diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 11161-0.txt | 12179 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/11161-8.txt | 12601 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/11161-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 258527 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/11161.txt | 12601 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/11161.zip | bin | 0 -> 258465 bytes |
8 files changed, 37397 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11161-0.txt b/11161-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bbf29cf --- /dev/null +++ b/11161-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12179 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11161 *** + + MARY WOLLASTON + + BY HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER + + 1920 + + + + +CONTENTS + + I THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND + + II SEA DRIFT + + III THE PEACE BASIS + + IV THE PICTURE PUZZLE + + V JOHN MAKES A POINT OF IT + + VI STRINGENDO + + VII NO THOROUGHFARE + + VIII THE DUMB PRINCESS + + IX IN HARNESS + + X AN INTERVENTION + + XI NOT COLLECTABLE + + XII HICKORY HILL + + XIII LOW HANGS THE MOON + + XIV A CLAIRVOYANT INTERVAL + + XV THE END OF IT + + XVI FULL MEASURE + + XVII THE WAYFARER + + XVIII A CASE OF NECESSITY + + XIX THE DRAMATIST + + XX TWO WOMEN AND JOHN + + XXI THE SUBSTITUTE + + XXII THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE + + XXIII THE TERROR + + XXIV THE WHOLE STORY + + XXV DAYBREAK + + XXVI JOHN ARRIVES + + XXVII SETTLING PAULA + + XXVIII THE KALEIDOSCOPE + + + + +MARY WOLLASTON + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND + + +Miss Lucile Wollaston was set to exude sympathy, like an aphid waiting +for an overworked ant to come down to breakfast. But there was no +sympathizing with the man who came in from a doctor's all-night vigil +like a boy from a ball-game, gave her a hard brisk kiss on the +cheek-bone, and then, before taking his place at the table, unfolded the +morning paper for a glance at the head-lines. + +If there was something rigorous about the way she lighted the alcohol +lamp under the silver urn and rang for Nathaniel, the old colored butler, +it was from a determination not to let this younger brother of hers put +her into a flurry again as he so often did. A very much younger brother +indeed, he seemed when this mood was on him. + +Miss Wollaston was born on the election day that made James Buchanan +president of the United States and Doctor John within a few days of +Appomattox. But one would have said, looking at them here at the +breakfast table on a morning in March in the year 1919, that there was a +good deal more than those ten years between them. He folded his paper and +sat down when the butler suggestively pulled out his chair for him and +his manner became, for the moment, absent, as his eye fell upon a letter +beside his plate addressed in his daughter, Mary's, handwriting. + +"I want a big platter of ham and eggs, Nat, sliced thick. And a few of +Lucartha's wheat cakes." He made some sort of good-humored, half +articulate acknowledgment of the old servitor's pleasure in getting such +an order, but one might have seen that his mind was a little out of +focus, for it was not exactly dealing with the letter either. He sliced +it open with a table knife with the precise movement one would have +expected from a surgeon and disengaged it in the same neat way from its +envelope. But he read it as if he weren't very sharply aware of what, +particularly, it had to say and he laid it beside his plate again without +any comment. + +"Did you have any sleep last night, at all?" Miss Wollaston asked. + +It brought him back like a flash. "Not a wink," he said jovially. + +This was a challenge and the look that went with it, one of clear boyish +mischief, was one that none of John Wollaston's other intimates--and +among these I include his beautiful young wife and his two grown-up +children by an earlier marriage--ever saw. It was a special thing for +this sister who had been a stately young lady of twenty when he was a bad +little boy of ten. She had watched him, admiring yet rather aghast, ever +since then. + +To the world at large his social charm lay in--or was at least +inseparable from--his really exquisite manners, his considerateness, the +touch of old-fashioned punctilio there was about him. His first wife +would have agreed with her successor about his possession of this quality +though they would have appraised it rather differently. Only this elderly +unmarried sister of his felt the fascination of the horrible about him. + +This was to some extent inherent in his profession. He had a reputation +that was growing to amount to fame as a specialist in the very wide +field of gynecology, obstetrics and abdominal surgery. The words +themselves made Miss Wollaston shudder. + +When he replied to her question, whether or not he had had any sleep at +all, with an open grin and that triumphant "Not a wink," she had a +prophetic sense of what was going to happen. She was going to ask him +more questions and he was going to tell her something perfectly ghastly. + +She felt herself slipping, but she pulled up. "What's in Mary's letter?" +she asked. + +She knew that this was not quite fair, and the look that it brought to +his face--a twinge of pain like neuralgia--awakened a sharp compunction +in her. She did not know why--at least not exactly why--his relation with +his daughter should be a sore spot in his emotional life, but she knew +quite well that this was true. There was on the surface, nothing, or +nowhere near enough, to account for it. + +He had always been, Miss Wollaston felt, an adorer to the verge of +folly of this lovely pale-blonde daughter of his. He had indulged her +outrageously but without any evident bad results. Upon her mother's +death, in 1912 that was, when Mary was seventeen years old, she had, +to the utmost limit that a daughter could compass, taken her mother's +place in the bereaved man's life. She had foregone the college course +she was prepared for and had taken over very skillfully the management +of her father's household; even, in a surprisingly successful way, +too, the motherly guidance of her two-years-younger brother, Rush. +Miss Wollaston's testimony on these two points was unbiased as it was +ungrudging. She had offered herself for that job and had not then +been wanted. + +Two years later there had been a quarrel between John and his daughter. +She fell in love, or thought she did--for indeed, how could a child of +nineteen know?--with a man to whom her father decisively and almost +violently objected. Just how well founded this objection was Miss +Wollaston had no means of deciding for herself. There was nothing +flagrantly wrong with the man's manners, position or prospects; but she +attributed to her brother a wisdom altogether beyond her own in matters +of that sort and sided with him against the girl without misgiving. And +the fact that the man himself married another girl within a month or two +of Mary's submission to her father's will, might be taken as a +demonstration that he was right. + +John had done certainly all he could to make it up with the girl. He +tried to get her to go with him on what was really a junket to +Vienna--there was no better place to play than the Vienna of those +days--though there was also some sort of surgical congress there that +spring that served him as an excuse, and Mary, Miss Wollaston felt, had +only herself to blame for what happened. + +She had elected to be tragic; preferred the Catskills with a dull old +aunt to Vienna with a gay young father. John went alone, sore from the +quarrel and rather adrift. In Vienna, he met Paula Carresford, an +American opera singer, young, extraordinarily beautiful, and of +unimpeachable respectability. They were in Vienna together the first week +in August, 1914. They got out together, sailed on the same ship for +America and in the autumn of that year, here in Chicago, in the most +decorous manner in the world, John married her. + +There was a room in Miss Wollaston's well ordered mind which she had +always guarded as an old-fashioned New England village housewife used to +guard the best parlor, no light, no air, no dust, Holland covers on all +the furniture. Rigorously she forbore to speculate upon the attraction +which had drawn John and Paula together--upon what had happened between +them--upon how the thing had looked and felt to either of them. She +covered the whole episode with one blanket observation: she supposed it +was natural in the circumstances. + +And there was much to be thankful for. Paula was well-bred; she was +amiable; she was "nice"; nice to an amazing degree, considering. She had +made a genuine social success. She had given John a new lease on life, +turned back the clock for him, oh--years. + +Mary, Miss Wollaston felt, had taken it surprisingly well. At the wedding +she had played her difficult part admirably and during the few months she +had stayed at home after the wedding, she had not only kept on good terms +with Paula but had seemed genuinely to like her. In the spring of the +next year, 1915, she had, indeed, left home and had not been back since +except for infrequent visits. But then there was reason enough--excuse +enough, anyhow--for that. The war was enveloping them all. Rush had left +his freshman year at Harvard uncompleted to go to France and drive an +ambulance (he enlisted a little later in the French Army). Mary had gone +to New York to work on the Belgian War Relief Fund, and she had been +working away at it ever since. + +There was then no valid reason--no reason at all unless she were willing +to go rummaging in that dark room of her mind for it--why John should +always wince like that when one reminded him of Mary. It was a fact, +though, that he did, and his sister was too honest-minded to pretend she +did not know it. + +He answered her question now evenly enough. "She's working harder than +ever, she says, closing up her office. She wants some more money, of +course. And _she's_ heard from Rush. He's coming home. He may be turning +up almost any day now. She hopes to get a wire from him so that she can +meet him in New York and have a little visit with him, she says, before +he comes on here." + +It was on Miss Wollaston's tongue to ask crisply, "Why doesn't she come +home herself now that her Fund is shutting up shop?" But that would have +been to state in so many words the naked question they tacitly left +unasked. There was another idea in her brother's mind that she thought +she could deal with. He had betrayed it by the emphasis he put on the +fact that it was to Mary and not to himself that Rush had written the +news that he was coming home. Certainly there was nothing in that. + +"Why," she asked brightly, "don't you go to New York yourself and +meet him?" + +He answered instantly, almost sharply, "I can't do that." Then not liking +the way it sounded in his own ear, he gave her a reason. "If you knew the +number of babies that are coming along within the next month...." + +"You need a rest," she said, "badly. I don't see how you live through +horrors like that. But there must be other people--somebody who can take +your work for you for a while. It can't make all that difference." + +"It wouldn't," he admitted, "nine times out of ten. That call I got last +evening that broke up the dinner party,--an intern at the County +Hospital would have done just as well as I. There was nothing to it at +all. Oh, it was a sort of satisfaction to the husband's feelings, I +suppose, to pay me a thousand dollars and be satisfied that nobody in +town could have paid more and got anything better. But you see, you never +can tell. The case I was called in on at four o'clock this morning was +another thing altogether." A gleam had come into his eyes again as over +the memory of some brilliantly successful audacity. The gray old look had +gone out of his face. + +"I don't altogether wonder that Pollard blew up," he added, "except that +a man in that profession has got no business to--ever." + +The coffee urn offered Miss Wollaston her only means of escape but she +didn't avail herself of it. She let herself go on looking for a +breathless minute into her brother's face. Then she asked weakly, +"What was it?" + +"Why, Pollard...." John Wollaston began but then he stopped short and +listened. "I thought I heard Paula coming," he explained. + +"Paula won't be down for hours," Miss Wollaston said, "but I do not +see why she shouldn't hear, since she is a married woman and your +own wife...." + +Her brother's "Precisely" cut across that sentence with a snick like a +pair of shears and left a little silence behind it. + +"I think she'll be along in a minute," he went on. "She always does come +to breakfast. Why did you think she wouldn't to-day?" + +This was one of Miss Wollaston's minor crosses. The fact was that on the +comparatively rare occasions when Doctor John himself was present for the +family breakfast at the custom-consecrated hour, Paula managed about two +times in five to put in a last-minute appearance. This was not what +annoyed Miss Wollaston. She was broad-minded enough to be aware that to +an opera singer, the marshaling of one's whole family in the dining-room +at eight o'clock in the morning might seem a barbarous and revolting +practise and even occasional submissions to it, acts of real devotion. +She was not really bitterly annoyed either by Paula's oft repeated +assertion that she always came to breakfast. Paula was one of those +temperamental persons who have to be forgiven for treating their +facts--atmospherically. But that John, a man of science, enlisted under +the banner of truth, should back this assertion of his wife's, in the +face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, really required +resignation to put up with; argued a blindness, an infatuation, which +seemed to his sister hardly decent. Because after all, facts were facts, +and you didn't alter them by pretending that they did not exist. + +So instead of answering her brother's question, she sat a little +straighter in her chair, and compressed her lips. + +He smiled faintly at that and added, "Anyhow she said she'd be along in a +minute or two." + +"Oh," said Miss Wollaston, "you have wakened her then. I would have +suggested that the poor child be left asleep this morning." + +Now he saw that she had something to tell him. "Nothing went wrong last +night after I left, I hope." + +"Oh, not wrong," Miss Wollaston conceded, "only the Whitneys went of +course, when you did and the Byrnes, and Wallace Hood, but Portia Stanton +and that new husband of hers stayed. It was his doing, I suppose. You +might have thought he was waiting all the evening for just that thing to +happen. They went up to Paula's studio--Paula invited me, of course, but +I excused myself--and they played and sang until nearly two o'clock this +morning. It was all perfectly natural, I suppose. And still I did think +that Paula might have sung earlier, down in the drawing-room when you +asked her to." + +"She was perfectly right to refuse." He caught his sister up rather short +on that, "I shouldn't have asked her. It was very soon after dinner. They +weren't a musical crowd anyway, except Novelli. It's utterly unfair to +expect a person like Paula to perform unless she happens to be in the +mood for it. At that she's extremely amiable about it; never refuses +unless she has some real reason. What her reason was last night, I don't +know, but you may be perfectly sure it was sufficient." + +He would have realized that he was protesting too much even if he had not +read that comment in his sister's face. But somehow he couldn't have +pulled himself up but for old Nat's appearance with the platter of ham +and eggs and the first installment of the wheat cakes. He was really +hungry and he settled down to them in silence. + +And, watching him between the little bites of dry toast and sips of +coffee, Miss Wollaston talked about Portia Stanton. Everybody, indeed, +was talking about Portia these days but Miss Wollaston had a special +privilege. She had known Portia's mother rather well,--Naomi Rutledge +Stanton, the suffrage leader, she was--and she had always liked and +admired Portia; liked her better than the younger and more sensational +daughter, Rose. + +Miss Wollaston hoped, hoped with all her heart that Portia had not made +a tragic mistake in this matter of her marriage. She couldn't herself +quite see how a sensible girl like Portia could have done anything so +reckless as to marry a romantic young Italian pianist, ten years at +least her junior. It couldn't be denied that the experiment seemed to +have worked well so far. Portia certainly seemed happy enough last +night; contented. There was a sort of glow about her there never was +before. But the question was how long would it last. How long would it +be before those big brown Italian eyes began looking soulfully at +somebody else; somebody more.... + +It was here that Miss Wollaston chopped herself off short, hearing--this +time it was no false alarm--Paula's step in the hall. She'd have been +amazed, scandalized, profoundly indignant, dear good-hearted lady that +she was, had some expert in the psychology of the unconscious pointed +out to her that the reason she had begun talking about Portia was that +it gave her an outlet for expressing her misgivings about her own +brother's marriage. Paula, of course, was a different thing altogether. + +What a beautiful creature she was, even at eight o'clock in the morning +at the end of an abruptly terminated night's sleep. She looked lovelier +than ever as she came in through the shadowy doorway. She wasn't a true +blonde like Mary. Her thick strong hair was a sort of golden +glorification of brown, her skin a warm tone of ivory. Her eyes, set wide +apart, were brown, and the lashes, darker than her hair, enhanced the +size of them. The look of power about Paula, inseparable from her beauty, +was not one of Miss Wollaston's feminine ideals. It spoke in every line +of her figure as well as in the lineaments of her face; in the short, +rather broad, yet cleanly defined nose; in the generous width of her +mouth; in the sculpturesque poise of her neck upon her shoulders. + +Paula's clothes, too, worried her elderly sister-in-law a little, +especially the house-dresses that she affected. They were beautiful, +heaven knew; more simply beautiful perhaps than it was right that +clothes should be. There was nothing indecent about them. Dear Paula was +almost surprisingly nice in those ways. But that thing she had on now, +for instance;--a tunic of ecru colored silk that she had pulled on over +her head, with a little over-dress of corn colored tulle, weighted +artfully here and there that it mightn't fly away. And a string of big +lumpish amber beads. She could have got into that costume in about two +minutes and there was probably next to nothing under it. From the +on-looker's point of view, it mightn't violate decorum at all; indeed, +clearly did not. But Miss Wollaston herself, if she hadn't been more or +less rigidly laced, stayed, gartered, pinched, pried and pulled about; +if she could have moved freely in any direction without an +admonitory--"take care"--from some bit of whalebone somewhere, wouldn't +have felt dressed at all. There ought to be something perpetually +penitential about clothes. The biblical story of the fall of man made +that clear, didn't it? + +John sprang up as his wife came into the room; went around the table and +held her chair for her. "My dear, I didn't know I was robbing you of half +a night's sleep," he said. "You should have turned me out." + +She reached up her strong white arms (the tulle sleeves did fall away +from them rather alarmingly, and Miss Wollaston concentrated her +attention on the spiggot of the coffee urn) for his head as he bent over +her and pulled it down for a kiss. + +"I didn't need any more sleep. I had such a joyous time last night. I +sang the whole of _Maliela_, and a lot of _Thais_. I don't know what all. +Novelli's a marvel; the best accompanist I've found yet. But, oh, my +darling, I did feel such a pig about it." + +He was back in his own chair by now and his sister breathed a little +more freely. + +"Pig?" he asked. + +"Oh, because you weren't there," said Paula. "Because I didn't sing +before, when you asked me to." + +"Dearest!" John remonstrated,--pleased though with the apology, you could +see with half an eye,--"it was inexcusable of me to have asked you. It +was a dull crowd from a musical point of view. The only thing I minded +was having, myself, put you into a position where you had to refuse. I am +glad you were able to make it up to yourself after." + +"That was not why I didn't," Paula said. She always spoke rather +deliberately and never interrupted any one. "I mean it wasn't because the +others weren't especially musical. But I couldn't have sung without +asking Novelli to play. And he couldn't have refused--being new and a +little on trial you know. And that drawing-room piano, so badly out of +tune, would have been terrible for him. There's no knowing what he +mightn't have done." + +John's face beamed triumph. "I might have known you had an unselfish +reason for it," he said. He didn't look at his sister but, of course, the +words slanted her way. + +It was perfectly characteristic of Miss Wollaston that she did not, +however, make any immediate attempt to set herself right. She attended +first very competently to all of Paula's wants in the way of breakfast +and saw her fairly launched on her chilled grapefruit. Then she said, "A +man is coming to tune the piano this morning." + +It was more than a statement of fact. Indeed I despair of conveying to +you all the implications and moral reflections which Miss Wollaston +contrived to pack into that simple sentence. + +The drawing-room piano was what an artillerist would speak of as one of +the sensitive points along the family front. It had been a present to the +Wollaston household from the eldest of John's brothers, the unmarried one +Miss Wollaston had kept house for so many years before he died; the last +present, it turned out, he ever made to anybody. Partly perhaps, because +it was a sacred object, the Wollaston children took to treating it rather +irreverently. The "Circassian grand" was one of its nicknames and the +"Siamese Elephant" another. It did glare in the otherwise old-fashioned +Dearborn Avenue drawing-room and its case did express a complete +recklessness of expense rather than any more austere esthetic impulse. + +Paula ignored it in rather a pointed way; being a musician she might have +been expected to see that it was kept in tune. She had a piano of her own +up in the big room at the top of the house that had once been the nursery +and over this instrument, she made, Miss Wollaston felt, a silly amount +of fuss. Supposedly expert tuners were constantly being called in to do +things to it and nothing they did ever seemed to afford Paula any +satisfaction. + +The aura that surrounded Miss Wollaston's remark included, then, the +conviction that the drawing-room piano, being a sacred memory, couldn't +be out of tune in the first place; that Paula, in the second, ought to +have attended to it; and third (this is rather complex but I guarantee +the accuracy of it) the fact that it was to be tuned this morning, really +made it a perfectly possible instrument for Mr. Novelli to have played +upon last night. + +John missed none of that. He hadn't been observing his sister during half +a century for nothing. He glanced over to see how much of it his wife +took in; but the fact, in this instance, was all that interested Paula. + +"It was awfully clever of you," she said, "to get hold of a tuner. Who is +he? Where did you find him?" + +"I found him in the park," said Miss Wollaston brightly, responding to +the little thrill you always felt when Paula focused her attention upon +you. "He was sitting on a bench when I drove by just after lunch. I don't +know why I noticed him but I did and when I came back hours later, he was +still sitting there on the same bench. He was in uniform; a private, I +think, certainly not an officer. It struck me as rather sad, his sitting +there like that, so I stopped the car and spoke to him. He got his +discharge just the other day, it seemed. I asked him if he had a job and +he said, no, he didn't believe he had. Then I asked him what his trade +was and he said he was a piano tuner. So I told him he might come this +morning and tune ours." + +It was Paula's bewildered stare that touched off John's peal of laughter. +Alone with his sister he might have smiled to himself over the lengths +she went in the satisfaction of her passion for good works. But Paula, he +knew, would just as soon have invited a strange bench-warming dentist to +come and work on her teeth by way of being kind to him. + +Miss Wollaston, a flush of annoyance on her faded cheeks, began making +dignified preparations to leave the table and John hastily apologized. "I +laughed," he said,--disingenuously because it wouldn't do to implicate +Paula--"over the idea that perhaps he didn't want a job at all and made +up on the spur of the moment the unlikeliest trade he could think of. And +how surprised he must have been when you took him up." + +"He did not seem surprised," Miss Wollaston said. "He thanked me very +nicely and said he would come this morning. At ten, if that would be +convenient. Of course if you wish to put it off...." + +"Not at all," said John. He rose when she did and--this was an extra bit, +an act of contrition for having wounded her--went with her to the door. +"It was a good idea," he said; "an excellent way of--of killing two birds +with one stone." + +Paula was smiling over this when he came back to her. "It doesn't matter, +does it?