looking gentleman this time, but exuding a sort of benignant serenity that had not been there early in the day.
"Hello," greeted the millionaire blandly. "Missed my train—got to browsing round the town like an old billy goat. Not sorry though. It is a nice little town. Mind if I sit down? I'm a bit blown." And dropping on a stool Mr. Cressy fanned himself with his panama and grinned at Philip, a grin the young man could not quite fathom. What new trick had the clever old financier at the bottom of his mind? Phil hoped he had not got to go through the thing again. Once had been quite enough for one day.
"Let me send out for something cool to drink, Mr. Cressy. You must be horribly hot. It is warm in here, even with all the fans going. Hi, there, Tommy!" Philip summoned a freckled, red-haired youth from somewhere in the background. "Run over to Greene's and get a lemonade for this gentleman, will you?"
"Right, Mr. Phil." The boy saluted—an odd salute, Mr. Cressy noted. It was rendered with the right hand, the three middle fingers held up, the thumb bent over touching the nail of the little finger. The saluter stood very straight as he went through the ceremony and looked very serious about it. "Queer!" thought the onlooker. The messenger boys he knew did not behave like that when you gave them an order.
Philip excused himself to attend to a customer and in a moment the red-haired lad was back with a tall glass of lemonade clinking delightfully with ice. Mr. Cressy took it and set it down on the counter while he fumbled for his wallet and produced a dollar bill.
To his amazement the boy's grin faded, and he drew himself up with dignity.
"No, thank you, sir," he said to the proffered greenback. "I'm a Scout and Scouts don't take tips."
"What!" gasped Harrison Cressy. In all his life he did not recall meeting a boy who ever refused money before. He began to think there was something uncanny about this town of Dunbury. First a young man who could not be bought at any price. And now a boy who wouldn't take a tip for service rendered.
"I said I was a Scout," repeated the lad patiently. "And Scouts don't take tips. We are supposed to do one good turn every day, anyway, and I hadn't gotten mine in before. I'm only a Tenderfoot but I'm most ready for my second class tests. Mr. Phil's going to try me out in first aid as soon as he gets time."
"Mr. Phil! What's he got to do with it?" inquired Mr. Cressy, after a long, satisfying swig of lemonade.
"He is our Scout-master and a peach of a one too. He is going to take us on a hike tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? Tomorrow is Sunday, young man." The Methodist in HarrisonCressy rose to the surface.
"I know. We all go to church and Sunday school in the morning. Mr. Phil won't take us unless we do. But in the afternoon he thinks it is all right to go on a hike. We don't practise signaling and things like that, but we get in a lot of nature study. I can identify all my ten trees now and a whole lot more besides, and I've got a bird list of over sixty."
"You don't say so?" Harrison Cressy was plainly impressed. "So your Mr. Phil gives a good deal of time to that sort of thing, does he?" he added, his eyes seeking Philip Lambert in the distance.
"Should say he did. I guess he gives about all the time he has outside of the store. He's a dandy Scout-master. What he says goes, you betcher."
Remembering the scene at the luncheon table that day, Harrison Cressy thought it quite probable. What Philip had said had gone "you betcher" on that occasion with a vengeance. So young Lambert gave his off hours to business of this sort. Most of Carlotta's male friends gave most of theirs to polo, jazz, and chorus girls. He began to covet Philip more than ever for a possible, and he hoped probable, son-in-law.
It played into his purposes excellently that Philip on returning invited him to supper on the Hill that night. He wanted to meet the boy's people, especially the mother. Carlotta had told him once that Philip's mother was the most wonderful person in the world.
Seated at the long table in the Lambert dining-room Harrison Cressy enjoyed a meal such as his chef-ridden soul had almost forgotten could exist—a meal so simple yet so delectable that he dreamed of it for days afterward.
But the food, excellent as it was, was only a small part of the significance of the occasion. It was a revelation to the millionaire to know that a family could gather around the board like this and have such a thoroughly delightful time all round. There was gay talk and ready laughter, a fine flavor of old-fashioned courtesy and hospitality and good will in everything that was said or done.