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "It isn't that it's out of tune, really; it's +just--hopeless." + +It was strange how like a knife thrust that word of hers--hopeless--went +through him. Perfectly illogical, of course; she was not speaking of his +life and hers but of that ridiculous drawing-room piano. Somehow the mere +glow she had brought into the room with her, the afterglow of an +experience he had no share in producing, had become painful to him; made +him feel old. He averted his eyes from her with an effort and stared down +at his empty plate. + +A moment later she came around the table and seated herself, facing him, +upon the arm of his chair; clasped his neck with her two hands. "You're +tired," she said. "How much sleep did you have last night?" And on his +admitting that he hadn't had any, she exclaimed against his working +himself to death like that. + +No memory, though he made a conscious effort to recover it, of his +audacious success during the small hours of that morning in bringing +triumphantly into the world the small new life that Pollard would have +destroyed, came back to fortify him; no trace of his own afterglow that +had so fascinated and alarmed his sister. "I shall sleep fast for an hour +or two this morning and make it up," he told Paula. + +"I do wish you might have been there last night," she said after a little +silence. "I don't believe I've ever sung so well;--could have, at least, +if there had been room enough to turn around in. It was all there; it's +getting bigger all the time. Not just the voice, if you know what I mean, +darling, but what I could do with it." + +"It was partly Novelli, I suspect," he said. "Having him for an +accompanist, I mean. He's very good indeed, isn't he?" + +"Oh, yes, he's good," she assented absently. "Awfully good. And he is a +nice furry little enthusiastic thing; like a faun, rather; exciting to +play with of course. But it wasn't that. It's you, really--being in love +with you the way I am. I suppose that's the very best thing that could +possibly have happened to me. I'm another person altogether from that +girl you found in Vienna. Just where she left off, I begin." + +She uttered a little laugh then of sheer exuberance and with a strong +embrace, pressed his head hard against her breast. He yielded passively, +made no response of his own beyond a deep-drawn breath or two. A moment +later when she had released him and risen to her feet, he rose too. + +"Would Novelli be procurable?" he asked. "Could he be engaged regularly, +as an accompanist for you and so on?" + +She looked at him rather oddly. "Why, I don't need him," she said, "as +long as I am just playing. Of course, if I were to go regularly to work, +somebody like him would be almost necessary." + +There was a tight little silence for a few seconds after that, he once +more evading her eyes. "It seems to me you work most of the time as it +is," he said. Then he announced his intention of going up-stairs to take +a nap. He wasn't going to the hospital until eleven. + +He did go up to his room and lay down upon his bed and, eventually, he +slept. But for an hour, his mind raced like an idle motor. That nonsense +of Lucile's about Portia Stanton's folly in marrying a young musician +whose big Italian eyes would presently begin looking soulfully at some +one else. Had they already looked like that at Paula? Jealousy itself +wasn't a base emotion. Betraying it was all that mattered. You couldn't +help feeling it for any one you loved. Paula, bending over that furry +faun-like head, reading off the same score with him, responding to the +same emotions from the music.... Fantastic, of course. There could be no +sane doubt as to who it was that Paula was in love with. That embrace of +hers, just now. Curious how it terrified him. He had felt like a mouse +under the soft paw of a cat. An odd symptom of fatigue. + +What a curious thing life was. How widely it departed from the +traditional patterns. Here in his own case, that Fate should save the one +real passion of his life for the Indian summer of it. And that it should +be a reciprocated passion. The wiseacres were smiling at him, he +supposed; smiling as the world always smiled at the spectacle of +infatuate age mating with tolerant, indifferently acquiescent youth. +Smiled and wondered how long it would be before youth awoke and turned to +its own. Well, he could afford to smile at the wiseacres. And at the +green inexperienced young, as well, who thought that love was exclusively +their affair--children the age of Mary taking their sentimental thrills +so seriously! + +Four years now he had been married to Paula and the thing had never +chilled,--never gone stale. How different from the love of his youth that +had led to his former marriage, was this burning constant flame. Paula +was utterly content with him. She had given up her career for him.--No. +She hadn't done that. He had not asked her to do that. Had not, on the +contrary, her marriage really furthered it? Was she not more of a person +to-day than the discouraged young woman he had found singing for +pittances the leading dramatic soprano rĂ´les in the minor municipal +operas of Germany and Austria? Wasn't that what she had said this +morning--that falling in love with him was the best thing that could +possibly have happened to her? He had taken it wrong when she said it, as +if she were regarding him just as an instrument that served her purpose, +a purpose that lay beyond him; outside him. + +That was what had given him that momentary pang of terror. Fatigue, of +course. He ought to go to sleep. Paula was refraining from her morning +practise just so that he could. Or was that why? Was she dreaming, up in +the music room where she was never to be disturbed,--of last night--of +Novelli? Damnation.... + + + + +CHAPTER II + +SEA DRIFT + + +Paula went up to the music room after breakfast, stood at one of its +open windows for a few minutes breathing in the air of an unusually +mild March and then abruptly left it; dressed for the street and went +out for a walk. + +She was quite as much disturbed over the scene in the dining-room as her +husband had been. His flash of jealousy over the little Italian pianist, +instantly recognizable through its careful disguise, had only endeared +John Wollaston to her further, if that were possible. She had laughed and +hugged his worried old head tight against her breast. + +But his refusal to face facts about her musical career was another thing +altogether. Once more he had, patently and rather pitiably, evaded the +subject of her going seriously to work. Did he think that she could go +on indefinitely parading a parlor accomplishment for his society +friends,--singing nice little English songs for Wallace Hood? It was too +ridiculous! That hadn't been their understanding when she married him. + +What she had been sure of last night as never before, she had tried down +there in the dining-room to convey to him; that her powers were ripe, +were crying out for use. She had failed simply because he had refused to +see what she was driving at. It was just another form of jealousy really, +she supposed. + +She was not an introspective person, but this, clearly, was something +that wanted thinking over. It was to "think" that she went out for the +walk. Only, being Paula, the rhythm of her stride, the sparkle of the +spring air, the stream of sharp new-minted sensations incessantly +assailing eye and ear, soon swamped her problem; sunk it beneath the +level of consciousness altogether. Long before ten o'clock when she came +swinging along Dearborn Avenue toward her husband's house, she had +"walked off" her perplexities. + +A block from the house she found herself overtaking a man in uniform and +slackened her pace a little in order not to pass him. There was something +unmilitary about the look of him that mildly amused her. It was not that +he slouched nor shuffled nor that he was ill-made, though he was probably +one of those unfortunates whom issue uniforms never fit. He carried a +little black leather satchel, and it broke over Paula that here perhaps +was Lucile's piano tuner. She half formed the intention to stay away +another hour or two until he should have had time to finish. But he +interfered with that plan by stopping in front of the house and looking +at it as if making up his mind whether to go in. + +It was an odd look he had, but distinctly an engaging one. He was not +criticizing the architecture, if so it could be called, of the +house-front. Yet there was a sort of comfortable detachment about him +which precluded the belief that it was a mere paralyzing shyness that +held him there. + +Paula abandoned her intention of walking by. She stopped instead as she +came up to him and said, "Are you coming in here? If you are, I'll let +you in." She fished an explanatory latch-key out of her wrist-bag as she +went up the steps. + +"Why," he said, "I believe this is the house where I'm expected to +tune a piano." + +In the act of thrusting home her key, Paula stopped short, turned +irrepressibly and stared at him. She was one of that very small number of +American-born singers who take the English language seriously and she +knew good speech when she heard it. It was one of the qualities which had +first attracted her to Doctor John. This man's speaking voice would have +arrested her attention pleasantly anywhere. Coming from the private +soldier Lucile had told to come round to tune the piano, it really +startled her. She turned back to the door and opened it. + +"Yes," she said, "they're expecting you. Come in and I'll show you +the piano." + +She might, of course, merely have indicated the drawing-room door to him +with a nod and gone up-stairs, but she was determined now to wait and +hear him say something more. So she led the way into the drawing-room and +quite superfluously indicated the Circassian grand with a gesture. Then +she looked back at him quickly enough to surprise the expression that +flickered across his face at the sight of it. A mere cocking of one +eyebrow it was, but amusingly expressive. So, too, was the way he walked +over toward it, with an air of cautious determination, of readiness for +anything, that made Paula want to laugh. He dropped down sidewise on the +bench, turned up the lid and dug his fingers into the keyboard. + +At the noise he evoked from that pampered instrument she did laugh aloud. +It was not a piano tuner's arpeggio but a curiously teasing mixed +dissonance she couldn't begin to identify. She thought she heard him say, +"My God!" but couldn't be sure. He repeated his chord pianissimo and held +it down, reached up and echoed it in the upper half of the keyboard; then +struck, hard, two octaves in the bass. + +"What a piano!" he said. "What a damned piano!" He made a sort of effort +to pull himself up; apologized (she thought that was what he meant to +do) for the damn. But as he turned back to the piano and struck another +chord or two, she could see that his sense of outrage was mounting +steadily all the time. + +"You can't tune a piano like this."--He pushed up the cover and stared +gloomily at the strings. "A mincing sickly thing like this. It's all +wrong. The scale is all wrong. The man who designed it ought to be hung. +But he called it a piano and sold it for a piano and I'm expected to come +in and tune it. Slick and smear it over and leave it sounding sicklier +and tubbier and more generally disgusting than ever. You might as well +take a painted harlot off the streets"--he glared at the ornate +extravagance of the case--"and expect to make a gentlewoman of her with +one lesson in deportment. I won't tune it. It's better left as it is. In +its shame." + +"Well," said Paula, letting go a long breath, "you've said it." + +Then she dropped into a chair and began to laugh. Never again, she felt +sure, would the drawing-room piano be able to cause her a moment's +irritation. This astonishing piano tuner of Lucile's had converted it, +with his new christening, into a source of innocent merriment. "The +painted harlot" covered the ground. Clear inspiration was what that was. +The way he went on glowering at it, digging every now and then a new and +more abominable chord out of its entrails made her mirth the more +uncontrollable. + +"It isn't funny, you know, a thing like this," he remonstrated at last. +"It's serious." + +"It would be serious," she retorted with sudden severity, "if you had +said all that or anything in the least like that to Miss Wollaston. +Because she really loves it. She has adopted it." + +"Was she the lady who spoke to me in the park?" His evident consternation +over this aspect of the case made Paula smile as she nodded yes. + +"That was an act of real kindness," he said earnestly. "Not mere good +nature. It doesn't grow on every bush." + +To this she eagerly agreed. "She is kind; she's a dear." But when she +saw him looking unhappily at the piano again, she said (for she hadn't +the slightest intention of abandoning him now), "There's another one, +quite a different sort of one, in the music room up-stairs. Would you +like to come along and look at that?" + +He followed her tractably enough, but up in her studio before looking at +the piano, he asked her a question or two. Had he the name right? And was +the lady related to Doctor Wollaston? + +"She's his sister," said Paula, adding, "and I am his wife. Why, do you +know him?" + +"I talked with him once. He came out to the factory to see my father and +I happened to be there. Two or three years ago, that was. He did an +operation on my sister that saved her life. He is a great man." He added, +"My name's Anthony March, but he wouldn't remember me." + +He sat down at the instrument, went over the keyboard from bottom, to top +and back again with a series of curious modulations. Then opening his bag +and beginning to get out his tools, he said, "Before I went into the +army, there was a man named Bernstein in these parts, who used to +perpetrate outrages like this on pianos." + +"Yes," said Paula, "he tuned this one two weeks ago." + +Without so much as a by your leave, Anthony March went to work. + +It was Paula's childlike way to take any pleasurable event simply as a +gift from heaven without any further scrutiny of its source; with no +labored attempt to explain its arrival and certainly with no misgivings +as to whether or not she was entitled to it. Anthony March was such a +gift. By the time he had got to work on her own piano, she knew he was +pure gold and settled down joyously to make the most of him. + +It was not until she attempted to give an account to the Wollastons at +dinner that night, of the day they had spent together--for they had made +a day of it--that she realized there was anything odd, not to say +astonishing, about the episode. How in the first place did it happen that +it was Paula's piano he tuned instead of the one in the drawing-room? +This was, of course, inexplicable until she could get John by himself and +tell him about it. One couldn't report to Lucile his phrase about the +painted harlot. She had to content herself with stressing the fact that +he intended to tune the drawing-room piano after he had finished with +hers and then somehow he hadn't got around to it. + +But why had an unaccredited wanderer whom Lucile had found in the park +even been given a chance at the piano up-stairs? Well, he had looked to +Paula like an artist when she had let him in the door. You could tell, +with people like that, if you had an eye for such matters. And then his +recognition of Bernstein's nefarious handiwork had clenched her +conviction. Certainly she had been right about it; he had absolutely +bewitched that piano of hers. She didn't believe there was another such +tuner in the United States. If they would come up-stairs after dinner, +she'd show them. They had always thought she was unnecessarily fussy +about it, but now they should see they were mistaken. It was like +unveiling a statue. The poor thing had been there all the time, covered +up so that you couldn't hear it. She was so excited about it she could +hardly leave it alone. + +And he had been as delighted with the results as she herself. After he +had played it a while for her (oh, he didn't play well, atrociously badly +really, but that didn't matter; it only made it all the more exciting) he +made her play for him. Paula smiled reminiscently when she added that he +had sat all the while she was playing, on the bare floor under the piano +where he could feel the vibrations as well as hear them. He had paid her +an odd sort of compliment too, when he came crawling out, saying that he +had assumed from the scores on the piano that she was a singer but that +she played like a musician,--only not a pianist! + +He was a genius, absolutely a genius of the first water, when it came to +tuning pianos. Whether his talent as a composer ran to any such lengths +as that she, of course, didn't know. If what he had played for her had +been his own, any of it, it was awfully modern and interesting, at +least. You could tell that even though it kept him swearing at himself +all the time for not being able to play it. And from something he said +at lunch... + +"Lunch!" Miss Wollaston gasped (she had been away from home all day). "Do +you mean you had lunch with him?" + +"Why not?" Paula wanted to know. "Me to have gone down-stairs and eaten +all alone and had a tray sent up for him? That would have been so silly, +I never even thought of it. He's a real person. I like him a lot. And I +don't know when I've had such a nice day." + +Here was where Paula's difficulties began. Because when they asked her +who he was, where he lived, where he came from, what his experiences in +the army had been, and whether he had been to France or not, she had to +profess herself upon all these topics totally uninformed. His name she +happened to know; it was Anthony March. He told her that, somehow, +right at the beginning, though she couldn't remember how the fact had +cropped out. + +As to the other matters her husband and his sister were seeking +information about she simply hadn't had time to get around to things like +that. She thought he might have been a farmer once or some such sort of +person. He liked the country anyway. He had spent a lot of time, he told +her, tramping about in Illinois and Iowa, earning his way by tuning +farmers' pianos. + +He hated Puccini and spoke rather disrespectfully of Wagner as a +spell-binder. He liked Wolf-Ferrari pretty well; the modern he was really +crazy about was Montemezzi. But he had made her sing oceans of +Gluck,--both the _Iphigenia_ and _Euridice_. It was awfully funny too +because he would sing the other parts wherever they happened to lie, +tenor, bass, contralto, anything, in the most awful voice you ever heard, +though his speaking voice was lovely. Let John just wait until he heard +it. It was almost as nice as his own. Oh, he was coming back again some +time. He had promised to bring over some songs of his own composing for +her to try. + +It was at this point or thereabouts that John precipitated a crisis by +asking how much this paragon of a piano tuner had charged her for his +professional services. Paula stared at him, stricken. + +"Why," she said, "I don't believe I paid him anything. I know I didn't. I +never thought of it at all. Neither did he, for that matter though, I'm +sure of it." + +This provoked Lucile into an outburst, rare with her, of outspoken +indignation. The man, delinquent as he had been in the matter of the +drawing-room piano, became once more her protĂ©gĂ©, her soldier whom she +had found in the park and attempted to do a kindness to. Paula had +kept him fussing over her piano all day and then let him go without, +for all she knew, money enough to buy his supper or procure a lodging +for the night. + +John, though he made less commotion about it, took his wife's negligence +even more seriously for he set about attempting to repair it. "You're +quite sure," he asked in his crisp, consulting-room manner--a manner +Paula was happily unfamiliar with--"You're quite sure he told you +nothing about himself beyond his bare name? You've got that right, +haven't you? Anthony March?" + +"Yes," said Paula uncertainly, "I'm absolutely sure of that." + +Had he any insignia on his uniform?--little bronze numerals on his +collar--anything like that that she could remember? That would tell them +what organization he belonged to and might give them a clue. + +Here Lucile got drawn into the inquisition. She had seen him and talked +to him. Had she noticed anything of the sort? But Lucile had not. She +had, naturally, deferred all inquiries until he came to tune the piano; +and had she been called as she felt she should have been.... + +But John, it appeared, was not interested in pursuing that line. He +turned back to Paula. "I wish you'd begin at the beginning, my dear, at +the time you let him into the house, and try to remember as nearly as you +can everything that you said to him and that he said to you. He may have +said something casually that you didn't remark at the time which would be +of the greatest help to us now." + +Paula wasn't very hopeful of obtaining any result in this way, but she +dutifully went to work trying to think. She was perfectly amiable about +it all. Presently her husband prompted her. "How did he happen to tell +you what his name was? Can you remember that?" + +After a minute, she did. "Why," she cried, lighting up, "he said he knew +you but you wouldn't remember him. He said you did an operation on his +sister once--that saved her life." + +"An unmarried sister?" he asked. + +"What difference ... Oh, I see, because if she was married her name +wouldn't be March. No, he didn't say anything about that. He did say +something, though, about a factory. You went out to the factory to see +his father and he was there." + +John Wollaston's face went blank for a minute and his eyelids drooped +shut. Then a quick jerk of the head and a sharp expulsion of breath +announced success. "That's all right," he said. "Thank the Lord, I've +got it now." + +It would have seemed absurd to Paula, had she been capable of regarding +anything he did in that light, that he should take a trivial matter like +this so seriously. He couldn't have looked more relieved over the +successful finish of a difficult operation. + +"That happens to be a case I'll never forget," he went on to explain. +"Professionally speaking, it was unique, but it had points of human +interest as well. The girl was a patient in one of the wards at the +Presbyterian. I didn't get a look at her until the last minute when it +was desperate. Her father was opposed to the operation--a religious +scruple, it turned out. Didn't want God's will interfered with. He was a +workman, a skilled workman in a piano factory. There was no time to lose +so I drove out there and got him; converted him on the way back to the +hospital. I remember the son, now I think of it; by his speech, too. I +remember thinking that the mother must have been a really cultivated +woman. Well, it's all right. I've got the address in the files at the +office. I'll send a letter there in the morning and enclose a check. How +much ought it to be?" + +Once more Paula did not know. Hadn't, she protested, an idea; and when +John asked her how much she paid Bernstein, she didn't know that either. +It all went on the bill. + +"Well, that's easy," said John. "I've got last month's bills in my desk. +All right, I'll look into it. You needn't bother about it any more." + +An approximation to a sniff from Miss Wollaston conveyed the comment +that Paula hadn't bothered appreciably about it from the beginning, but +neither of the others paid any attention to that. + +As it fell out, John might have spared his labors because at eight +o'clock or thereabouts the next morning just as he was sitting down to +breakfast, Anthony March came back to repair his omission of the day +before and tune the drawing-room piano. + +A minor domestic detail of that sort would normally have fallen within +Lucile's province, but John decisively took it away from her. + +"When I finish breakfast," he said, "I'll write him a check and take it +in to him." He added, "I'm curious to see what this new discovery of +Paula's looks like." + +That was exactly what he felt, an amused comfortable curiosity. Nothing +in the least like that flash of jealousy he had felt over Novelli. If it +had occurred to him to try to explain the difference to himself and had +he taken the trouble to skim off the superficial explanation,--that +Portia Stanton's husband belonged in Paula's world and that a tramp +genius who came around to tune pianos did not,--he might have got down to +the recognition of the fact that the character Paula had sketched for him +last night was a grotesque and not therefore to be taken seriously. You +could not, at least, do anything but smile over a man who sat on the +floor under Paula's piano while she played and came crawling out to +express surprise that a singer should be a musician as well. + +So the look of the man he found in the drawing-room stopped him rather +short. Anthony March had taken off the ill-fitting khaki blouse and the +sleeves of his olive-drab uniform shirt were rolled up above the elbows. +He was sitting sidewise on the piano bench, his left hand on the +keyboard, his right making imperceptible changes in the tension of one of +the strings. His implement, John's quick eye noticed, was not the +long-handled L shaped affair he had always seen tuners use but a T shaped +thing that put the tuner's hand exactly above the pin. + +"It must take an immense amount of strength," he observed, "to tune a +piano with a wrench like that." + +March turned and with a pleasant sort of smile wished him a good morning. +But he finished ironing the wave out of a faulty unison before he replied +to John's remark. He arose from the bench as he spoke. "It does; but it +is more a matter of knack really. A great tuner named Clark taught me, +and he learned it from Jonas Chickering himself. Old Jonas wouldn't allow +any of his grand pianos to be tuned with an L head wrench." + +"My wife," said John, "recalled you to me last night, in the effort to +remedy her omission to pay you for your services yesterday. I remember +your sister's case very distinctly. I hope she is ..." + +"She is quite well, thank you," March said. Oddly enough his manner +stiffened a little. + +John hastily produced his check. It had struck him as possible that March +might suspect him of hinting that one gratuitous service ought to offset +the other. + +"I hope the amount is satisfactory," he said. + +March glanced at the check and smiled. "It's rather more than +satisfactory; I should call it handsome. Thank you very much." He tucked +the check into the pocket of his shirt. + +"My wife's immensely pleased over what you did to her piano. I'm sure she +will be glad to do all she can in the way of recommending you among her +musical friends." + +March looked at him in consternation. "Oh, she mustn't do that!" he +cried. "I hope she won't--recommend me to any one." + +John's sudden unwelcome surmise must have been legible in his face +because March then said earnestly and quite as if the doctor had spoken +his thought aloud, "Oh, it isn't that. I mean, I haven't done anything +disgraceful. It's only that I know too many musicians as it +is--professional pianists and such. If they find out I'm back, they'll +simply make a slave of me. I don't need to earn much money and I like to +live my own way, but it's hard to deny people what they are determined to +get." He added thoughtfully, "I dare say you understand that, sir." + +John Wollaston nodded. He understood very well indeed. He checked on his +tongue the words, "Only I _have_ to earn a lot of money." "You are a +composer, too, my wife tells me." + +"Yes," March said, "but that isn't the point exactly. Put it that I enjoy +traveling light and that I don't like harness. Though this one,"--he +glanced down at his uniform,--"hasn't been so bad." He turned toward the +piano with the evident idea of going back to work. + +"Well," John said, "I must be off. You've a good philosophy of life if +you can make it work. Not many men can. Good-by. We'll meet again some +time, I hope." + +"I hope so too," said Anthony March. + +John went out and closed the drawing-room door behind him. Then he left +the house without going up-stairs and saying hello to Paula and sitting +down on the edge of her bed, as he had meant to do, and telling her all +about his talk with the piano tuner. + +It really was late and he must be getting started. Only why had he closed +the drawing-room door so carefully behind him? So that his wife shouldn't +be disturbed by the infernal racket those fellows always made tuning +pianos? Or so that she mightn't even know, until he had finished his work +and gone, that Anthony March had come back at all? And not knowing, +should not come down _en negligĂ©e_ and ask whether he had brought his +songs for her. Had he brought them? Certainly John had given him a good +enough chance to say so. And if he had brought them and Paula did not +come, would he leave them for her with Nat? Or would he carry them away +in his little black satchel? + +All the way out to the hospital John kept turning Anthony March over in +his mind and the last thing to leave it was what had been the first +impression of all. The fine strength of that hand and wrist which tuned +grand pianos with a T wrench. + +He hated himself for having shut the door. + +And as it happened this act did not prevent Paula from finding March. The +tyrant who looked after her hair had given her an appointment that +morning at ten. So, a little before that hour and just as March was +finishing off his job, she came down, dressed for the street. She came +into the drawing-room and with good-humored derision, smiled at him. + +"I knew you'd come and do it," she told him. + +"It isn't going to be so bad," he answered. "Moszkowski, +Chaminade,--quite a little of Chopin for that matter,--will go pretty +well on it." + +"Did you bring my songs?" she asked. + +From the chair that he had thrown his blouse upon, he produced a flat +package neatly wrapped in brown paper. And as she went over to the window +with it, tearing the wrappers away as she walked, he went back to his +work at the piano. + +"Don't do that," she said, as he struck a chord or two. "I can't read if +you do." But almost instantly she added with a laugh, "Oh, all right, go +ahead. I can't read this anyway. Why, it's frightful!" She came swiftly +toward the piano and stood the big flat quires of score paper on the +rack. "Show me how this goes," she commanded, but he pushed back a little +with a gesture almost of fright. + +"No," he protested sharply. "I can't. I can't begin to play that stuff." + +She remained standing beside his shoulder, looking at the score. + +"They're strange words," she said, and began reading them to herself, +half aloud, haltingly. + +"'Low hangs the moon. It rose late, +It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.'" + +"Walt Whitman," he told her. "They're all out of a poem called +_Sea-Drift_." + +She went on reading, now audibly, now with a mere silent movement of the +lips, half puzzled, half entranced, and catching--despite her protest +that she could not read the music,--some intimations of its intense +strange beauty. + +"' ..._do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?... Loud I +call to you, my love ... Surely you must know who is here ... O rising +stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise ... with some of you ... +O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere_ ...'" + +With a shake of the head, like one trying to stop the weaving of a spell, +she turned the pages back to the beginning. + +"This means Novelli," she said. "I'll get him. I'll get him this morning. +He's the best accompanist in Chicago. We'll go to work on them and when +we've got them presentable, I'll let you know and sing them to you. +Where do you live?" + +He got up for a paper and pencil and wrote out an address and a telephone +number. She was still staring at that first page of the score when he +brought it back to her. + +"I've never heard any of those songs myself," he told her. + +At that she looked around at him, looked steadily into his face for a +moment and then her eyes filled with tears. She reached out both hands +and took him by the shoulders. "Well, you're going to hear them this +time, my dear," she said. As she moved away, she added in a more +matter-of-fact tone, "Just as soon as we can work them up, in a few days +perhaps. I'll let you know." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE PEACE BASIS + + +There were four in their party but it was only with Alfred Baldwin that +Mary Wollaston danced. The other man--Black his name was, and he came +from Iowa City or Dubuque or thereabouts--devoted all his attention to +Baldwin's wife. He was very rich, very much married--out in Iowa--and +whenever he made his annual business trip to New York, he liked to have a +real New York time. They had dined together at the Baldwins' apartment +with a vague idea of going afterward to see a play of Baldwin's then +drawing toward the close of a successful season's run. But dinner had +been late and they had lingered too long over it to make this excursion +worth while. It had amused both Mary and Christabel to discover Black's +secret hope of being taken back-stage and introduced to the beautiful +young star who was playing in the piece and taking her out to supper with +them. He didn't know that Baldwin hated her with a perfect hatred and +never got within speaking distance of her if he could help it. + +So, by way of making up to the western visitor for his disappointment +they taxied up-town about ten o'clock to the brightest, loudest and most +fantastically expensive of New York's dancing restaurants. Once there, he +took command of the party; confidently addressed the head waiter by his +first name and began "opening wine" with a lavish hand. He was flirting +in what he conceived to be quite a desperate and depraved manner with +Christabel, and what enhanced his pleasure in this entertainment was that +he did it all right under the nose of the husband, who obviously didn't +mind a bit. He would talk eloquently when he got home, with carefully +selected corroborative details, about the wickedness of New York. + +Mary liked the Baldwins. Christabel was on the executive committee of +their Fund and one of the best and steadiest and most sensible supporters +it had. She was a real person. Baldwin, himself, whom she hadn't known so +long nor so well and had regarded from afar as a rather formidable +celebrity, proved on better acquaintance, though witty and sophisticated, +to be as comfortable as an old glove. Altogether they were the nearest +thing to friends that her long sojourn in New York had given her. She had +sometimes thought rather wildly of putting them to the test and seeing +whether they were real friends or not. + +To-night, though, even they irritated her. She wished Christabel would +snub that appalling bounder, Black, as he deserved. How could she go on +playing up to him like that! As for Baldwin, she wished he would just +dance with her and not talk. She supposed that the amount of alcohol they +had consumed since seven o'clock had something to do with his verging +upon the vein, the Broadway sentimental vein, that he had got started on +and couldn't seem to let alone. + +It wasn't new to Mary. Indeed it was a phenomenon familiarly associated +in her mind with Forty-second Street restaurants and late hours and +strong drink, particularly gin. The crocodile tear for the good woman who +stayed at home; who didn't know; who never, please God! should know. The +tribute to flower-like innocence--the paper flower-like innocence of the +stage _ingenue_! + +Baldy wasn't as bad as that, couldn't ever conceivably be as bad as that, +no matter how much he had had to drink. Perhaps, if she had not been +hypersensitive to-night,--in an impossible mood for any sort of party +really--she might have failed to detect the familiar strain in his +sensible, rather fatherly talk. As it was, she thought she did detect it +and it made her want to scream--or swear! + +There is one point to be urged in Baldy's defense that Mary never learned +to allow for. Gin or no gin, the effect of contrast she presented to her +surroundings in a place like this, her look of a seraphic visitor gone +astray, would have given any one the impulse, at least, to rush to the +rescue. To begin with, it was not possible to credit her with the +twenty-five years she truly claimed; nineteen, in a soft colored evening +frock like the one she had on to-night, was about what one would have +guessed. Then, you never would have believed, short of discovering the +fact yourself, how strong she was; her slenderness and the fine +articulation of her joints made her look fragile. Her coloring helped the +illusion along, the clear unsophisticated blue of her eyes, the pallor of +her hair that the petals of a tea-rose could have got lost in,--it was, +literally, just about the tint of unbleached linen--and the pearly +translucence of her skin. If you got the opportunity to look close enough +to see that there wasn't a grain of powder upon it, not even between the +shoulder blades, it made you think of flower petals again. What clenched +the effect was her healthy capacity for complete relaxation when no +effort was required of her. She drooped a little and people thought she +looked tired. She never could see herself like that and never made due +allowance for the effect she produced, invariably upon strangers and not +infrequently upon an old friend. + +To-night, she lacked the name to label her mood by, rejecting rather +fiercely the one that kept offering itself. You couldn't be homesick when +home was the last place in the world you wanted to go back to--the place +you were desperately marshaling reasons for staying away from. + +It was the non-appearance of her brother, Rush, that had brought a lot of +dispersed feelings to a focus. She had heard nothing later from him than +the letter she referred to when she last wrote to her father. She had +expected a cable and it hadn't come. She had this morning gone over to +Hoboken to meet the transport he had said he expected to sail on, but +having got down to the pier a little late, after the debarkation had +begun, she could not be sure that she hadn't missed him. So she had gone +back to her tiny flat in Waverly Place and had spent the rest of the day +there, vainly hoping that he would turn up or at least that she should +get some word of him. And sitting around like that for hours and hours +she had, which was a silly thing to do, let her thoughts run wild over +things--a thing--that there was simply no sense in thinking about at all. + +It was an odd fact, which she had noted long before today, that anything +connected with home, a letter from her father or her aunt, news of the +doings of any of her Chicago friends (the birth of Olive Corbett's second +baby, for example), any vivid projection of a bit of the pattern of the +life into which she had once been woven, roused that nightmare memory. Or +gave, rather, to a memory which normally did not trouble her much, the +quality of a nightmare; a moment of paralyzed incredulity that it could +have happened to her; a pang of clear horror that it really and truly had +happened to her very self; to this Mary Wollaston who still lived in the +very place where it had happened. + +This afternoon, while she had sat awaiting from moment to moment the +appearance of her brother, or at least the sound of his voice over the +telephone, the pang had been prolonged into an agony. She had let herself +drift into a fantastic speculation of a sort that was perfectly new. What +if the boy who had shared that crazy adventure with her, himself an +officer bound overseas, had fallen in with Rush, made friends with him, +told him the story! + +This was pure melodrama, she knew. There was, in any external sense, +nothing to be feared. The thing had happened almost a year ago. It had +had no consequences--except this inexplicable one that her brother's +approach brought back the buried memory of it. Why should it cling like +that? Like an acid that wouldn't wash off! She was not, as far as her +mind went, ashamed of it. Never had been. But, waiving all the +extenuating circumstances--which had really surrounded the act--admitting +that it was a sin (this thing that she had done once and had, later, +learned the impossibility of ever doing again), was it any worse than +what her brother had probably done a score of times? + +What was this brother of hers going to be like? It wasn't possible, of +course, that she would find him the boy he had been five years ago, +before he went to France--though from some of his letters one might have +thought he hadn't changed a bit. Wasn't it likely that he'd turn out to +be some one she could cling to a little; confide her perplexities +to--some of them? Was there a chance that ripened, disillusioned, made +gentle and wise by the alchemy of the furnace he had come through, he +might prove to be the one person in the world to whom she could confide +everything? That would make an end to her nightmare, she felt sure. + +The question whether he was or was not going to turn out like that was +one presently to be answered. Until she knew the answer she didn't want +to think at all, least of all about those things which Baldy's talk +to-night kept rousing echoes of. + +"Oh, they all look good when they're far away," she said, picking that +bit of comic supplement slang deliberately to annoy him. "I don't believe +our grandfathers and grandmothers were always such models of decorum as +they tried, when they had grown old, to make us think. And the simple +primitive joys ... I believe an old-fashioned husking bee, if they had +plenty of hard cider to go with it, was just as bad as this--coarser if +not so vulgar. After all, most of these people will go virtuously home +to bed pretty soon and you'd find them back at work to-morrow morning not +any the worse, really, for this. It may be a rather poor sort of home +they go to, but how do you know that the vine-covered cottage you have +been talking about was any better?" + +"Not to mention," he added, in humorous concurrence, "that there was +probably typhoid in the well the old oaken bucket hung in. It seems odd +to be convicted of sentimentality by an innocent babe like you. But if +you had been looking at the party down at the end table behind you that +I've had under my eye for ten minutes, perhaps you'd feel more as I do. +No! don't turn around; they have been looking at us." + +"Moralizing over us, perhaps," she suggested. "Thinking how wicked we +probably were." + +"No," he said, "I happen to know the girls. They live down in our part of +town, just over in the Village, that is. They have been here six or eight +years. One of them was quite a promising young illustrator once. And +they're both well-bred--came obviously from good homes. And they've both +gone, well--clean over the edge." + +Somehow his innocent euphemism annoyed her. "You mean they are +prostitutes?" she asked. + +He frowned in protest at her employment of the word but assented +unequivocally. He was used--as who is not--to hearing young women discuss +outspokenly such topics but he couldn't forgive it from one who looked +like Mary Wollaston. + +"I have a hunch," he said, "that the two boys who are with them are +officers out of uniform. I noticed that they looked the other way +pretty carefully when that major who is sitting at the next table to +ours came in." + +"Let's dance again," she said. "I love this Hawaiian Moonlight thing." + +He saw her take the opportunity that rising from the table gave her for +a good square look at the party he had been talking about and some change +in her manner made him say with quick concern, "What is it?" + +But she ignored the question and stepped out upon the floor with him. +They had danced half-way round the room when she said quietly, "One of +the boys at that table is my brother Rush." + +Baldwin said, "He has seen you, I think." He felt her give a sort of gasp +before she replied but the words came steadily enough. + +"Oh, yes, we saw each other at the same time." + +He said nothing more, just went on dancing around the room with her in +silence, taking care, without appearing to do so, to cut the corner where +Rush was sitting, rather broadly. After two or three rounds of the floor, +she flagged a little and without asking any questions, he led her back to +their table. Luckily, Christabel and her Iowan had disappeared. + +As soon as she was seated she asked him for a pencil and something she +could write on--a card of his, the back of an old letter, anything. She +wrote, "Won't you please come and ask me to dance?" and she slid it over +to him. He read it and understood, picked up a busboy with his eye and +despatched him with the folded scrap for delivery to Captain Wollaston at +the end table. + +Mary meanwhile had cradled her chin in her palms and closed her eyes. +She had experienced so clear a premonition before she turned round to +look at the party at the end table that one of those officers out of +uniform would turn out to be Rush that the verification of it had the +quality of something that happens in a dream. She felt a sharp +incredulity that it could really be they, staring at each other across +that restaurant. More than that, the brother she saw was not--in that +first glance--the man she had been trying all day to make up her mind he +would be. Not the new Rush with two palms to his _Croix de Guerre_ and +his American D.S.C.; and the scars in his soul from the experiences +those decorations must represent; but the Rush she had said good-by to +in the autumn of 1914 when he set out to be a freshman at Harvard, the +kid brother she had counciled and occasionally admonished, in the +vicarious exercise of her father's authority. And in his panic-stricken +gaze at her, she had recognized his instinctive acceptance of that +position. Exactly so would he have looked five interminable years ago if +she had caught him in mischief. + +Then, like the undertow of a big wave, the reaction caught her. It was +intolerable that he should look at her like that. He who had earned his +manhood and its privileges in the long death grapple with the grimmest of +realities. Certainly she was not the one to cast the first stone at him. +She must contrive somehow, at once, to make that clear to him. The +urgency of the thing lay in her belief that the whole of their future +relationship depended upon the removing of his misapprehension +now--to-night. + +She could not go to that table where he sat without seeming more than +ever the school mistress in pursuit of a truant, but perhaps he would +come to her if she put her request right. They had danced together quite +a lot in the old days. She danced so well that not even her status of +elder sister had prevented his enjoying the exercise of their combined +accomplishment. + +A horrible misgiving had attacked her when she had scribbled the note and +closed her eyes, that the cocktails and the champagne she herself had +consumed since seven o'clock might have clouded her judgment--if, indeed, +they were not responsible for the whole nightmare. Would she be equal to +following out the line she had set for herself? + +But no trace of that misgiving was apparent to her when Rush, after a +wait of only two or three minutes, appeared at her table. She greeted him +with a smile and a Hello, nodded a fleeting farewell to Baldwin and +slipped comfortably into her brother's arms out on the floor. They danced +away without a word. There was the same quite beautiful accord between +them that there had been in the old days, and the sense of this steadied +her. They had gone all the way around the floor before she spoke. + +"It is like old times, isn't it?" she said. "And it does seem good. You +don't mind, do you,--for ten minutes?" + +"Ten minutes?" he echoed dully. + +She knew then, as she had indeed been aware from the first, that he was +drunk and that only by the most painful effort, could he command his +scattered wits at all. It made her want to cry that he should be trying +so hard. She must not cry. That would be the final outrage. She must be +very simple and clear. She must--_must_ contrive to make him understand. + +"Will you listen to me, dear, and do exactly what I ask you to? I want +you to go back to your people and forget that you have seen me at all." + +"I am going to take you home--out of this," he said laboriously. + +"I'm going home soon, but not with you. I want you to go back to--to the +girl you brought here. No, dear, listen. This is the only reason I sent +for you. To tell you that I wasn't going to try to scold you. I don't +mind a bit. I want to tell you that, so that when you come back to me +to-morrow or next day or whenever your party is quite over, you won't +feel that you have anything to try to explain or apologize for. Now take +me back to my place and then go on to yours." + +"I won't take you back to him," he said doggedly. "What do you think I +am? I'm drunk, but not enough for that. I am going to take you home." + +She tried to laugh but in spite of herself it was more like a sob. + +"Rush, dear, don't be silly. I am perfectly all right--or would be if I +hadn't drunk quite so much champagne. They'll take me home. His wife's +here with him and they're old friends of mine. They know a lot of our +friends in Chicago. Please, Rush...." + +"Do you think I'd go back to that--" he managed to pull up on the edge +of an ugly word--"back to those people, and leave you here? Is it your +wrap on that chair? We'll stop and get it and then we'll go." + +She could have wept with vexation over the way her scheme had gone awry +but there was clearly nothing else to do. She retrieved her cloak, simply +said good night to Christabel and the man named Black, leaving Baldy to +explain things as he chose. + +Five minutes later she gave a taxi driver the address of her flat and +dropped back against the cushions beside her brother. Neither of them +spoke a word during that fifteen-minute drive. Mary wept quietly most of +the way--it didn't matter there in the dark. The thought of this splendid +glorious brother of hers painfully endeavoring to drag himself back into +a state of sobriety from his first wild caper after long wearing of the +harness of discipline--an escapade she supposed that he must have been +looking forward to for days--dragging himself back to protect her--oh, it +was too hopeless! Should she ever be able to explain to him why she had +sent for him, and that her intentions had been the opposite of those of +the moralizing meddler he would take her for? If only she could make it +up to him somehow. She would have liked to reach over and pull him down +into her arms, mother him and tell him not to mind--there was something +so intolerably pathetic about his effort to sit soberly straight--but she +resisted this impulse savagely. The alcohol in her own veins was +responsible for this. She could not quite trust herself not to go +maudlin. So she froze herself tight and huddled away from him into her +own corner. + +She did not think beyond the address she had given to the chauffeur until +they pulled up at her door. Then she turned to Rush and asked, "Where +shall he take you? Are you staying at a hotel?" + +"I am going to take you home," he said precisely. + +She saw she did not dare to let him go. There was no telling what serious +trouble he might get into, in his illicit civilian dress, if she turned +him adrift now. So she said, simply, "Well, here we are. Come in." + +She opened the street door with her latch-key, and punched on the hall +lights. She dreaded the two flights of stairs, but with the help of the +banister rail he negotiated them successfully enough. And then he was +safely brought to anchor in her sitting-room. It was plain he had not the +vaguest idea where he was. + +"I'll make some coffee," she said. "That will--pull us both together. And +it won't take a minute because it's all ready to make for breakfast." + +She was not gone, indeed, much longer than that, but when she came back +from her kitchenette he had dropped like a log upon her divan, submerged +beyond all soundings. So she tugged him around into a more comfortable +position, managed to divest him of his dinner-jacket and his waistcoat, +unbuttoned his collar and shirt-band, took off his shoes, and covered him +up with an eiderdown quilt. Then she kissed him--it was five years since +she had done that--and went, herself, to bed. + +At ten o'clock the next morning she sat behind her little breakfast +table--it was daintily munitioned with a glass coffee machine, a +grapefruit and a plate of toast--waiting, over _The Times_, for Rush to +wake