The Lambert girls—the pretty twins and the younger, slim slip of a lassie, Elinor—were charming, fresh, natural, unspoiled, very different from and far more to his taste than most of the young women who came to Crest House—hot-house products, over-sophisticated, cynical, too familiar with rouge and cigarettes and the game of love and lure, huntresses more or less, the whole pack of them. It seemed girls could still be plain girls on this enchanted Hill—girls who would make wonderful wives some day for some lucky men.
But the mother! She was the secret of it all, quite as remarkable as Carlotta had said. She was extraordinarily well read, talked well on a dozen subjects as to which he was himself but vaguely informed, and she was evidently even more extraordinarily busy. There was talk of a Better Babies movement in which she was interested, of a Red Cross Chapter at which she had spent the afternoon, of a committee meeting of the local Woman's Club which was bringing a noted English poet-lecturer to town. There were Chatauqua plans in view, and a new children's reading room in the public library with a story-telling hour of which Clare was to be in charge. A hundred things indicated that Mrs. Lambert was by no means confined to the four walls of her home for interests and activities. Yet her home was exquisitely kept and she was a mother first of all. One could see that every moment. It was "Mums, this" and "Mums, that" from them all. The life of the home clearly pivoted about her.
Harrison Cressy found himself wishing that Carlotta could have known a motherhood like that. Rose had gone so soon. Carlotta had never known what she missed. Perhaps Mr. Cressy himself had not known until he saw Mrs. Lambert and realized what a mother might be. Poor Carlotta! He had given her a great deal. At least, until this, afternoon, he had thought he had. But he had never given her anything at all comparable to what this quiet village store-keeper and his wife had given to their son and daughters. He hadn't had it to give. He had been poor, after all, all along. Though he hadn't suspected it until now.
After supper Stuart Lambert had slipped quickly away, bidding his son stay up on the Hill a little longer with their guest. Phil had demurred, but had been quietly overruled and had acquiesced perforce. Poor Dad! There had not been a moment all day to relieve his mind about Mr. Cressy's offer. Not once had the father and son been alone. Phil was afraid his father was taking the thing a good deal to heart, and it worried him. He had counted on talking it over together as they went back to the store but his father had willed otherwise.
It was with Carlotta's father instead of his own that Philip talked first after all.
"See here, Philip," began Mr. Cressy as they descended the Hill in "Lizzie." "I went at this all wrong. So did Carlotta. I understand better now. I've been back in the past this afternoon, remembering what it means to live in the country and love and mate there in the good old-fashioned way as Carlotta's mother and I did. It is what I want her to do with you. Do you get that, boy? I want her to come to Dunbury. I want her to have a piece of your mother. Carlotta never knew what it was to have a mother. It is mostly my fault she doesn't see any clearer. You mustn't blame her, lad."
"I don't," said Phil. "I love her."
"I know you do. And she loves you. Go to her. Make her see. Make her marry you and be happy."
Phil was silent, not because he was not moved by the older man's plea but because he was almost too moved to speak. It rather took his breath away to have Harrison Cressy on his side like this. It was almost too incredible, and yet there was no mistaking the sincerity in the other's words or on his face. Carlotta's father did want Carlotta to come to him on his Hill.
But would Carlotta want it? That was the question. For himself he sought no higher road to follow than the one where his father and mother had blazed the trail through fair weather and stormy these many years. But would Carlotta be content to travel so with him? He did not know. At any rate he could ask her, try once more to make her see, as her father put it.
He turned to his companion with a sober smile at this point in his reflections.
"Thank you, Mr. Cressy. I will try again and I know it is going to make a great deal of difference to Carlotta—and to me—to have you on my side. Perhaps she will see it differently this time. I—hope so."
"Lord, boy, so do I!" groaned Mr. Cressy. "You will come back to CrestHouse tomorrow with me?"
Phil hesitated, considered, shook his head.
"I'll come next Saturday. I can't get away tomorrow," he said.
"Why not? For the Lord's sake, boy, get it over!"
Phil smiled but shook his head. He too wanted to get it over. He could hardly wait to get to Carlotta, would have started that moment if he could have done so. But there were clear-cut reasons why he could not go tomorrow, obligations that held him fast in Dunbury.