up. She looked more seraphic than ever, enveloped in a white turkish +toweling bathrobe and with her hair in a braid. Her brother lay on the +divan just as she had left him the night before. Presently the change in +his breathing told her that he was struggling up out of the depths of +sleep. She looked over at him and saw him blinking at the ceiling. When +his gaze started round her way, she turned her attention to the busy +little coffee machine which opportunely needed it. + +It was a minute or two before he spoke. "Is that really you, Mary?" + +She smiled affectionately at him and said, "Hello," adding with just an +edge of good-humored mischief, "How do you feel?" + +He turned abruptly away from her. "I feel loathsome," he said. + +"Poor dear, of course you do. I'll tell you what to do. I've got a nice +big bathroom in there. Go in and take a cold one." Then--"You've grown +inches, Rush, since you went away but I believe you could still get into +a suit of my pajamas--plain ones, not ruffly. Anyhow, I've another big +bathrobe like this that you could roll up in. You'll be just in time for +the coffee. You won't know yourself by then." + +"I wish I didn't," he said morosely. + +There wasn't much good arguing with that mood, she knew, so she +waited a little. + +"Is this where you live?" he asked. "You brought me here last night?" + +"You brought me," she amended. + +He frowned over that but didn't take it in. The next moment though he +sat up suddenly and after a struggle with the giddiness this movement +caused, asked, "Who else is here? Where's the other girl that lives +with you?" + +"She's not here now," Mary said. "We are all by ourselves." + +He rose unsteadily to his feet. "I've got to get out of here quick. If +anybody came in ..." + +"Rush, dearest!" she entreated. "Don't be silly. Lie down again--Well, +then take that easy chair. Nobody will come in." Then over his air of +resolute remorse she cried, on the edge of tears herself, "Oh, _please_ +don't be so unhappy. Do let's settle down and be comfy together. I don't +have to go to the office to-day. My job's just about played out. But +nobody ever comes here to see me in the daytime. And it wouldn't matter +if they did." + +But this change of attitude was clearly beyond him. "I'll have to ask you +to tell me what happened last night. You were there at that restaurant +with friends of yours I suppose. I must have disgraced you up to the hilt +with them. I should think you'd hate the sight of me." + +"You didn't disgrace me at all," she contradicted, and now the tears did +came into her eyes. "They knew I was expecting you and I told Mr. Baldwin +who you were. You came up in the nicest way and asked me to dance and +when we went away together there wasn't a thing--about you--that they +could see. I was on the point of tears myself because my plan had gone +wrong. But that would have seemed natural enough to them." + +He frowned at the name Baldwin, as if he were trying to recover a memory. +Now he felt vaguely in his trousers pocket and pulled out the crumpled +visiting card that had her note scribbled on the back of it. "You haven't +told me yet what happened," he said. + +"Oh, I was afraid you wouldn't remember." She looked away from him as she +said it and a little unwonted color crept into her cheeks. + +"Afraid?" he questioned. + +"I wanted you to understand," she said, "and now I'll have to tell you +again. It was because I was trying so hard not to meddle that I did. I +sent that little note to you just to get a chance to tell you not to mind +my seeing you there with those others--not to let it spoil your party. I +couldn't bear to have you come to me to-day, or to-morrow or whenever it +was, feeling--well, ashamed you know, and explanatory. That's what I +tried to tell you last night but couldn't make you understand. So I did, +really, just exactly what I was meaning not to. Of course, I loved you +for coming away and I love having you here like this, all to myself. But +I didn't mean to--to spoil things for you." + +He stared at her a moment in blank inapprehension; then a deep blush came +burning into his face. "You didn't understand," he said thickly. "You +didn't know what those girls were." + +"Oh, Rush!" she cried. "Of course I did. I knew exactly what they +were--better than you. I even knew who they were. They live not very far +from here." + +He paled and his look was frightened. "How did you know that?" he +demanded. "How could you know a thing like that?" + +"They've lived here in the Village for years," she said, summarizing +Baldy without quoting him as her authority. "One of them used to be an +illustrator--or something--before she went--over the edge. They're two of +our celebrities. One can't go about, unless he's stone blind, without +picking up things like that." + +"You did know what she was, then," he persisted, doggedly pushing +through something it was almost impossible for him to say, "and yet, +knowing, you asked me to leave you alone and go back to her. You wanted +me to do that?" + +"I didn't want you to!" she cried. "I hated it, of course. But +men--people--do things like that, and I could see how--natural it was +that you wanted to. And if you wanted to, I didn't think it fair that it +should be spoiled for you just because we happened to recognize each +other. I didn't want you to hate me for having spoiled it. That's all." + +She gave him the minute or two he evidently needed for turning this over +in his mind. Then she turned her back on the window she had withdrawn to +and began again. + +"I used to be just a big sister to you, of course. Ever so superior, I +guess, and a good bit of a prig. And all this time over there in France +with nothing but my letters and that silly picture of me in the khaki +frame, I suppose you have been thinking of me, well,--as a sort of nice +angel. I'm not either, really. I don't want to be either. + +"I want to be somebody you feel would understand anything; somebody you +could tell anything to. So that it would work the other way as well. +Because I've got to have somebody to tell things to,--troubles, and +worries. And I've been hoping, ever since your letter came, that it would +turn out to be you." + +"What sort of troubles?" He shot the question in rather tensely. + +There was a breathless moment before she answered, but she shook it off +with a laugh and her manner lightened. "There's nothing to be so solemn +about as all that. We don't want to wallow. We'll have some +breakfast--only you go first and tub." + +He was too young and healthy and clean-blooded to resist the effect upon +his spirits which the cold water and the fresh white bathrobe and the hot +strong coffee with real cream in it produced. And the gloomy, remorseful +feeling, which he felt it his moral duty to maintain intact, simply +leaked away. She noted the difference in him and half-way through their +breakfast she left her chair and came round to him. + +"Would you very much mind being kissed now?" she asked. + +His answer, with a laugh, was to pull her down upon his knee and hug +her up tight in his arms. They looked rather absurdly alike in those +two white bathrobes, though this was an appearance neither of them was +capable of observing. She disengaged herself presently from his embrace +and went to find him some cigarettes, refraining from taking one +herself from a feeling that he would probably like it better just then +if she did not. + +Back in her own place over her coffee and toast, she had no difficulty in +launching him upon the tale of his own recent experiences. What the +French were like now the war was over; and the Boche he had been living +among in the Coblenz area;--the routine of his army life, the friends he +made over there, and so on. Altogether she built him up immensely in his +own esteem. It was plain he liked having her for a younger sister instead +of for an older one, listening so contentedly to his tales, ministering +to his momentary wants, visibly wondering at and adoring him. + +But she broke the spell when she asked him what he meant to do now. + +He turned restlessly in his chair. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know +what the deuce there is I can do. Certainly father's idea of my going +back to college and then to medical school afterward, is just plain, rank +nonsense. I'd be a doddering old man before I got through--thirty years +old. I should think that even he would see that. It will have to be +business, I suppose, but if any kind friend comes around and suggests +that I begin at the bottom somewhere--Mr. Whitney, for instance, offering +me a job at ten dollars a week in his bank--I'll kill him. I can't do +that. I won't. At the end of about ten days, I'd run amuck. What I'd +really like," he concluded, "for about a year would be just this." His +gesture indicated the bathrobe, the easy chair and the dainty breakfast +table. "This, all the morning and a ball-game in the afternoon. Lord, it +will be good to see some real baseball again. We'll go to a lot of games +this summer. What are the Sox going to be like this year?" + +She discussed the topic expertly with him and with a perfectly genuine +interest, at some length. "Oh, it would be fun," she finished with a +little sigh, "only I shan't be there, you know. At least I don't think I +shall." Then before he could ask her why not, she added in sharper focus, +"I can't go home, Rush." + +"Can't!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean by that?" + +"Oh, nothing to make a fuss about," she said with a frown of irritation. +"I wish you weren't so jumpy this morning,--or perhaps, it's I that am. +All I meant was that home isn't a comfortable place for me and I won't go +back there if I can help it--only I am afraid I can't. That's the trouble +I wanted to talk to you about." + +"I thought you liked the new stepmother," he said. "Hasn't she turned out +well?--What am I supposed to call her, anyhow? I wanted to find out about +that before I was right up against it." + +"Call her?" Mary was a little taken back. "Why, anything you like, I +should think. I've always called her Paula.--You weren't thinking of +calling her mother, were you?" + +"Well," he protested, "how should I know? After all, she is father's +wife. And she must be fairly old." + +"But, Rush, you've _seen_ her!" + +"Only that once, at the wedding. She was made up to look young then, of +course. Painted and dyed and so on, I suppose. I felt so embarrassed and +silly over the whole thing--being just a kid--that I hardly looked at +her. And that was a long while ago." + +Mary laughed at that, though she knew it would annoy him. "She never +paints nor dyes nor anything, Ruddy. She doesn't have to. She's such a +perfectly raving beauty without it. And she's more beautiful now than she +was then. She really is young, you see. Hardly enough older than we are +to matter, now that we're grown up." + +She saw Rush digesting this idea of a beautiful young stepmother whom he +was to be privileged to call--straight off--by her first name, with a +certain satisfaction, so she waited--rather conscious that she was being +patient--for him to come back from the digression of his own accord. +Presently he did. + +"What does she do that you don't like?" + +"She does nothing that isn't perfectly nice, and good-tempered, +and--respectable," Mary assured him, and added on a warmer note, "Oh, and +she's really amiable and lovely. I was being a cat. But I am truly fond +of her--when I have her to myself. It's when she's with father ..." + +She broke off there, seeing that she could not make that clear to him +(how could she since she would not state it in plain terms to herself?) +and hurried on, "It's really father whom I don't get on with, any more. +He worries about me and feels sorry for me and wants me to come home. But +I'm nothing to him when I do come--but an embarrassment.--No, it _isn't_ +rot. He knows it himself and feels horrid about it and raises my +allowance when I go away, though it was foolishly big already; and then, +as soon as I'm back here he begins worrying again, and urging me to come +home. He didn't insist as long as I was doing war work, but now that +that's played out, I suppose he will. + +"Oh, I know well enough what I ought to do. I ought to answer some +advertisement for a typist--I can do that, but not stenography--and take +a regular job. The sort you said you'd shoot Mr. Whitney for offering +you. And then I ought to take a hall bedroom somewhere in the +cross-town twenties and live on what I earned. That's the only thing I +can see, and, Rush, I simply haven't the courage to do it. It seems as +if I couldn't do it." + +His lively horror at the bare suggestion of such a thing drew her into a +half-hearted defense of the project. Numbers of the girls she knew down +here who had been doing war work were going enthusiastically into things +like that--or at least were announcing an invincible determination to do +so. Only they were cleverer than she at that sort of thing and could hope +for better jobs. They were in luck. They liked it--looked forward to a +life of it as one full of engaging possibilities. But to Mary it was +nothing, she hardly pretended, but a forlorn last shift. If one couldn't +draw nor write nor act nor develop some clever musical stunt, what else +was there for a girl to do? + +"Well, of course," said Rush, in a very mature philosophical way and +lighting a cigarette pretty deliberately between the words,--"of course, +what most girls do, is--marry somebody." Then he stole a look around at +his sister to see how she had taken it. + +There was a queer look that almost frightened him in her blue eyes. Her +lips, which were trembling, seemed to be trying to smile. + +"That's father's idea," she said raggedly. "He's as anxious now that I +should marry somebody--anybody, as he was that I shouldn't five years +ago--before he found Paula. You see I am so terribly--left on his hands." + +There was, no doubt, something comical about the look of utter +consternation she saw on her brother's face, but she should not have +tried to laugh at him for a sob caught the laugh in the middle and swept +away the last of her self-control. She flung herself down upon the divan +and buried her face in one of the pillows. He had seen men cry like that +but, oddly enough, never a woman. What he did though was perhaps as much +to the point as anything he could have done. He sat down beside her and +gathered her up tight in his arms and held her there without a word until +the tempest had blown itself out. When the sobs had died away to nothing +more than a tremulous catch in each indrawn breath, he let her go back +among the pillows and turn so that she could look up at him. By that time +the sweat had beaded out upon his forehead, and his hands, which had +dropped down upon her shoulders, were trembling. + +"Well," she asked unsteadily. "What do you think of me now?" + +He wanted to bend down and kiss her but wisely he forbore. "It's easy to +see what's the matter," he said. "This war business you have been doing +has been too much for you. You're simply all in." Then happily he added, +"I'd call you a case of shell-shock." + +She rewarded that with a washed-out smile. "What's the treatment going to +be?" she asked. + +"Why," he said, "as soon as I'm done tucking you up properly in this +eiderdown quilt, I'm going out to your icebox and try to find the makings +of an egg-nog. Incidentally, I shall scramble up all the rest of the eggs +I find and eat them myself. And then I'll find something dull to read to +you until you go to sleep. When it's dark enough so that my evening +clothes won't attract too much attention, I'll go back and get into +uniform; then I'll buy two tickets for Chicago on the fast train +to-morrow, and two tickets for a show to-night; and then I'll come back +and take you out to dinner. Any criticisms on that program?" + +"Not just for this minute," she said contentedly. "I don't know whether +I'm going to Chicago with you, tomorrow, or not." + +"That's all right," he said. "I know all about that." He added, "I +hope the other girl won't mind--the one who lives here with you. What +was her name?" + +"Ethel Holland? Oh, she went over to France with the Y.M.C.A. just +about a year ago. I've tried to find somebody to take her place, but +there didn't seem to be any one I liked well enough. So I've been +living alone." + +She saw his face stiffen at that but his only comment was that that +simplified matters. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PICTURE PUZZLE + + +There was a good quarter of an hour beginning with the tear-blurred +moment when Mary caught sight of her father looking for her and Rush down +the railway station platform, during which the whole fabric of misgivings +about her home-coming dissolved as dreams do when one wakes. It had not +been a dream she knew, nor the mere concoction of her morbid fancy. He +had not looked at her like this nor kissed her like this--not once since +that fatal journey to Vienna five years ago. Had something happened +between him and Paula that made the difference? Or was it her brother's +presence, that, serving somehow to take off the edge, worked a mysterious +catalysis? + +When John, after standing off and gazing wordless for a moment at this +new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with +bits of ribbon on the breast of it,--tried to say how proud he was and +choked instead, it was for Mary that he reached out an unconscious, +embracing arm, the emotion which would not go into words finding an +outlet for itself that way. + +When they got out to the motor and old Pete, once coachman, now +chauffeur, his eyes gleaming over the way Rush had all but hugged him, +said to her, "You home to stay, too, Miss Mary?" her father's hand which +clasped her arm revealed the thrilling interest with which he awaited her +answer to that question. The importunity of the red-cap with the luggage +relieved her of the necessity for answering but the answer in her heart +just then was "Yes." + +It was with a wry self-scornful smile that she recalled, later that day, +the emotions of the ride home. If at any time before they got to the +house, her father had repeated the old servant's question, "Are you home +to stay, Mary?" she would, she knew, have kissed the hand that she held +clasped in hers, wept blissfully over it and told him she wanted never to +go away again. She hadn't minded his not asking because she thought she +knew quite surely why he had not. He was afraid to risk his momentary +happiness upon her answer. And why had she not volunteered the assurance +he wanted so eagerly and dared not ask for? The beastly answer to that +question was that she had enjoyed the thrill of his uncertainty--a +miserable sort of feline coquetry. + +Well, it had been short-lived, that little triumph of hers. It had +stopped against a blank wall just when the car stopped under the _ports +cochère_ of the Dearborn Avenue house. John's arm which had been around +her was withdrawn and he looked with just a touch of ostentation at his +watch. She knew before he spoke that when he did, his tone would ring +flat. The old spell was broken. He was once more under the dominion of +the newer, stronger one. + +"I'm terribly late," he said. "I must drive straight along to the +hospital. I'll see you to-night. We're having a few old friends in to +dinner. Run along now. Your Aunt Lucile will be waiting for you." + +His omission to mention Paula had been fairly palpable. Her reply, "All +right, dad, till to-night, then. _Au 'voir_" had been, she knew, as +brittle and sharp-edged as a bit of broken glass. It had cut him;--she +had meant it to. + +Well it served her right. Paula deserved to own the stronger spell. +Paula's emotional channels were open and deep. No choking snags and +sandbars, no perverse eddies in them. Look at her with Rush to-day! There +was a situation that fairly bristled with opportunities for blundering. +She might, with this grown-up son of her husband's whom she had hardly +seen, have shown herself shy, embarrassed, at a loss how to take him. She +might have tried to be archly maternal with him or elder-sisterly. But +she played up none of these sentimental possibilities, seemed, indeed, +serenely unaware of them. She treated him just as she had always treated +Mary--as a contemporary. From the beginning she had no trouble making him +talk. For one thing her acquaintance with France and Germany was intimate +enough to enable her to ask him questions which he found it pleasantly +stimulating to try to answer. As she felt her way to firmer ground with +him, she allowed what was evidently a perfectly spontaneous affection to +irradiate the look she turned upon him and to warm her lovely voice. + +So she must have begun--as simply and irresistibly as that--in Vienna! + +Mary tried hard to think of it as a highly skillful performance, but this +was an attitude she could not maintain. It was not a performance at all; +it was--just Paula, who, having taken her father away from her was now, +inevitably, going to take her brother too. Not because she meant +to--quite unconscious that she was doing any harm ("and of course she +isn't, except to a cat like me")--that was the maddening, and at the same +time, endearing thing about her. + +For there was a broad impartiality about her spell that tugged at Mary +even while she forlornly watched Rush yielding to it. And the way it +affected Aunt Lucile was simply funny. She melted, visibly, like a +fragment left on the curb by the iceman, whenever Paula--turned the +current on. What made this the more striking was that Aunt Lucile's +normal mood to-day impressed Mary as rather aggressively sell-contained. +Was it just that Mary had forgotten how straight she sat and how +precisely she moved about? Had she always had that discreet significant +air, as if there were something she could talk about but didn't mean +to--not on any account? Or was there something going on here at home that +awaited--breathlessly awaited--discovery? Whatever it was, when Paula +turned upon her it went, laughably;--only it would have been a pretty +shaky sort of laugh. + +It was after lunch that Paula electrified them by suggesting that they +all go together to a matinĂ©e. That's an illustration of the power she +had. To each of the three, to Lucile and to Mary as well as to the now +infatuated Rush, she could make a commonplace scheme like that seem an +irresistibly enticing adventure. Lucile recovered her balance first, but +it was not until Nat had fetched the morning paper and they had discussed +their choice of entertainments for two or three minutes that she said of +course she couldn't go. She didn't know what she'd been thinking of. The +number of things imperatively to be done or seen to in preparation for +the party to-night would keep her busy all the afternoon. + +Then Mary followed suit. If this was really going to be a party--she +hadn't quite got this idea before--she'd have to spend the afternoon +unpacking and putting her frocks in order or she wouldn't have +anything to wear. + +"Well," Paula said comfortably, "until they turn me on like a Victrola at +nine o'clock or so, I've nothing to do with the party except not think +about it." She made this observation at large, then turned on Rush. +"You'll come with me, won't you, and keep me from getting frightened +until tea-time?" + +Rush would go--rather!--but he laughed at the word "frightened." + +"I'm not joking," she said, and reaching out she covered his hand, which +rested on the cloth, with one of hers. + +He flushed instantly at that; then said to the others with slightly +elaborated surprise, "It _is,_ cold, for a fact." + +"So is the other one," said Paula. "For that matter, so are my feet. And +getting colder every minute. Come along or we'll be late." + +Mary branded this as a bit of rather crude coquetry. It wasn't +conceivable that a professional opera singer of Paula's experience could +look forward with any sort of emotion to the mere singing of a few songs +to a group of familiar friends. It occurred to her, too, that Paula had +calculated on her refusal to go to the matinĂ©e as definitely as on Aunt +Lucile's and for a moment she indulged the idea of changing her mind and +going along with them just to frustrate this design. Only, of course, it +wouldn't work that way. She couldn't keep Rush from being taken away from +her by playing the spoil-sport. She couldn't keep him anyhow she +supposed. She made a hasty, rather forlorn retreat to her own room as +soon as the departing pair were safely out of the house. + +That room of hers exerted now a rather curious effect upon her mood. It +had been hers ever since her promotion from the nursery and it, like +her brother's adjoining, had been kept unchanged, unoccupied during her +long absence. + +The furniture and the decoration of it had been her mother's last +Christmas present. The first Mrs. Wollaston had lived under the influence +of the late Victorian esthetes, and Mary's room looked as if it had been +designed for Elaine the lily maid of Astolat, an effect which was +heightened by a large brown picture in a broad brown frame of Watts' Sir +Galahad. After her mother's death, that winter, Mary added a Botticelli +Madonna, the one with the pomegranate, which she hung by itself on a wall +panel. There was a narrow black oak table under it to carry a Fra +Angelico triptych flanked by two tall candlesticks. It wasn't exactly a +shrine, even if there was a crimson cushion conveniently disposed before +it, and if Mary for a while said her prayers there instead of in the old +childish way at her bedside, and if she genuflected when she passed it, +that was her own affair. + +Coming to it now, as to port after storms, with the intention almost +openly avowed to herself of lying down upon the bed and, for an hour or +two, feeling as sorry for herself as she could, she found an appalling +strangeness about its very familiarity that pulled her up short. The +abyss she stared into between herself and the Mary Wollaston whose +image was so sharply evoked by the ridiculously unchanged paraphernalia +of that Mary's life, turned her giddy. Even the face which looked back +at her from the frame of that mirror seemed the other Mary's rather +than her own. + +From the doorway she stood, for a moment, staring. Then she managed a +smile (it was the only possible attitude to take) at Sir Galahad, above +the bed. The notion of flinging herself down for a self-pitying revel +upon that bed,--the other Mary's virginal little narrow bed--had become +unthinkable. The thing to do was to stop thinking. Quickly. + +She stripped off her suit and blouse, slipped on a pongee kimono that she +got out of her hand-bag, unlocked her trunk and began discharging its +contents all about the room. She covered the chairs with them, the bed, +the narrow table--that had never had anything upon it but that Fra +Angelico triptych and the two candlesticks--the round table with the +reading lamp, the writing desk in the corner, the floor. Then, a little +out of breath, she paused. + +Which among two or three possible frocks should she wear for the party +to-night? What sort of party was it going to be anyhow? It was curious, +considering the fact that they had done nothing but sit and talk all the +morning, how vague her ideas about it were. Her father had said +something out in the car about having a few old friends in for dinner. +Paula was going to sing and professed herself frightened by the +prospect. Also she had cited it as the reason for an unusually and +almost strenuously unoccupied day. On the other hand it was keeping Aunt +Lucile distractedly busy. + +Was it the chance result of their preoccupation with other things that +she had been given no more intelligible account of it, or was it +something that all three of them, her father, Paula and Aunt Lucile, were +walking round the edge of? The nub of some seriously trivial quarrel? Was +that why Paula was so elaborately disengaged and Aunt Lucile so +portentous? Was it even perhaps why her father had so abruptly fled this +morning without coming into the house? + +She treated this surmise kindly. It was something to think about anyhow; +something to sharpen her wits upon, just as a cat stretches her claws in +the nap of the drawing-room rug. She rescued from oblivion half a dozen +remarks heard during the morning, whose significance had gone over her +head, and tentatively fitted them together like bits of a picture puzzle. +She hadn't enough to go on but she believed there was something there. +And when a little later in the afternoon, she heard, along with a knock +on her door, her aunt asking if she might come in, she gave her an +enthusiastic welcome, scooped an armful of things out of a chair and +cleared a sitting space for herself at the foot of the bed. + +"Would this blue thing do for to-night?" she asked, "or isn't it enough +of an affair? What sort of party is it anyhow?" + +"Goodness knows," said Lucile. "Between your father and Paula I find it +rather upsetting." + +Mary had reached out negligently for her cigarette case, lighted one and +letting it droop at a rather impossible angle, supported by the lightest +pressure of her lips so that the smoke crept up over her face into her +lashes and her hair, folded her hands demurely in her lap and waited for +her aunt to go on. She was mischievously half aware of the disturbing +effect of this sort of thing upon Lucile. + +"What has there been between them?" Mary asked, when it became clear that +her aunt needed prompting. "Between father and Paula, I mean. Not a row?" + +Mary never used language like this except provocatively. It worked on her +aunt as she had meant it to. + +"There has been nothing between them," she said, "that requires a rowdy +word like that to express. It has not been even a quarrel. But they have +been for the last day or two, a little--at ..." + +"Outs?" Mary suggested. + +This had been the word on Lucile's tongue. "At cross purposes," she +amended and paused again. But Mary seeing that she was fairly launched +waited, economically, meanwhile, inhaling all the smoke from her +cigarette. "I suppose after all, it's quite natural," Lucile began, +"that Paula should attract geniuses, since she's rather by way of being +one herself." + +Mary took the cigarette in her fingers so that she could speak a little +more crisply than was possible around it. "Who is the genius she's +attracting now? Doesn't father like him? And is he being not asked to the +party? I'm sorry, aunt, I didn't mean to interrupt." + +"He is being asked which, it appears, is what Paula objects to; only not +until after dinner. That she insisted upon. Really," she went on, in +response to her niece's perplexed frown, "I shall be much more +intelligible If you'll let me begin at the beginning." + +"Please do," said Mary. "Where did Paula find him?" + +"I found him," said Miss Wollaston. "Paula discovered him a little later. +I found him on a bench in the park and told him he might come to tune +the drawing-room piano. Paula had him tune her piano instead and spent +what must have been a rather mad day with him over it. He brought round +some songs the next day for her to try and she and Portia Stanton's +husband have been practising them with hardly any intermission since. The +idea was that when they had 'got them up' as they say, the man,--March +his name is, Anthony March, I think,--should be invited round to hear +Paula sing them. Paula insists, absurdly it seems to me, that he never +has heard a note of them himself; that he can't even play them upon the +piano. How he could compose them without playing them on the piano first, +is beyond me. But she is inclined to be a little emotional, I think, over +the whole episode. Quite naturally--even Paula can't deny that--your +father thought he would like to be present when the songs were sung and +it was arranged that it should be this evening." + +"She may not have been able to deny that it was natural," Mary observed, +"but I'd bet she didn't like it." + +"It's only fair to Paula to say," Miss Wollaston insisted, "that she did +nothing to exhibit a feeling of that sort. But when, at John's +suggestion, I spoke of the possibility of having in the Cravens and the +Blakes,--the Cravens are very musical, you know--and Wallace Hood who +would be really hurt if we left him out, Paula came nearer to being +downright rude than she often allows herself to be. She said among other +things that she didn't propose to have March subjected to a +'suffocating' affair like that. She said she wanted him free to +interrupt as often as he liked and tell them how rotten they were. That +was her phrase. When I observed that Mr. March didn't impress me as the +sort of person who could conceivably wish to be rude as that she said he +could no more remember to be polite when he heard those songs for the +first time than she herself could sing them in corsets. She summed it +up by saying that it wasn't going to be a polite affair and the fewer +polite people there were, hanging about, the better. There was, +naturally, nothing I could say to that." + +"I should think not," Mary agreed, exhaling rather explosively an +enormous cloud of smoke. "Poor Aunt Lucile!" Her commiseration didn't +sound more than skin deep. + +"The matter rested there," the elder woman went on, "until your father +received Rush's telegram that you were coming to-day. Then he took +matters into his own hands and gave me a list of the people he wanted +asked. There are to be about a dozen besides ourselves at dinner and +perhaps as many more are to come after." + +"I can see Paula when you told her that," Mary reflected. "Or did you +make dad tell her himself? Yes, of course you did! Only what I can't +understand is why Paula didn't say, 'All right. Have your party, and I'll +sing if you want me to. Only not--what's his name?--March's songs.' And +have him all to herself, as she wanted him, later. That would have been +mate in one move, I should think." + +Then, at the fleeting look she caught in the act of vanishing from her +aunt's face, she cried, "You mean she _did_ say that? And that father +turned to ice, the way he can and--made a point of it? You know it's +serious, if he's done that." + +With a vigor meant to compensate for a sad lack of conviction, Miss +Wollaston protested against this chain of unwarranted assumptions. But +she admitted, at last, that her own surmise accorded with that of her +niece. John certainly had said to her at breakfast that he saw no reason +for foregoing the musical feature of the evening simply because an +audience was to be present to hear it. Paula's only comment had been a +dispassionate prediction that it wouldn't work. It wouldn't be fair to +say she sulked; her rather elaborate detachment had been too good-humored +for that. Her statement, at lunch, that she was to be turned on like a +Victrola at half past nine, was a fair sample. + +"What's he like, this genius of hers?" Mary wanted to know. "Young and +downy and helpless, I suppose. With a look as if he was just about to +burst into tears. I met one like that last winter." She knew exactly how +to get results out of her aunt. + +"He's not in the least like that! If he had been I should never have +brought him home, not even to tune the piano. He's quite a well behaved, +sensible-appearing young man, a little over thirty, I should say. And he +does speak nicely, though I think Paula exaggerates about that." + +"Sensible or not, he's fallen wildly in love with her, of course," Mary +observed. "The more so they are the more instantaneously they do it." + +But this lead was one Miss Wollaston absolutely declined to follow. "If +that clock's right," she exclaimed, gazing at a little traveling affair +Mary had brought home with her, "I haven't another minute." It was not +right, for it was still keeping New York time, but the diversion served. +"Wallace Hood spoke of coming in to see you about tea-time," she said +from the doorway. "I'm going to be to busy even to stop for a cup, so do +be down if you can." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +JOHN MAKES A POINT OF IT + + +Mary was warmly touched by the thought of Wallace's coming to see her in +that special sort of way when he was certain of finding her at dinner an +hour or two later. Her feelings about him were rather mixed but he dated +back to the very earliest of her memories, and his kindly affectionate +attitude toward her had never failed, even during those periods when she +had treated him most detestably. Even as a little girl, she had been +aware of his sentimental attachment to her mother and perhaps in an +instinctive way had resented it, though her actual indictment against +Wallace in those days had always been that he made her naughty; incited +her by his perpetual assumption that she was the angelic little creature +she looked, to one desperate misdemeanor after another, for which her +father usually punished her. Mary had, superficially anyhow, her mother's +looks along with her father's temper. + +But for two years after Mrs. Wollaston's death, she and Wallace had been +very good friends. She was grateful to him for treating her like a +grown-up, for talking to her, as he often did, about her mother and how +much she had meant to him. (She owed it, indeed, largely to Wallace that +her memories of this sentimental, romantic, passionless lady with whom in +life she had never been completely in sympathy, were as sweet and +satisfactory as they were.) He had taken infinite pains with her, guiding +her reading and her enjoyment of pictures in the paths of good taste. He +took her to concerts sometimes, too, though at this point her docility +ceased. She wouldn't be musical for anybody. He gave her much-needed +advice in dealing with social matters which her sudden prematurity +forced her to cope with. And with all this went a placidity which had no +part at all in her relations with her father. + +She got the idea, during this period, that he meant, when she was a +little older, to ask her to marry him, and she sometimes speculated +whether, if he did, she would. There would be something beautifully +appropriate about it;--like the Professor's Love Story. Usually, though, +she terminated the scene with a tender refusal. + +She had long known, of course, how unreal all this was. Wallace had faded +into complete invisibility at the time when she fell in love with Captain +Burch and quarreled with her father about him. She couldn't remember +afterward whether he had even been on the scene or not. But the savor of +their friendship, though mild, was a pleasant one and there was none of +her old acquaintances she'd rather have looked forward to to-day at +tea-time in the drawing-room. She knew exactly what he would be like; +just what they would say to each other. The only doubt in her mind was +whether he'd bring her chocolates or daffodils. + +She guessed wrong. It was a box of candied strawberries that he gave her +as soon as their double hand-shake set him free. But nothing else came at +once to the surface to falsify her prevision. She remembered how he liked +his tea and was able to get an affectionate warmth into her voice, that +sounded real though strangely enough it wasn't, in agreeing with him how +like old times this was and how good it seemed to be home. Then came the +joy of having Rush back again, and the war, and the Peace +Conference,--only we weren't going to talk about things like that. And +then Alan Seeger, Rupert Brooke, Conningsby Dawson. + +But oddly enough, she felt herself going back to still older times, to +the abominable little girl who had yielded to irresistible desires such +as making faces at him and rubbing the nap of his silk hat the wrong +way. She repressed, vigorously, this lawless vein. She was determined for +this one day to be just as nice as he tried, so hard, to think she was. +But with this resolution occupying her mind the talk presently ran rather +thin, her contribution to it for whole minutes drying up entirely. It was +after a rather blank silence that he said he supposed Paula was lying +down, resting for to-night's performance. His inflection struck Mary as a +little too casual and reminded her that it was his first mention of her +stepmother's name. This roused her attention. + +"Oh, Paula's off playing with Rush," she said. "I believe they went to +a matinĂ©e." + +He exclaimed at that, over Paula's stores of energy and her reckless ways +of spending them. He said she gave him the impression of being absolutely +tireless, superimposing a high speed society existence which John +Wollaston and he, in relays, could hardly keep up with, upon the heavy +routine of work in her studio. He illustrated this with a schedule of her +activities during the last three days. "Oh, yes," he threw in, in +parenthesis, "I'm as much in the family as ever. When your father can't +do escort duty, they call on me." He added in conclusion that he was glad +she had already made a start toward getting acquainted with Rush. + +Was this relief, Mary wondered--at learning that she was not at this +moment engaged less domestically somewhere with Anthony March? But she +doubted whether this was a good guess. If he did feel any such relief, it +was not, at all events, from a personal jealousy; for the illuminating +conviction had come over her that Wallace could not possibly be one of +Paula's conquests. A man still capable of cherishing as the most +beautiful event of his life, that sentimental platonic friendship he had +enjoyed with her mother, would be immune against Paula's spells. + +She wondered if he wasn't a little afraid of Paula. If he did not, in +his heart, actually dislike her. But if this were true, why did he +willingly devote so many of his hours to squiring her about, substituting +for her husband? (She told herself, as one discovering a great truth, +that a substitute was exactly what Heaven had ordained Wallace Hood to +be.) She kept him going about Paula easily enough, as a sort of obbligato +to these meditations and her name was on Wallace's lips when John +Wollaston came into the room. + +"Where is she?" he asked Mary. "I hoped I'd find her resting for +to-night." Evidently he had been up to her room to see. The relief was +plainly legible in his face when he got Mary's answer. + +"She and Rush, eh," he said. "I'm glad they've made a start together, but +they ought to be back by now. They drove, didn't they?" + +She couldn't inform him as to that and by way of getting him to come to +anchor, offered him his tea. + +"Oh, I'll wait for the others," he said. "They can't be much later than +this.--I'm glad she's taken a vacation from those songs," he went on +presently from the fireplace. "She told me last night she'd been working +all day with Novelli over them. Only sent him home about half an hour +before it was time for her to dress for dinner. Do you suppose,"--this to +Wallace--"that they're as wonderful as she thinks they are?" + +It was obvious to Mary that Hood's reply was calculated to soothe; his +attitude was indulgent. He talked to Mary about March as just another of +Paula's delightful extravagances. March's indignant refusal, at first, to +tune the Circassian grand, his trick of sitting on the floor under +Paula's piano while she played for him, his forgetting to be paid, though +he had not, in all probability, a cent in his pockets, were exhibited as +whimsicalities, such as Wallace's favorite author, J.M. Barrie, might +have invented. It was just like Paula to take him up as she had done, to +work away for days at his songs, proclaiming the wonder of them all the +while. "We're all hoping, of course," he concluded, "that when she's +finished with them to-night, she'll sing us some of the old familiar +music we really love." + +The neat finality of all this, produced, momentarily, the effect of +ranging Mary on the other side, with Paula and her musician. But just at +this point, she lost her character of disinterested spectator, for +Wallace, having put March back in his box and laid him deliberately on +the shelf, abruptly produced, by way of diversion, another piece of goods +altogether. + +"I hope Mary's come home to stay," he said to John. "We can't let her go +away again, can we?" + +Afterward, she was able to see that it was a natural enough thing for him +to have said. It would never have occurred to him, pleasant, harmless +sentimentalist that he was, that John's second marriage might be a +disturbing factor in his relation with Mary and that the question so +cheerfully asked as an escape from the more serious matter that he had +been talking about, struck straight into a ganglion of nerves. + +But at the time, no such excuse for him presented itself. She stared for +a moment, breathless, paled a little and locked her teeth so that they +shouldn't chatter; then, a wave of bright anger relaxed her stiffened +muscles. She did not look at her father but was aware that he was fixedly +not looking at her. + +"I don't know whether I am going to stay or not," she said casually +enough. "There isn't any particular reason why I should, unless I can +find something to do. You haven't a job for me, have you?" + +"A job?" Wallace gasped. + +"In your office," she explained. "Filing and typing, or running the +mimeograph. It seems to be a choice between something like that +and--millinery." + +"That's an extravagant idea," her father said, trying for, but not quite +able to manage, a tone that matched hers. "Good lord, Wallace, don't sit +there looking as if you thought she meant it!" + +"You do look perfectly--consternated," she said with a pretty good laugh. +"Never mind; I shan't do anything outrageous for a week or two. Oh, here +they come. Will you ring, dad? I want some more hot water." + +Rush came into the drawing-room alone, Paula having lingered a moment, +probably before the mirror in the hall. Mere professional instinct for +arranging entrances for herself, Mary surmised this to be. And she may +have been right for Paula was not one of those women who are forever +making minute readjustments before a glass. But when she came in, just +after Wallace Hood had accomplished his welcome of the returned soldier, +it was hard to believe that she was concerned about the effect she +produced upon the group about the tea-table. She didn't, indeed, +altogether join it, gave them a collective nod of greeting with a faint +but special smile for her husband on the end of it and then deliberately +seated herself with a "No, don't bother; this is all right," at the end +of the little sofa that stood in the curve of the grand piano, rather in +the background. + +When Mary asked her how she wanted her tea, she said she didn't think +she'd have any; and certainly no cakes. No, not even one of Wallace's +candied strawberries. There was an exchange of glances between her and +Rush over this. + +"They have been having tea by themselves, those two," Mary remarked. + +"No," said Rush, "not what you could call tea." + +Paula smiled vaguely but didn't throw the ball back, did not happen, it +appeared, to care to talk about anything. Presently the chatter among the +rest of them renewed itself. + +Only it would have amused an invisible spectator to note how those three +Wollastons, blonde, dolichocephalic, high-strung, magnetically +susceptible, responded, as strips of gold-leaf to the static electricity +about a well rubbed amber rod, to the influence that emanated from that +silent figure on the sofa. Rush, in and out of his chair a dozen times, +to flip the ash from his cigarette, to light one for Mary, to hand the +strawberries round again, was tugging at his moorings like a captive +balloon. When he answered a question it was with the air of interrupting +an inaudible tune he was whistling. John still planted before the +fireplace, taking, automatically, a small part in the talk just as he +went through the minimum of business with his tea, seemed capable of only +one significant action, which he repeated at short, irregular intervals. +He turned his head enough to enable him to see into a mirror which gave +him a reflection of his wife's face; then turned away again, like one +waiting for some sort of reassurance and not getting it. Mary, muscularly +relaxed, indeed, drooping over the tea-table, had visible about her, +nevertheless, a sort of supernormal alertness. Every time her father +looked into the mirror she glanced at him, and she rippled, like still +water, at all of her brother's sudden movements. + +As for Wallace Hood, one look at him sitting there, as unresponsive to +the spell as the cup from which he was sipping its third replenishment of +tea, would have explained his domestication in that household;--the +necessity, in fact, for domesticating among them some one who was always +buoyantly upon the surface, whose talk, in comfortably rounded sentences, +flowed along with a mild approximation to wit, whose sentiments were +never barbed with passion;--who was, to sum him up in one embracing +word, appropriate. + +Mary, in addition to feeling repentant over her outbreak just before +Paula came in, experienced a sort of gratitude to him for being able to +sit squarely facing the sofa, untroubled by the absent thoughtful face +and the figure a little languorously disposed that confronted him. His +bright generalities were addressed to her as much as to the rest of them; +his smile asked the same response from her and nothing more. + +Nothing short of an explosion that shattered all their surfaces at once +could have got a single vibration out of him. By that same token, when +the explosion did occur, he was the most helpless person there, the only +one of them who could really be called panic-stricken. + +John had, at last, crossed the room and seated himself beside his wife. +He spoke to her in a low voice but her full-throated reply was audible +everywhere in the room. + +"No, I'm not tired and I really don't want any tea. I've gone slack on +purpose because that's how I want to be till nine o'clock. I've just +eaten an enormous oyster stew with Rush. That's what we waited for." + +John frowned. "My dear, you'll have ruined your appetite for dinner." + +"I hope so," she said, "because I'm not to have any." + +At that, from the other two men, there began an expostulatory--"No +dinner!" "You don't mean ...!" but it was silenced by John's +crisp--"You're planning not to come down to dinner, then?" + +"Oh, I'll come down," said Paula, "and I'll sit. But I don't mean to eat +anything. Unless you think that will be too much like a--what is +it?--skeleton at the feast." + +"I think it would seem somewhat-exaggerated," he said. + +"Well," Paula retorted, drawing the rest of the room into it again just +as Wallace was making a gallant effort to start a subsidiary conversation +to serve as a screen, "that's because you haven't heard those songs. If +there's a singer in the world who'd dare--cut loose with them right after +eating the sort of dinner Lucile will have to-night for Mary and Rush, +I'd like to see him try it." + +"I didn't mean to imply that they were not difficult. I dare say they are +all but impossible. But it does seem to me that you are taking the +occasion of singing them--a little too--emotionally." + +The tone he was trying for was meant to have nothing in it--for other +ears than hers, at least, beyond mere good-humored remonstrance. But her +reply tore all pretense aside. She let him have it straight. + +"You're the one who's being emotional about it," she said. + +The blood leaped into his face at that but he did not reply. + +"Look here, John," she went on--and her big voice swept away the polite +convention that the others were not listening, "I've told you that this +won't work and you must see now that that's true. There's still time to +call up March and tell him that it's to-morrow instead of to-day. Because +of Rush and Mary. Won't you let me do that?" + +It is just possible that if he had been alone with her, he might have +acknowledged the issue, might have admitted that this new composer whose +works she had been so absorbed in, frightened him, figured in his mind as +the present manifestation of a force that was trying to take her away +from him. And having let her see that, he could safely enough have said, +"Have your own way about it. You know what will work and what won't. Only +make it as easy for me as you can." But in the presence of his +children--it was they, rather than Wallace, that he minded--he was at +once evasive and domineering. + +"I thought we'd already disposed of that suggestion," he said. "If the +situation is as it has been made to appear to me there is not the +smallest reason why March should be put off; why Mary and Rush and the +friends we have asked in to meet them, shouldn't be permitted to hear his +songs; or why I shouldn't myself. I think we'll consider that settled." + +Paula rose all in one piece. "Very well," she said--to the audience, "it +is settled. Also it's settled that I shall not come down to dinner. As +for what people will think, I'll leave that to you. You can make any +explanation you like. But I shall sing those songs to March--and for +him--for all they're worth. I don't care who else is there or whether +they like it or not.