"I can't go tomorrow because I have promised my boys a hike," he explained.
Harrison Cressy nearly exploded.
"Heavens, man! What does a parcel of kids amount to when it comes to getting you a wife? You can call off your hike, can't you?"
"I could, but it would be hard on a good many of them. They count on it a good deal. Some of them have given up other pleasures they might have had on account of it. Tommy has, for instance. His uncle asked him to go to Worcester with him in his car, and he refused because of his date with me. They are all bribed to church and Sunday School by the means. One of the things Scouting stands for is sticking to your job and your word. I don't think it is exactly up to the Scoutmaster to dodge his responsibilities when he preaches the other kind of thing. Of course, if it were a life and death matter, it would be different. It isn't. I have waited a good many weeks to see Carlotta. I can wait one more."
Harrison Cressy grunted. He hardly knew whether to fly into a rage with this extraordinary young man or to clap him on the back and tell him he liked him better and better every minute. He contented himself by repeating a remark he had made earlier in the day.
"You are a darn fool, young man." Then he added, half against his will,"But I like your darnfoolness, hang me if I don't!"
Phil had a strenuous two hours in the store with never a minute to get at his father. It was not until the last customer had departed, the last clerk fled away and the clock striking eleven that the father and son were alone.
Philip came over to where the older man stood. His heart smote him when he saw how utterly worn and weary the other looked, as if he had suddenly added a full ten years to his age since morning. His characteristic buoyancy seemed to have deserted him for once.
"Dad, I've not had a minute alone with you all day. I am sorry Mr. Cressy bothered you about that blue sky proposition of his. I never would have let him if I had known. Of course there was nothing in it. I didn't consider it for a minute."
Stuart Lambert smiled wearily and sat down on the counter.
"I am afraid you have given up more than we realized, Philip, in coming into the store. Mr. Cressy gave me a glimpse into things that I knew nothing about. You should have told us."
"There was nothing to tell. I've given up nothing that was mine. I told Carlotta all along she would have to come to me. I couldn't come to her. My whole life is here with you. It is what I have wanted ever since I had the sense to want anything but to enjoy my fool self. But even then I didn't appreciate what it would be like to be here with you. I couldn't, till I had tried it and found out first hand what kind of a man my dad was. I am absolutely satisfied. If Mr. Cressy had offered me a million a year I wouldn't have taken it. It wouldn't have been the slightest temptation even—" he smiled a little sadly—"even with Carlotta thrown in. I don't want to get Carlotta that way."
"You say you are satisfied, Philip. Maybe that is so. But you are not happy."
"I wasn't, just at first. I was a fool. I let the thing swamp me for awhile. Mums helped pull me out of the slough and since then I've been finding out that happiness is—well, a kind of by-product. Like the kingdom of heaven it doesn't come for observation. I have had about as much happiness here with you, and with Mums and the girls at home, and with my Scouts in the woods, as I deserve, maybe more. I'm going to try to get Carlotta. I haven't given up hope. I'm going down to Sea View next week to ask her again and maybe things will be different this time. Her father is on my side now, which is a great help. He has got the Holiday Hill viewpoint all at once. He wants Carlotta to come to me—us. So do I, with all my heart. But whether she does or doesn't, I am here with you as long as you want me, first last and all the time and glad to be. Please believe that, Dad, always."
Stuart Lambert rose.
"Philip, you don't know what it means to me to hear you say this." There was a little break in the older man's voice, the suggestion of pent emotion. "It nearly killed me to think I ought to give you up. You are sure you are not making too much of a sacrifice?"
"Dad! Please don't say that word to me. There isn't any sacrifice. It is what I want. I haven't been a very good son always. Even this summer I am afraid I haven't come up to all you expected of me, especially just at first when I was wrapped up in myself and my own concerns too much to see that doing a good job in the store was only a small part of what I was here in Dunbury to do. But anyway I am prouder than I can tell you to be your son and I am going to try my darndest to live up to the sign if you will let me stay on being the minor part of it."
He held out his hand and his father took it. There were tears in the older man's eyes. A moment later the store was dark as the two passed out shoulder to shoulder beneath the sign of STUART LAMBERT AND SON.