--A lot of patronizing amateurs! Bring them up to the +music room about nine o'clock, if you like. I'll be there." + +She left behind her, in that Victorian drawing-room, a silence +that tingled. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +STRINGENDO + + +A crisis of this sort was just what the Wollastons needed to tune them +up. The four of them, for Lucile had to be counted in, met the +enemy--which is to say their arriving guests--with an unbroken front. +They explained Paula's non-appearance with good-humored unconcern. She +was afraid if she sat down to Lucile's dinner that she would forget her +duty and eat it and find herself fatally incapacitated for cutting loose +on Mr. March's songs afterward. They must be rather remarkable songs that +required to be approached in so Spartan a manner. Well, Paula assured us +that they were. The family declined all responsibility in the matter, not +having themselves heard a note of them, but if you wanted to you might +ask Mr. Novelli, over there. He'd been working over them with Paula for +days. As for the composer, he was as much a mystery as his songs. He +wasn't coming to the dinner but was expected to appear from somewhere +afterward. + +Novelli, as it happened, was not very productive of information. Half an +hour before the dinner, his wife had telephoned Lucile to ask if he +might bring a guest of his own, a certain Monsieur LaChaise, who was one +of the conductors at the Metropolitan and was to have the direction of +the summer opera out here at Ravinia this year. Portia added with the +falsely deprecatory air of a mother apologizing for a child's prank, +that Pietro had in fact, already invited him to the dinner and had only +just informed her of the fact. Lucile had assured her, of course, that +this addition to the company would cause not the slightest +inconvenience, served on the contrary to bring it up to the number that +had originally been counted upon. + +When LaChaise arrived the discovery that he talked no English at all +beyond a few rudimentary phrases, a fact which normally would have seemed +calamitous, was now merely treated as an added feature of the evening. He +and Novelli were in the midst of an animated discussion when they +arrived. They stuck together in the drawing-room as if locked in the same +pair of handcuffs and seating arrangements were hastily revised so that +they might go on talking in untroubled mutual absorption straight through +the dinner. Rush being placed handily by, where he could come to the +rescue in case of need. + +It was only the extremest surface of Mary sitting at the head of the +table in Paula's place (which once had been her own) that was engaged +with her unforeseen duties as hostess. And yet in a way, the whole of her +consciousness had been drawn to the surface. The strong interior +excitement that had been burning in her during all this day of her +home-coming, the rising conviction that life at home might turn out to be +something very different indeed from the thing that it had, down in New +York, looked like, the blend of foreboding with anticipation that +accompanied it, and finally a sense of the imminence of something +important, not quite to be accounted for by the quarrel between her +father and his wife,--all this emotional reaction found its outlet during +the long dinner in a quite unusual vivacity. Her sphere of influence +spread down the table until it embraced a full half the length of it on +both sides and those just beyond the reach of it, aware that they were +missing something, listened but distractedly to the talk of their more +remote partners. And while she was doing all this she managed with her +left hand, as it were, to, keep going a vivid little confidential +flirtation with the Stannard boy, Graham, a neighbor and a contemporary +of hers just back from service on a destroyer. + +The thing that stimulated her to all this was a consciousness of her +father's intense awareness of her. She had been deliberately evasive of +him since his quarrel with Paula. What he wanted of her she knew as well +as if he had expressed the need of it in so many words. He had turned to +her for it as soon as Paula had gone up-stairs and Rush had accompanied +the thoroughly demoralized Wallace into the hall. She had found a certain +hard satisfaction in denying it to him, in not nestling up into the arms +that happened, for the moment, to be vacant of Paula. This was so +imperative an instinct that she had not even reproached herself for it, +though she supposed she would later. + +The sense that something in some way or other decisive was going to +happen to-night, quickened her pulse as she mounted, along with the last +of their guests to the music room, in response to Paula's message that +Mr. March had come and that the "rehearsal" was about to begin. She +looked about eagerly for a man who might be March but could not discover +him anywhere. Was he, perhaps, she absurdly wondered, sitting once more +under the piano? + +Novelli drooped over the keyboard. LaChaise was half hidden in a deep +chair in one of the dormers. Paula, her back to the little audience, +stood talking to Novelli. Mary allowed herself a faint smile over the +expression in those faces that Paula wouldn't look at. The half-concealed +impatience, the anticipatory boredom, showed through so unfaltering a +determination to do and express to the end the precisely correct thing. +Even her father's anger looked out through a mask like that. + +LaChaise, from his corner said something in French that Mary didn't +catch. Novelli straightened his back. And in that instant before a note +was sounded, Mary's excitement mounted higher. The absorption of those +three musicians, the intensity of their preoccupation, told her that the +something she had expected was going to happen--now. But she did not know +that it was going to happen to her. + +Long ago the family had acquiesced in Mary's assertion that she was not +in the least musical and in her stubborn refusal to "take" anything, even +the most elementary course of lessons on the piano. She had been allowed +to grow up in an ignorance almost unique in these days, of the whole +mystery of musical notation and phraseology, an ignorance that might be +reckoned the equivalent of a special talent. + +Later, indeed, she had made the discovery--or what would have been a +discovery if she had fully admitted it to herself--that music sometimes +exerted a special power over her emotions. Whether it was a certain sort +of music that created the mood or a certain sort of mood that was capable +of responding to music, she had never seriously inquired. The critical +jargon of the wiseacres always irritated her. She supposed it meant +something because they seemed intelligible to each other but she rather +enjoyed indulging the presumption that it did not. When she went to +concerts, she liked to go alone, or at least to be let alone, to sit back +passively and allow the variegated tissue of sound to envelop her spirit +as it would. If it bored her, as it frequently did, there was no harm +done, no pretense to make. If, as more rarely happened, it stole somehow +into complete possession, floated her away upon strange voyages, she was +at least immune from analysis and inquisition afterward. + +So it was with no critical expectancy that she listened when Novelli +began to play; indeed, in the active sense, she did not listen at all. +She forgot to be amused by the composed faces about her; she forgot, +presently, whose music it was and whose voice she heard. What she felt +was a disentanglement, an emergence into more open, wider spaces,--cold +ethereal spaces. It seemed, though, that it was her own mood the music +fitted into, rather than the other way about. + +She heard the talk that followed the polite rustle of applause at the +first intermission, without being irritated by it, without even +listening to what it meant, though here and there a phrase registered +itself upon her ear. Henry Craven's "Very modern, of course. No tonality +at all, not a cadence in it," and Charlotte Avery's "No form either. And +hardly to be called a song. A tone poem, really, with a part written +into it for the voice." + +The music began again, and now was given ungrudging credit for the +recreation of her mood. Only its admitted beauty created a longing which +it did not serve to satisfy. The cold open sky with its mysterious +interstellar spaces, the flow of the black devouring clouds, the +reemergence of the immortal Pleiades, remote, inhuman, unaware, brought +no tranquillity but only a forlorn human loneliness. + +On that note it ended, but Paula, with a nod to Novelli, directed him to +go straight on to the love song. The two do not form a sequence in the +poem; indeed the love song occurs very early in it and the Burial of the +Stars comes afterward, nearly at the end. But I think, as March did, that +Paula's instinct was sound in using the unearthly Schubert-like beauty of +the Burial of the Stars as a prelude to the purely human passion of the +love song. + +It is, I suppose, one of the supreme lyric expressions in the English +language of the passion of love. Furthermore, Whitman's free unmetered +swing, the glorious length of his stride, fell in with March's rhythmic +idiom as though they had been born under the same star. + +The result is one of those happy marriages so rare as to be almost +unique, in which the emotional power of a great song is enhanced by its +musical setting, and where, conversely, a great piece of lyric music +gains rather than loses by its words. + +March did not use the whole poem. His setting begins on the line "Low +hangs the moon," and ends with the "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" +Why he elected not to go on with it, I don't know. Possibly, because his +own impulse was spent before Whitman's; possibly, because he did not wish +to impose the darker melancholy of the latter stanzas upon the clear +ecstasy of that last call. + +It lost something, of course, from the inadequacy of the piano +transcription, for it was conceived and written orchestrally. Paula, too, +has given finer performances of it;--indeed, she sang it better a little +later that same evening. But spurred as she was by the knowledge that the +composer was listening to it and by her determination to win a victory +for it, she flung herself into it with all the power and passion she had. + +I doubt whether any other auditor ever is more completely overwhelmed +by it than Mary was. It was so utterly her own, the cry of it so verily +the unacknowledged cry of her own heart, that the successive stanzas +buried themselves in it like unerring arrows. The intensity of its +climax was more poignant, more nearly intolerable, than anything in all +the music she had ever heard. Limp, wet, breathless, trembling all +over, she sat for a matter of minutes after that last ineffable +yearning note had died away. + +There was a certain variety in the emotions of the rest of the audience, +but they met on common ground in the feeling of not knowing where to look +or what to say. Their individualities submerged in a great crowd, they +might--most of them--have allowed themselves to be carried away, +especially if they'd come in the expectation--founded on the experience +of other audiences--that they would be carried away. But to sit like +this, all very much aware of each other while a woman they knew, the +wife of a man they had long known, proclaimed a naked passion like that, +was simply painful. What they didn't know you see--there was no program +to tell them--was whether the thing was inspired or merely dreadful, and +when it was over they sat in stony despair, waiting, like the children of +Israel, for a sign. + +It was LaChaise who broke the spell by crossing the room and +unceremoniously displacing Novelli at the piano. He turned back to the +beginning of the score and began reading it, at first silently, then +humming unintelligible orchestral parts as he was able to infer them from +the transcription; finally with noisy outbursts upon the piano, to which +din Novelli contributed with one hand reached down over the conductor's +shoulder. Paula standing in the curve of the instrument, her elbows on +the lid, followed them from her copy of the score. It got to the audience +that an alert attitude of attention was no longer required of them. That +in fact, so far as the three musicians were concerned, nothing was +required of them, not even silence. As an audience they ceased to exist. +They were dissolved once more into their social elements and began a +little feverishly to talk. + +The realization broke over Mary with the intensity of panic that some one +of them might speak to her. She rose blindly and slipped out into the +hall, but even there she did not feel safe. Some of them, any of them, +might follow her. She wanted to hide. There was a small room adjoining +the studio--it had been the nurse's bedroom when the other had been the +nursery--and its door now stood ajar. She slipped within and closed it +very softly behind her. + +Here in the grateful half-dark she was safe enough although the door into +the studio was also part way open. There was nothing in here but +lumber--an old settee, a bookcase full of discarded volumes from the +library and an overflow of Paula's music. No one would think of looking +for her in here. + +But as she turned her back upon the door that she had just closed, she +saw that some one was here, a man in khaki sitting on the edge of that +old settee, leaning forward a little, his hands clasped between his +knees. She had come in so quietly he had not heard her. + +It seemed to her afterward that she must have had two simultaneous and +contradictory ideas as to who he was. She knew,--she must have known, +instantly--that he was Anthony March, but his uniform suggested Rush and +drew her over toward him just as though she had actually believed him to +be her brother. And then as he became aware of her and glanced up, Paula +in the other room began singing the last song over again, her great broad +voice submerging the buzz of talk like the tide rushing in over a flat. +Without a word Mary dropped down beside him on the settee. + +In the middle of a phrase the music stopped. + +"A vous le tour!" they heard LaChaise say to Novelli. "Je ne suis pas +assez pianiste. Maintenant! Recommencons, n'est-ce-pas?" + +The song resumed. March's frame stiffened. + +"Oh night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the + breakers? + What is that little black thing I see there in the white?" + +"Now then," March whispered. "Quicker! My God, can't they pick it up?" +Like an echo came LaChaise's "Plus vite! _Stringendo_, jusque au bout!" +and with a gasp the composer greeted the quickened tempo. Then as the +song swept to its first tempestuous climax he clutched Mary's arm. +"That's it," he cried. "Can't you see that's it?" + +"Loud! loud! loud! + Loud I call to you, my love! + High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves, + Surely you must know who is here, is here, + You must know who I am, my love." + +He let go her arm. The song went on. + +"Low-hanging moon! + What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? + O it is the shape, the shape of my mate! + Oh moon, do not keep me from her any longer." + +From there, without interruption it swept along to the end. + +It was during the ecstatic pianissimo just before the final section +that their hands clasped. Which of them first sought the contact +neither of them knew but they sat linked like that, tingling, +breathless during the lines:-- + +"... somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, + So faint I must be still, be still to listen, + But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to + me." + +On the last "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" the clasp tightened, +convulsively. But it was not until the circuit was broken that the spark +really leaped across the gap. + +There was no applause in the other room when the song ended for the +second time, but it won a clear half minute of breathless silence before +the eddies of talk began again. During that tight-stretched moment the +pair upon the settee, their hands just unclasped, sat motionless, fully +aware of each other for the first time, almost unendurably aware, +thrilling with the just-arrived sense of the amazing intimacy of the +experience they had shared. Neither of them was innocent but neither had +ever known so complete a fusion of his identity with another as this +which the spell of his music had produced. + +They sat side by side but not very close, not so close that there was +contact anywhere between them and neither made any move to resume it. +Both were trembling uncontrollably and each knew that the other was. + +The hum of talk in the other room rose louder and finally became +articulate in Charlotte Avery's crisp, "Good night, my dear Paula, +we've had a most interesting evening. I shall hope to hear more of +your discovery. And see him too sometime if you make up your mind to +exhibit him." + +March started from his seat at that. "Don't make any noise," Mary +whispered, rising too, and laying a detaining hand on him. "Nobody will +come in here. They'll all go now. We must wait." + +He obeyed tractably enough, only turned toward her now and gazed at her +with undissimulated intensity; not, though, as if speculating who she +might be, rather as if wondering whether she were really there. + +"Don't you want them to find you, either?" he asked. + +"N-not after that," she stammered; and added instantly, "We +mustn't talk." + +So silent once more, they waited while the late audience defiled in +irregular, slow moving groups down the hall toward the stairs. Mary +distinguished her father's voice, her brother's, her aunt's, all taking +valiantly just the right social note. They were covering the retreat in +good order. And she heard Portia Stanton taking her husband home. But the +music room was not yet deserted. There were sounds of relaxation in +there, the striking of a match, the sound of a heavy body--that of +LaChaise, probably--dropping into an easy chair. + +"And now," Mary heard him say to Paula--"Now fetch out your composer. +Where have you had him hidden all this while?" + +"He's in there. I was just waiting until they were really gone. I'll get +him now, though. No, sit still; I'd rather, myself." + +March, however, didn't move; not even when they could hear Paula coming +toward the door. He stood gazing thoughtfully at Mary, his eyes luminous +in the dark. It occurred to her that the conversation in the other room +had been in French and that he had not understood it. + +"Oh, go--quickly!" she had just time to breathe. Then she crowded back, +close against the partition wall. The door opened that way, so that when +Paula flung it wide it screened her a little. + +The singer stood there, a golden glowing thing in the light she had +brought in with her. "Where are you?" she asked. Then she came up to +March and took him by the arms. "Was it good?" she asked. "Was it--a +little--as you meant it to sound?" + +When he did not speak, she laughed,--a rich low laugh that had a hint of +tears in it, pulled him up to her and kissed his cheek. "You don't have +to answer, my dear," she said. "Come in and hear what LaChaise has got to +say about it." + +Without effort, irresistibly, she swept him along with her into the +music room. + +Mary, when they were gone, let herself out by the other door as softly as +she had come in. She fled down one flight of the stairs and a moment +later had locked the door of her own room behind her. She switched on the +light, gave a ragged laugh at Sir Galahad; then lay down, just as she +was, on the little white bed, her face in the pillow, and cried. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +NO THOROUGHFARE + + +It was hours later, well along toward one o'clock in the morning when +Rush coming into his room saw a light under the door communicating with +his sister's and, knocking, was told he might come in. + +He found her in bed for the night, reclining against a stack of pillows +as if she had been reading, but from the way she blinked at the softened +light from the lamp on her night table, it appeared that she had switched +it on only when she heard him coming. She might have been crying though +she looked composed enough now;--symmetrically composed, indeed, a braid +over each shoulder, her hands folded, her legs straight down the middle +of the bed making a single ridge that terminated in a little peak where +her feet stuck up (the way heroines lie, it occurred to Rush, in the last +act of grand operas, when they are dead) and this effect was enhanced by +the new-laundered whiteness of the sheet, neatly folded back over the +blankets and the untumbled pillows. + +"You always look so nice and clean," he told her, and, forbearing to sit +on the edge of the bed as a pat of her hand invited him to, pulled up a +chair instead. It was going to be a real talk, not just a casual +good-night chat. + +"We were wondering what had become of you," he said. "Poor Graham +was worried." + +"Graham!" But she did not follow that up. "I decided we'd had temperament +enough for one evening," she explained in a matter-of-fact tone, "so when +I saw I was going to explode I came away quietly and did it in here. By +the time it was over I thought I might as well go to bed." + +"It doesn't look as if you'd exploded very violently," he observed. + +"Oh, I've cleared away the ruins," she said. "I hate reminders of a +mess." + +It was like her exquisiteness to do that and it tightened his throat to +think about it. He'd have liked to make sure what the cause of the +explosion had been, but thought he'd better wait a while for that. All he +ventured in the way of sympathetic approbation was to reach out and pat +the ridge that extended down the middle of the bed. "It certainly has +been one devil of an evening," he said. + +"I suppose it has," she agreed, thoughtfully. Then, noticing that this +had rather thrown him off his stride, she went on, "Tell me all that's +been happening since I ran away. How did Paula act when it was over?" + +"I haven't seen her," he said. "She never came down at all. Of course it +must have been--well, in a way, a devil of an evening for her, too. +Though I can't believe our being there cramped her style very much in +singing those songs. If it did, I'd hate to think what she would have +done if we hadn't been. I hope March liked his own stuff. He was there +all the while, you know. She must have had him tucked away in that little +old room of Annie's that opened off the nursery. Somewhere anyhow, +because long after every one else had gone, he came down-stairs with the +Frenchman. I got one surprise just then all right. He's a private +soldier, did you know that? Just a plain doughboy." + +"Overseas?" Mary asked. + +"As far as Bordeaux, with the Eighty-sixth. Saxaphone player with one of +the artillery bands. In a way I'm rather glad of it. That that's what he +turns out to be, I mean." + +"Why?" Mary made the word rather crisply. + +"Oh, well," Rush explained uncomfortably, "you know what it had begun to +look like. Paula quarreling with father about him and not going down to +dinner; and--cutting loose like that over his music. But of course there +couldn't be anything of that sort--with a chap like that." + +"What is the lowest military rank," Mary inquired, "that you think Paula +could fall in love with?" + +The satirical import of her question was not lost upon him but he held +his ground. "It may sound snobbish but it's true just the same," he +insisted. "A doughboy's a doughboy, and Paula wouldn't get mixed up with +one--any more than you would." + +There was a silence after that. + +"His music didn't sound to me like doughboy music," Mary observed at +last. "Nor his going to Walt Whitman to get the words." + +"Was that Walt Whitman? It sounded to me as if he was making it up as he +went along." He had the grace to grin at himself over that admission, +however. "Oh, well," he concluded, "Paula's all right anyhow. I think +she's--wonderful, myself. Only poor old dad! He is a peach, Mary. It's +funny how differently I remember him. He acted like one real sport +to-night." + +"Afterward, you mean." Mary, it seemed, would not have characterized her +father's behavior earlier in the evening in just that way. "Tell me all +about it. Only reach me a cigarette first." + +He obeyed the latter injunction with an air of protest. "It's the only +thing you do that I wish you didn't," he said. + +"Why? Do you think it's bad for me?" + +He wouldn't commit himself by answering that. The retort it offered her +was obvious. "It doesn't seem like you," he explained. + +"Very well," she said, taking a light from his match, "then I shall go on +just to keep you reminded that I'm not plaster of Paris. I like to have +somebody around who doesn't think that." + +"Father doesn't," Rush asserted, and got so eager a look of inquiry from +her that he regretted having nothing very substantial to satisfy it +with. "Oh, down there in the hall," he said, "after everybody but March +and the Frenchman had gone. Aunt Lucile began fussing about you. She was +rather up in the air, anyway. She'd done the nonchalant, all +right,--overdone it a bit in fact--as long as there was any one around +to play up to. But when we had got rid of the Novellis--they were the +last--she did a balloon ascension. She had a fit or two in general and +then came round to wondering about you. Wanted to know when we'd last +seen you--what _could_ have happened to you,--that sort of thing. I'd +been having a little talk with Graham so I supposed I knew. But of +course I said nothing about that." + +He was looking rather fixedly away from her and so missed her frown of +incomprehension. "Well, but father?" she asked. + +It had been coming over him that what his father had said was not just +what he wanted to report to Mary. Not while she felt about him as she +had confessed, down there in New York, she did. But he had let himself +in for it. + +"Why, it wasn't much," he said; "just that nothing could have happened to +you; that you wouldn't 'fall off anything and break.' What you said about +plaster of Paris made me think of it. He was only trying to get Aunt +Lucile quieted down." + +"While he had Paula on his mind, he didn't want to be bothered about me. +That's natural enough, of course." Her dry brittle tone was anything but +reassuring. Still without looking at her, he hurried on. + +"Well, it _is_ natural that he should be worried about Paula. I know +how I'd feel about a thing like that. It was rather weird while we +waited after Aunt Lucile went up to bed for those two to come down. +Old Nat was fussing around the drawing-room, shutting up and putting +things to rights. Dad sent him to bed, too, told him we'd do the +locking up ourselves. I got the idea that he was expecting Paula to +come sailing down, with March, you know, and perhaps didn't want any +one around. So I made a bluff of going to bed myself. But he told me +to stick; said we'd settle down and have a smoke presently. I don't +know how long it was before we heard LaChaise and March coming but it +seemed a deuce of a while. + +"Dad was right on the job then, calm as a May morning. He introduced +March and me and said something polite about his music, never a word +about his having been hiding all the evening. + +"Then LaChaise spoke to dad in French. Said there was some business he +wanted to talk with him about and that he'd like an appointment. I wasn't +sure that dad quite got him so I crashed in and interpreted. + +"Dad reached out and took hold of me, as if he was sort of glad that I +was there, and told me to tell Mr. LaChaise that we had plenty of time +right now, and if there was anything to discuss the sooner we got at it, +the better. + +"I handed that on in French--I tried not to lose any of the kick out of +it--and while I was doing that March made a move to go. + +"Dad told him not to. I wish you could have been there. I remember he +said after inviting him to stay, 'I imagine you are as much concerned in +this as any one.' It didn't faze March though. He said that he didn't +believe that what Mr. LaChaise had to say concerned him. Then he made a +stiff little bow for good night and went off down the hall to get his +hat. Oh, that wasn't like a doughboy, I'll admit. I went to the door +with him and we made a little conversation there for a minute or two just +to--take off the edge. That's when I found out where he'd been. + +"Father had taken LaChaise into the drawing-room when I got back but I +don't believe either of them had said three words. They were waiting for +me. Dad led off by asking what he thought of March, and LaChaise told +him, though you could see that wasn't what was on his mind. He said March +had a very strong and original talent and that he believed he had operas +in him. There was one about finished that he was going to look at +to-morrow. Then he pulled up short and said it was Paula he wanted to +talk about. + +"Dad caught that all right without waiting for me to translate it. What +he wanted to get at, right at the jump off, was whether Paula knew +LaChaise had come down to talk about her. Was he to consider Mr. +LaChaise her emissary? I took a chance on _Ă©missaire_ for that and it +worked all right. + +"Well, the Frenchman said, as cool as you please, that he was. Said he +wouldn't have ventured to intrude otherwise:--and dad froze to ice right +there. But LaChaise went on and spoke his piece just the same. He said +he'd come to-night to verify the enthusiastic reports he had heard of her +singing but that she had outdone them all. He said the voice itself was +unusual, of great power and of beautiful quality, adequate in range for +anything that could be expected of her. But he said that was only the +beginning of it. The important things were that she was a real musician +in the first place and a woman with real passions in the second. + +"I didn't know whether to translate that to dad or to shut the Frenchman +up myself right there. I would have liked to take a punch at him. But, of +course, you're nothing but a part of the machinery when you are +interpreting, so I handed it on, without looking at dad. All he said was, +'We'll get to the point, if you please, Monsieur.' + +"LaChaise understood that without waiting for me. He said he had had no +hesitation in offering Paula a contract to sing the leading dramatic +soprano rĂ´les at Ravinia this summer and that he had told her if it +worked anywhere near as well as he expected it to there was no doubt of +her getting a good Metropolitan engagement next season. He finished up by +saying he had had to ask her to make a decision as soon as possible +because he was at that moment negotiating with some one else who couldn't +be put off very long. + +"Dad asked then whether Paula had given him an answer to-night. LaChaise +told him she had accepted--subject to his obtaining dad's consent. Then +he finished up with a full-dress bow. 'That is the point you have asked +me to come to, Monsieur,' he said. + +"Dad never said a word for a minute. You could see it must have been +ghastly for him. I guess LaChaise must have seen it himself, for he went +on and tried to soften it down a bit. Said he didn't want to seem to +_brusquĂ©_ the affair. All he wanted to ask dad to-night was that he +should agree to consider the matter, bearing in mind that a real artist +like _madame_, his wife, couldn't be kept shut up in a brass tower +indefinitely. + +"Dad cut him off rather short on that. He said that from a legal or +business point of view, which was all that could possibly concern +LaChaise, his consent wasn't necessary. If his wife signed a contract he +would put no obstacles in the way of her fulfilling it. Beyond that he +had obviously nothing to say. + +"Well, that was about all. They both put on all the trimmings saying good +night to each other and LaChaise thanked me very handsomely for +interpreting. I chucked him into his overcoat and let him out the front +door.--And bolted it after him, you bet! Lord, but I hated to go back to +dad after that. + +"I needn't have worried though. When we sat down for our smoke in the +library, it was exactly as if nothing had happened. I'd have been tearing +my hair but old dad.... He certainly is a peach." + +Rush paused there for some comment from her and when she made none, +looked around at her. Her hands were lightly clasped across her breast, +her eyelids nearly closed. Save for her barely perceptible breathing, she +lay dead still. + +"Have I talked you to sleep?" he asked. + +"No," she said, "I was thinking what a mixed-up thing life is. The way +you can't help liking and admiring the people you wish you could hate and +hating and hurting the ones you love." Then her eyes came open with a +smile and she held out a hand toward him. "You don't have to answer that. +It's the sort of silly thing people say when they have been drinking gin. +What I was really wondering was whether there will be anything about Mr. +March's opera in that contract Paula signs with LaChaise?" + +This startled him. "I never thought of that," he answered. "Do you +suppose that's it? Oh, it can't be! She wouldn't chuck dad for that +doughboy piano tuner. Not Paula!" + +"Oh, no," said Mary. "She wouldn't do that. It wouldn't look to her like +that, anyhow. She's got enough, don't you see, for everybody; for dad +and--and the doughboy as well. Father wouldn't have any less, if he could +just make up his mind that he didn't have to have it all. And as for the +other, why, it might be the greatest thing that could possibly happen to +him;--being in love with Paula and writing operas for her and having her +sing them the way she sang those songs to-night. I suppose that's what a +genius needs. And you couldn't blame her exactly. At least there always +have been people like that and the world hasn't blamed them--no matter +how moral it pretends to be. It's the other sort of people, the ones who +won't take anything unless they can have it all and who can't give +anything unless they can give it all--those that haven't but one thing to +give--that are--no good." + +He didn't more than half understand her, which was fortunate, since he +was rather horrified as it was. He put it down broadly as the same sort +of nervous crisis that he had encountered in New York, a sort of +hypersensitiveness due to the strain of war work--the thing he had amused +her by speaking of as shell-shock. + +"I think perhaps I know what has upset you to-night," he said +uncomfortably. "At least Graham told me about it." + +She looked at him with a puzzled frown. It was the third time that he had +brought up the Stannard boy's name. What in the world...? + +"He's terribly distressed about it," Rush went on. In his embarrassment +he wasn't looking at her and she composed her face. "He didn't +mean to shock you or--or offend you. He says he gave you reason enough +to be offended, but only because you didn't understand. He says he +has always--cared for you a lot. He said he thought you were the +most--well, about the most perfect thing in the world. Only to-night +he said he got carried off his feet and went further than he had any +right to. And he simply can't bear to have you think that he meant +anything--disrespectful. He felt he had to apologize to you before he +went home, but you didn't come down so finally he told me about it and +made me promise that I'd tell you to-night. Of course, I don't know what +he did," Rush concluded, "but I can tell you this. Graham Stannard's a +white man; they don't make them whiter than that." + +Her reply, although it was unequivocally to the effect that it was all +right--Graham needn't worry--failed, altogether, to reassure him. Was +this, after all, he wondered, what she had exploded about? She prevented +further inquiry, however, by an abrupt change of the subject, demanding +to be told what it was that he and his father, all these hours, had been +talking about. + +He took up the topic with unforced enthusiasm. He had been surprised and +deeply touched over the discovery that his father did not require to be +argued out of the project either to send him back to Harvard or to start +him in at the bottom in Martin Whitney's bank. "If he'd just been +through it all himself, he couldn't have understood any better how I +feel about it." + +"Did you tell him about the farm?" Mary asked. + +This was an idea of Graham's which she and Rush had been developing with +him during the half hour in the drawing-room before they had gone down to +dinner. Young Stannard, during his two years on a destroyer, had +conceived an extraordinary longing for Mother Earth, and had filled in +his dream in tolerably complete detail. What he wanted was an out-of-door +life which should not altogether deprive him of the pleasures of an urban +existence; and he accomplished this paradox by premising a farm within +convenient motoring distance of Chicago, on one of the hard roads. +Somewhere in the dairy belt, out Elgin way perhaps. You could have +wonderful week-end house parties in a place like that, even in winter, +with skiing and skating for amusements, and in summer it would be simply +gorgeous. And, of course, one could always run into town for the night if +there was anything particular to come for. + +Mary had volunteered to keep house for them and they had talked a lot of +amusing nonsense as to what her duties should be. Graham, too, had a kid +sister, only seventeen, who fitted admirably into the picture. She loved +the country, simply lived in riding breeches and rode like a man--a sight +better than most men--and drove a car like a young devil. There was +nothing, in fact, she couldn't do. + +Graham was altogether serious about it. He had been scouting around +during the fortnight since his return and had his eyes on two or three +places that might do. There was one four-hundred-acre property that was +altogether desirable, ideal in fact, except for the one painful +particular that the cost of it was just about twice as much as Graham's +father was willing to run to. But if Rush would go in with him they need +seek no further. The thing was as good as settled. + +"I did talk to father about it," Rush now told Mary. "The thing is a real +idea. Graham and I talked seriously about it while we were smoking before +we went up-stairs. The scheme is to run a dairy, hog and poultry +combination on a manufacturing basis and then sell our whole product +direct to two or three customers in town, one or two of the +clubs--perhaps a hotel. Deliver by motor truck every day, you see, and +leave the middleman out entirely. It's the only way to beat the game. +Father saw it like a shot. He said it would take a lot of money, of +course, but he thought he could manage my share." + +Mary relaxed just perceptibly deeper in the pillows and her eyelids +drooped again. "It's getting awfully late," Rush said; "don't you want to +go to sleep?" But he needed no urging to go on when she asked him to tell +her all about it, and for another half hour he elaborated the plan. + +He was still breezing along on the full tide of the idea, when, +happening to glance at her little traveling clock, he pulled himself up +short, took away her extra pillows, switched off her night lamp and +ordered her to go to sleep at once. Her apparent docility did not +altogether satisfy him and two or three times during the hour before he +himself fell asleep, he sat up to look under the door and see whether +she had turned the light on again. + +He was right about that, of course. The enforced calm Mary had imposed +upon herself as a penance for the tempest of emotion she had +indulged--she had lain without moving, hardly a finger, from the time she +remade that bed and crept back into it until hearing Rush coming she +switched on the light--had had a sort of hypnotic effect upon her. So +long as her body did not move, it ceased to exist altogether and set her +spirit free, like a pale-winged luna moth from its chrysalis to adventure +into the night. The light it kept fluttering back to was that blinding +experience with March while the music of his song had surged through her +and her hand had been crushed in his. + +Rush's coming in had brought her back to that tired still body of hers +again; his voice soothed, his presence comforted her; at his occasional +touch she was able to relax. (If only there were some one who loved her, +who would hold her tight--tight--) She hoped he would go on talking to +her; on and on. Because while he talked she could manage to stop +thinking--by the squirrel-like process of storing away all the ideas he +was suggesting to her for consideration later. + +But when the respite was over and she lay back in the dark again, she +made no effort to deny admission to the thoughts that came crowding so +thickly. She must think; she must, before the ordeal of the next +breakfast table, have taken thought. She must have decided if not what +she should do, at least what she could hope for. She was much clearer and +saner for the little interlude with Rush. + +Suppose in the first place;--suppose that Paula's rebellion was serious. +Suppose the Tower of Brass violated and the Princess carried away by the +_jinn_ or upon the magic carpet--whichever it was--to a world where none +of them could follow her. Suppose John Wollaston bereft again. Would not +Mary's old place be hers once more? Would not everything be just as it +had been during those two years before her father went to Vienna? + +But some instinct in her revolted utterly at that. It was an instinct +that she could not completely reason out. But she knew that if such a +calamity befell, her old place would not exist or would be intolerable +if it did. + +Suppose again:--suppose that Paula's rebellion could be somehow +frustrated. Would it be possible to save Paula for her father by saving +March from Paula? In plain words, by diverting him from Paula to herself. + +That was a disgustingly vulgar way of putting it. But wasn't it what she +meant? And if she couldn't be honest with her own thoughts.... Well then, +were her powers of attraction great enough, even if they were consciously +exerted to the utmost, to outpull Paula's with a musician, with a man +whose songs she could sing as she had sung to-night? + +That moment in Annie's old bedroom off the nursery supplied concretely +enough the answer to her question. They had been soul to soul in there, +they two. There was no language to describe the intimacy of it, except +perhaps the hackneyed phrases of the wedding service which had lost all +their meaning. And while they had stood together in the half dark, Paula +had opened the door, bringing the light in with her. She had taken him +confidently in her strong hands and kissed him and led him away without +one hesitating backward thought. + +And the truth seemed clear enough, incandescent, now she looked back at +it, that it was Paula who had possessed him all along. That moment which +she had called her own had been Paula's. Mary had got it because she had +happened to come in and sit down beside him. She had, as it were, picked +his pocket. She stood convicted the moment the rightful owner appeared. +That was how much her chance of "saving" March from Paula amounted to. + +What a hypocrite she had been to use that phrase even in her thoughts. +Save him from Paula, indeed! Paula could give him, even if she gave only +the half loaf, all he needed. She could inspire his genius, float it +along on the broad current of her own energy. Compared to that, what +could Mary give? What would it, her one possible gift, amount to? + +She pulled herself up short. Wallowing again! No more of that. She'd +leave March alone, and on that resolution she'd stop thinking about him. +She'd think about Rush and Graham and the farm. + +Graham! They didn't come, Rush had said, any whiter than that. Probably +he was right about it. It was a wonderful quality, that sort of +whiteness. What was it he had done (she didn't even remember!) that had +caused him such bitter self-reproach? You couldn't help liking him. It +ought not to be hard to fall sufficiently in love with him. And out on a +farm... A farmer's wife certainly had enough to do to keep her from +growing restless. With a lot of children, four to half a dozen,--no one +could call that a worthless life. + +And it was practicable. With an even break in the luck, she could +accomplish the whole of it. A man like Graham she could make happy. Her +one gift would be enough for him; all he'd want. What was it he had told +Rush to-night? That he had always thought her the most perfect... + +At that, appallingly, she was seized in the cold grip of an unforeseen +realization. She couldn't marry a boy like that--she couldn't marry any +man who regarded her like that--without first telling him what she was; +what she was not! She would have to make clear to him--there was simply +no escape from that--the nature of the thing that had happened in that +tiny flat in New York where she had lived alone so long. + +It was possible, of course, oh, more than that, probable even, that after +hearing the story he would still want to marry her. That he might regard +her, no matter what she said, as having been wronged; her innocence, +though once taken advantage of by a scoundrel, intact. His love would be +reenforced by pity. He'd think of nothing, in the stress of that moment, +but the desire to protect her, to provide a fortress for her. + +But would she dare, on these terms, marry him, or any other man for that +matter, no matter how ardently he professed forgiveness? It wouldn't be +until after the marriage was an accomplished thing, its first desires +satisfied, its first tension relaxed, that the story of her adventure +would begin to loom black and thunderous over the horizon of his mind. +(Who was the man? How could it have happened? In what mood of madness +could she have done such a thing? Might it ever,--when might it +not--happen again?) No! Marriage was difficult enough without being +handicapped additionally by a perennial misgiving like that. No +thoroughfare again! + +She started once more around the circle, but one can not keep at that +sort of thing forever. About sunrise she fell asleep. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE DUMB PRINCESS + + +None of his own family knew quite what to make of Anthony March. All of +them but his mother disapproved of him, on more or less mutually +contradictory grounds. Disapproved of him more than they did of one +another, though he occupied a sort of middle ground between them. It is a +possible explanation to the paradox that each of them regarded him as a +potential ally and so spent more time trying to change his ways, scolding +at him, pointing out his derelictions and lost opportunities, than it was +worth while spending on the others who were hopeless. + +I shall be a little more intelligible, perhaps, if I tell you briefly +who they were. The father, David March, and Eveline, his wife, were New +Englanders. They both came, as a matter of fact, from within ten miles +of Glastonbury, Connecticut, though they didn't discover this fact until +after they'd met a number of times in the social and religious +activities of the Moody Institute. The lives of both had been woven in +the somber colors of Evangelical religion. With him this ran close to +fanaticism and served as an outlet for a very intense emotional life. +She was not highly energized enough to go to extremes in anything, but +she acquiesced in all his beliefs and practises, made him in short, a +perfectly dutiful wife according to the Miltonian precept, "He for God +only, she for God in him." + +Back in New England she probably would not have married him for she was a +cut or more above him socially, the played-out end of a very fine line, +as her beautiful speech would have made evident to any sensitive ear. But +in Chicago, the disheveled, terrifying Chicago of the roaring eighties, +to all intents and purposes alone, clinging precariously to a +school-teacher's job which she had no special equipment for, she put up +only the weakest resistance to David March's determination that she +should be his wife. + +He was a skilled artisan, a stringer and chipper in a piano factory +(chipping, if you care to be told, is the tuning a piano gets before its +action is put in). One would hardly have predicted then, considering the +man's energy and intelligence, that he would remain just that, go on +working at the same bench for thirty-five years. But, as I have said, his +energy found its main outlet in emotional religion. + +Their first child, born in 1886, was a girl whom they named Sarah. +Anthony came two years later and for twelve years there were no more. +Then came the late baby, whom they appropriately named Benjamin and +allowed a somewhat milder bringing up than the iron rule the elder ones +had been subjected to. + +It was the dearest wish of David's life to make a preacher of Anthony +and he must have got by way of answers to his prayers, signs which +reconciled him to the sheer impossibility of this project. The boy's +passion for music manifested itself very early and with this David +compromised by training him for the higher reaches of his own craft. He +got employment for Anthony in the piano factory for a year or two after +his graduation from high school and then sent him on for a liberal two +years in a school in Boston where the best possible instruction in piano +tuning was to be had. + +Sarah was half-way through high school when her brother Benjamin was born +and for two years after she graduated, her mother's ill health, the +familiar breakdown of the middle forties, kept her at home. Then she +defied her father and took a job in a down-town office. What he objected +to, of course, was not her going to work but the use she made of the +independence with which self-support provided her. The quarrel never came +to a real break though often enough it looked like doing so, and except +for the brief period of her marriage Sarah always lived at home. + +When Anthony came back from Boston, he revolted, too. He had not been a +prodigal; indeed, during his second year in the East, he had in one way +or another, earned his own living and he had learned even beyond his +father's hopes to tune pianos. But he did it at an incredibly small +expense in time and energy. What his heart went into during those two +years was the study of musical theory and composition, and, thanks to a +special aptitude which rose to the pitch of genius, he managed to make +the comparatively meager training he could get in so short a time, +suffice to give him the technical equipment he needed. + +He came home armed, too, with a discovery. The discovery that a man not +enslaved by a possessive sense, a man whose self-respect is not dependent +upon the number of things he owns, a man able therefore to thumb his nose +at all the maxims of success, occupies really a very strong position. + +He didn't like the factory, though he gave it what he considered a fair +trial. He didn't like the way they tuned pianos in a factory. The dead +level of mechanical perfection which they insisted upon was a stupid +affront to his ear. And, of course, the strict regimentation of life at +home, the, once more, dead level of the plateau upon which life was +supposed to be lived, was distasteful to one with a streak of the nomad +and the adventurer in him. + +Thanks to his discovery he was able to construct an alternative to a life +like that. A skillful piano tuner could earn what money he needed +anywhere and could earn enough in a diligent week to set him free, his +simple wants provided for, for the rest of the month. + +But even a wanderer needs a base, a point of departure for his +wanderings, and his father's house could not be made to serve that +purpose, so Anthony domiciled himself, after a long quest, in the half +story above a little grocery just off North LaSalle Street and not far +from the river. + +It happened when Anthony had been living there a year or more that the +grocer, with whom he was on the friendliest of terms, got, temporarily, +into straits at precisely the time that Anthony had three hundred +dollars. He had won a prize of that amount offered by a society for the +encouragement of literature for the minor orchestral instruments, with a +concerto for the French horn. The grocer offered his note for it, but +Anthony thought of something better. He bought his room. It was to be his +to live in, rent free, for as long as time endured. + +He took a childlike pleasure in this lair of his. It accumulated his +miscellaneous treasures like a small boy's pocket. He made a mystery of +it. He never gave it as his address. Not even his family knew where it +was, nor, more than vaguely, of its existence. The address he had given +Paula was the one he gave every one else, his father's house out on the +northwest side, just off Fullerton Avenue. This room, in a sense seldom +attained, was his own. When he came back from France, the day Lucile saw +him sitting on the bench in the park, he found it exactly--save for a +heavy coating of dust--as he had left it, in 1917, when he went down to +Camp Grant. + +A good philosophy, so John Wollaston with a touch of envy had +admitted--if you can make it work. Where it breaks down with most young +men who set out so valiantly with it, is the point where one sees the +only girl in the world and recognizes the imperious necessity of winning +her, of holding out lures for her, of surrounding her, once won, with the +setting her superlative worth demands. That this did not happen to +Anthony March was due to the fact that the young woman he--not so much +saw as gradually perceived, was his sister Sarah's friend, Jennie +MacArthur. + +Independence had been forced upon Jennie so early that she never was +called upon to decide whether she liked it or not. She had an inquiring +mind--perhaps experimental would be the better word for it--abundant +self-confidence and a good stiff backbone. It was easy to make the +mistake of thinking her hard. She was not a pretty woman, with her +sandy hair and rather striking freckles, but she was well formed, she +dressed always with that crisp cleanliness which is the extravagant +standard of young women who work in good offices, and her voice had an +attractive timbre. + +To Sarah March (who, having fought for independence, was a little at a +loss what to do with it) Jennie's experience and her rather interesting +range of friends were a Godsend. It was at one of Jennie's parties in the +tiny pair of rooms where she lived alone that Sarah met Walter Davis, a +mechanical draftsman by day and an ardent young Socialist by night, whom +she afterward married. + +On the other hand, the home which Sarah was sometimes rather dubious +about the advantage of possessing, was to Jennie a delightful place to be +a familiar visitor in. She liked old David, who was a surprisingly +charming person when he had no authority over you, she liked Mrs. March, +she adored little Ben--young Ben he was now rapidly growing up to be--and +finally, she began taking an interest which eventually outweighed all the +rest, in the family black sheep, Anthony. + +The intimacy between them which began around the time of Sarah's marriage +continued intermittently for nearly four years. It had not, indeed, been +definitely broken off when he went into the army. + +When the attraction faded as it had definitely begun to do some months +before he went to Camp Grant, it left their friendship unimpaired, +enriched on the contrary. He could talk to her more easily, confide his +thoughts to her more freely than to any one else he knew. + +This ability to be confided in and depended upon was one of her special +talents. She had emerged, years before, from the crowded stenographers' +room in a big engineering concern into the private office of the chief. +He was an erratic genius, brilliant, irritable, exacting, tireless, all +but impossible to maintain any consistent relation with but one of bitter +enmity. He had about made up his mind that a fresh stenographer every +morning was all he could hope for, when Jennie became his Scheherazade. +By the time the war broke out she was as indispensable to him as his +hands. He had made her an officer of the company and paid her a salary of +six thousand dollars a year, but she went on remembering his engagements, +writing his letters and soothing the outraged feelings of his clients +just as she had done in humbler days. She was, in the good, old-fashioned +sense, his better half. Her amusement was the stock market and she played +it cannily and with considerable success with his rather diabolic +encouragement. + +She was in New York when March got home, and he saw her for the first +time since his return at his father's house on a Sunday morning more +than a fortnight after the evening at the Wollastons' when Paula had +sung his songs. + +It was his first appearance anywhere since the afternoon in Novelli's +studio when he had shown his opera to La Chaise and Paula. It had been +agreed among them that with certain important changes, it would make an +admirable vehicle for Paula's return to the operatic stage, and being a +small affair from the producer's point of view, involving only one +interior set, would be practicable for production during the summer at +Ravinia in case the project for Paula's singing there went through. March +had agreed to the changes and withdrawn into his stronghold over the +grocery store with a determination not more than to come up for air until +he had worried the thing into the shape they wanted. + +He didn't know it was Sunday--having attributed the peacefulness he +found pervading Fullerton Avenue to his own good conscience, a purely +subjective phenomenon--until in the parlor of his father's house the +sight of his brother Ben at the piano playing a soundless tune upon +the tops of the keys, brought it home to him. When he inquired for the +rest of the family, he learned that they were up-stairs getting ready +for church. + +"I hope," he said, with a grin at his younger brother, "that you aren't +suffering from that old hebdomadal sore throat of yours." + +"No, it's all right," Ben said, declining though to be amused. "I've got +a gentleman's agreement with Sarah. Every other Sunday. Father's well +enough satisfied now if he gets one of us. When they're all gone, I can +slip out and buy a Sunday paper--jazz up the piano--have a regular orgy. +Every other Sunday! Gee, but it's fierce!" + +"It's pathetic," March said. "Poor father! I don't suppose there's any +help for it." + +What struck him was the pitiful futility of his father's persistence in +trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly +growing into full independence. The only sanction he had was a tradition +daily becoming more fragile. He was in for the bitterness of another +disappointment. That was what there was no help for. + +Naturally young Ben didn't interpret it this way. "You're a nice one +to talk like that," he said resentfully. "You've always done whatever +you pleased." + +"There's nothing to prevent you from doing the same thing if you look at +it that way," Anthony observed. "You've got a job a man could live on, +haven't you?" + +"Live on? Fifteen dollars a week?" + +And it may be admitted that Ben's sense of outrage had some foundation. +Years ago he had made up his small young mind that he would never work in +the factory and he settled the question by getting himself a job in one +of the piano salesrooms on Wabash Avenue. He wasn't precisely a salesman +yet, he might perhaps have been spoken of by an unkind person as an +office boy. But it was essential that he look like a salesman and act +like a salesman, even in the matter of going to lunch. Some day soon, he +was going to succeed in completing a sale before some one else came +around and took it out of his hands, and he could then strike for a +regular commission. + +In the meantime with shoes and socks and shirts and neckties costing what +they did, the suggestion that his salary was adequate to provide a +bachelor's independence was fantastic and infuriating. + +"Yes," he grumbled, "if I wanted to live in a rat hole and look +like a tramp." + +"My rat hole isn't so bad to live in," Anthony said, "but I'd be sorry to +think I looked like a tramp. Do I, for a fact? I haven't had this suit on +since I went into the army but I thought it looked all right." + +"Oh, there's a big rip in the back of the shoulder where the padding is +sticking through and your cuffs are frayed and your necktie's got a hole +worn plumb through it where the wing of your collar rubs. You don't look +like a tramp, of course, because you look clean and decent. It would be +all right if you had to be like that. Only it's all so darned +unnecessary. You could make good money if you'd only live like a regular +person. Every day or two, somebody telephones to know if you aren't home +and if there isn't some way we can get word to you, and it's kind of +humiliating to have to say there isn't;--that we don't know where you +are, haven't seen you for a week,--things like that. Of course, it's none +of my business, but _I'm_ trying to pull out of this. I'd like to _be_ +somebody someday and it would be a darn sight easier if you were trying +to pull the same way instead of queering us all the time." + +"Yes, I know," Anthony said thoughtfully. "But then there's Sarah on the +other hand who can't forgive me for not putting on a red necktie and +going Bolshevik. She'd have me put in my time trying to upset the +bourgeois applecart altogether." + +Ben grinned. "You ought to have heard her go on about the limousine that +came and left a note for you the other day. Lady inside, chauffeur in a +big fur coat. He came up to the door and asked whether you were home and +left the note when Sarah said you weren't. Last Thursday, I think that +was, just before supper. It's over there on the mantel, I guess. Sarah's +afraid you're going to turn into a little brother of the rich." + +"You tell Sarah," Anthony said off the top of his mind, the rest of it +obviously engaged with the note,--"you tell Sarah there's nothing +capitalistic about this. This is from her Doctor Wollaston's wife. +Certainly he earns his living if anybody does." + +"Do they want their piano tuned again?" Ben asked. + +"They don't mention it. They want to know if I'll come to lunch to-day. +I'm going to telephone to see if the invitation has expired." + +"Good lord!" said Ben, "what have you got to wear? You can't go looking +like that!" He meant to go into particulars when his brother came back +from the telephone. But by that time he had something of nearer concern +to himself to think about. Anthony found him staring out the window with +an expression of the liveliest dismay. + +"Oh, look who's here!" he said. "Can you beat it?" + +Anthony looked and saw a little Ford coupĂ© pulling up to the curb in +front of the house; looked more closely at the person at the wheel +and blinked. + +"Jennie MacArthur! I thought she was still in New York. But what's she +doing in that car?" + +"Oh, she bought it last fall," Ben said. "She's getting rich. But can't +you see what it means? She's coming around to see Sarah and that'll give +Sarah an excuse for staying home from church. And that means that _I'll_ +have to go." + +"Don't worry about that," Anthony said, catching up his hat. "I'll head +her off. Tell mother I'll be around to-night." + +He intercepted Jennie at the car door, caught both her hands and pressed +them tight, pushed her back into her seat as he did so, climbed in and +sat down beside her. "I'm supposed to be saving Ben from the horrible +fate of getting dragged to church when it's really Sarah's Sunday," he +said. "If you'll just drive me around the corner, I'll explain." + +But she prevented him with a little laugh when he would have begun. "This +is good enough for me. I don't want any explanation." + +"It's pretty good," he agreed. "Stop a minute now we're safely around the +corner and let me have a look at you." + +She obeyed him, literally, pulling up to the curb again, accorded him the +look he wanted and took, meanwhile, one of her own at him. Neither of +them, however, seemed to find just the phrase in which to announce the +result of this scrutiny. She started on again presently and he relaxed +against the cushion. "This is more like being home again than anything +that's happened yet," he said. "Are we to have a real visit?" + +She was free till lunch she told him, and he, after saying "Well, that's +something," admitted his own engagement. "However, that's the best part +of two hours. The thing is not to waste any of it." + +Naturally enough they wasted a good deal of it. They talked about the +little car they were riding in, how she had learned to drive, why she had +bought it; how Mr. Ferris, her boss, had said he wouldn't be any good for +the day after coming down-town in a tight jammed elevated train and how, +having tried the new method of transportation she had agreed with him; +how it was as easy to run as a typewriter. + +A few minutes more of that, she thought, and she'd begin telling Ford +jokes, so she wrenched around to a new subject and asked him how much +he'd seen of France; what he thought of the French; how long he'd been +home; and what it seemed like to be in civilian clothes again;--topics +upon which he enlarged as well as he could. She had driven meanwhile, +north to Diversey Boulevard and had then turned west, around the ring. +They were out in the middle of Garfield Park when she said after a hard, +tight silence, "Isn't this perfectly ghastly?" + +"It's awful," he agreed. "I don't know what's the matter with us--or +whose fault it is. But I certainly didn't mean to get started like this." + +"I expect that's it," she told him. "Haven't you been trying to treat +me just exactly right? Make me feel perfectly comfortable? Haven't you +been--being tactful, with all your might, ever since we started? +Because I have." + +"Well, then, for heaven's sake," he said, "let's quit! Quit trying so +infernally hard, I mean. It's too nice a morning to spoil. You know, if +the sun manages to come out, as it's trying to, it will be a very +handsome April day." + +"I don't think talking about the weather is much of an improvement," she +commented. "Tony, let's give it up, for to-day I mean. We'll try again +sometime from a fresh start. This is perfectly hopeless." + +He tried to pretend that she didn't mean it but she made it clear even +with a touch of asperity that she did. "Oh, all right," he growled and +reached for the handle to the door. + +"Don't be silly," she commanded. "I'm not going to leave you out here in +the wilds of Garfield Park. Where do you want to go? Is it too early for +your lunch?" + +"Mrs. Wollaston told me to come at one," he said. "You aren't supposed to +be ahead of time for a thing like that, are you? Anyhow, I've got to go +back to my room first." + +She caught up the name. "Sarah told me about your going there. First to +tune the piano and then the evening when she sang your songs. Sarah's +quite eloquent about it." + +"Yes, poor Sarah, I know. Ben was quoting her this morning. However, that +won't make the least difference with what I'm going to do." + +"What are you going to do?" she asked. + +"Why, I suppose," he said, "that I'm going to do what people speak of as +settling down. What they mean by that is taking an interest in +consequences--more of an interest in what things lead to than in what +they are. Well, that's what I'm at now." + +"That's a change, all right, for you," she said. + +He agreed with her. "I knew when it happened," he added. "It happened +when I heard Paula Carresford sing one of my songs. Do you remember the +story that used to be in the school reader about the tiger that tasted +blood and ate up the princess? You know, Jennie, it's practically true +that up to that night I'd never heard any of my music at all--except +mutilated fragments of it as I played it myself. And I'll tell you it was +a staggering experience. The queerest experience I ever had in my life, +too. I'll tell you about that sometime. But I changed right there, just +the way the tiger did. I don't happen to want a fur overcoat nor an +automobile nor an apartment on the Drive. I honestly don't want them. +They aren't a part of my dreams--never were. But I do want to hear my own +music. I want to hear it done for all it's worth. I want to hear +orchestras play it and singers as good as Paula Carresford sing it. And +in order to do that I've got to look ahead a little. I've got to stop +doing always exactly as I damned please. I've got to do things because +somebody besides myself wants them done." + +"Have you got something like that to do to-day--with an eye to the +consequences?" she asked. + +He looked sharply around at her. She was very intent on her driving just +then. "That's a remarkably good guess in a way," he said. "I dread going +to that house to lunch. A month ago I'd have refused--or pretended I +hadn't got the invitation until too late. And I'd have pretended to +myself that it was because I didn't care to play the social game; didn't +want to take on obligations of a kind I couldn't meet. But now I've told +Mrs. Wollaston I'd come, I know the real reason why I don't want to. + +"I said just now I didn't want a fur overcoat nor an automobile, and +that's eighty percent true. And yet, there's a crawly little snob +inside me that's in a panic right now because I haven't got proper +clothes to wear and because I'm going to have to sit down in front of a +lot of funny shaped forks that I don't know the special uses of. + +"Oh, there's more to it than that of course. It's rather a cross-grained +situation. Wollaston doesn't like me. He thinks I'm responsible for his +wife's having kicked over the traces and signed up to sing at Ravinia +this summer. In a way, I suppose I am. She's planning to use that opera +of mine, you remember,--_The Outcry_ we called it--for a novelty, +provided they like the way I've padded up her part. The big rĂ´le in it is +really for the baritone, of course. That's what I've been slaving over +for the last two weeks. If she makes a hit with it, she'll take it to the +Metropolitan next winter. Of course, there's no reason in God's world why +she shouldn't do that if she can get away with it. She hasn't any +children to look after; she told me she didn't even keep house for her +husband. All the same he regards me as a sort of potential homewrecker." + +"You can't quite blame him for that, can you?" Jennie suggested. "If you +began reading a story about a beautiful young opera singer who left her +husband to go back on the stage again and sing an opera by a musical +genius she'd discovered, wouldn't you expect them to fall in love with +each other?" + +"That shows what nonsense stories are," he said. "That couldn't happen to +us in a thousand years. She's beautiful, and kindly, and affectionate. +She's got temperament enough to blow the cork out of any bottle you tried +to hold it down in. But I couldn't fall in love with her if I tried. It +doesn't happen on that basis. Besides which, it's my belief that she's +altogether in love with her husband. All the same, she's taken me up. She +means to push me for all she's worth and let her husband like it or lump +it as he pleases. She's got some plans, I don't know just what, for +showing me off to one or two of the 'right' people to-day. You can +imagine what it will be like, can't you?" + +"I should think it would be rather good fun--that sort of game," she +commented. + +"That's where the forks come in," he said. "And not having a proper +coat. That sort of social skill is the suit of armor those people wear. +I've got to go back to my room and sew up the rip Ben told me about and +trim my cuffs and try to tie my necktie so that the worn-out spots won't +show-and make them do." + +It was but a few minutes later--they had been silent ones--that she +stopped her car in front of the little grocery store where the rickety +outside stair led up to his door. + +"I'll come in with you and sew up the rip in your coat," she said. + +She wouldn't have made that offer, indeed would hardly have driven him up +to his own door, if she had not been a young woman with steady nerves and +a level head, and an abundant confidence in both. Because that dingy +little wooden building with its outside stair to his attic, was the +nucleus of memories that had by no means lost their poignancy. It was +not, after all, so many years ago that she had mounted that stair for the +first time, and it couldn't be considered strange that her heart +quickened a little as she climbed it now. + +The room startled her by being so utterly unchanged. Not only the major +articles in it; the stove, the iron bed, the deal table he wrote at, the +carpenter's bench, the half invented musical typewriter that he had once +attempted to convert an old square piano into, the hollow-backed easy +chair,--but the quite minor and casual trifles as well. On top of the set +of home-made shelves that served for his music and his books was a sort +of still-life composed of a meerschaum pipe with a broken stem and an +empty goblet of pressed glass, standing upon a yellow paper-covered copy +of Anatole France's _Thais_, that had been just like that the last time +she was here. She had stuck a bunch of sweet peas she was wearing into +that goblet. It made an uncannily short bridge to the past, a trivial +reminder like that. + +Evidently he felt it, too. Perhaps he had followed her glance toward that +dusty shelf corner. Because, a moment after he had shut the door behind +them, opened a window and taken a look at the fire, he came hesitantly +and a little awkwardly up to her and took her by the shoulders as if to +draw her into an embrace. He was very gentle about it. + +Also he was ludicrously tentative. If she'd wanted to let herself go she +could have laughed rather hysterically about that. She disengaged herself +from his hands, decisively, indeed, yet without any air of pique. + +"Oh, no, my dear," she said. "Take off your coat and let me get to work. +Where's your sewing kit?" + +He produced it instantly (the room was not in real disorder; it only +looked like that to one who did not understand its system), gave her his +coat, wandered restlessly about for a few minutes and presently came to +rest at the deal table where he had spent the greater part of the last +fortnight, turning over, discontentedly, the sheets of score paper he had +left there. + +Over her sewing she let her mind run free, forgetting this present Sunday +with its problems, mixing a pleasant amalgam of the past. She wasn't +heartbroken, you know, hardly regretful. She had life about as she wanted +it. She never had been in love with March in the accepted meaning of the +phrase--she had never even thought she was--and it is altogether probable +that if she had found him eager to resume the old relation, she would +have felt a certain reluctance about taking it up again. Life changed +with the years and some of its old urgencies quieted down--for the time +anyhow. Still the night when she had worn those sweet peas remained a +fragrant memory. She was recalled to the present by the violent gesture +he made over the score on his work table. + +"This damned thing is rotten," he said with angry conviction. "I knew +it,--I knew it while I wrote it. It may be what they want, but it's +rotten. Straight into the stove is where it ought to go." + +"Is that what you're writing for Mrs. Wollaston?" she asked. + +He nodded. "I was trying to make up my mind whether to take this with me +to-day or not. If she's the musician I think she is, she'll tell me to +carry it out to the ash can." + +"Well, that will be better than putting it in the stove yourself," she +observed, going back with an air of placidity to her sewing, "because +then you'll know it's bad and if you burn it up now, you won't. You +haven't even heard it." + +"I heard it before I wrote it," he argued. "I hear it again when I read +it. That's a silly argument. Of course I know it." + +"You said a little while ago that you'd never heard any of your music +until Mrs. Wollaston sang those songs. They sounded better than you +thought they would." + +"That's different," he protested. "I knew they were good, damned good. +Only I didn't quite realize how good they were. I suppose I won't realize +until I hear her sing this how rotten it is. But I don't need to. I know +well enough right now." + +He went on turning the pages back and forth with gloomy violence, reading +a passage here and another there and failing to get the faintest ray of +comfort out of any of it, even out of the old soiled quires which +belonged obviously to the original score. + +"Is it all bad?" she asked. "Or just the new part." + +"The whole thing," he grunted. + +"That's that Belgian thing, isn't it?" + +"That's the one." + +"Well," she pointed out to him, "you thought that was good once. If it +all looks alike to you this morning, perhaps what you've just been +writing is as good as that, and it's just your mood to-day that makes it +look rotten." + +He closed the score and slapped his hand down upon it with a gesture of +dismissal. Then he rose and leaned back against the edge of the table. +"That's good logic, my dear," he conceded, "but it doesn't cover the +ground. The old stuff was good in a way. I really meant it and felt it +and I managed to get it down on paper. And the new stuff is like it, in +that it's a damned clever imitation of it. I had to do it that way +because I couldn't get back into the old mood. I'm sick of atrocities and +horrors--everything that's got the name of war in it, even though I was +never under fire myself. Well, writing the imitation has made me hate the +thing I was trying to imitate. I stuck at it for the reason I told you +this morning. But, good God, when it results in stuff like this...! +Jennie, what shall I do about it? Shall I take this thing now and chuck +it into the stove and then tell La Chaise and Mrs. Wollaston to go to the +devil? Or shall I tuck it under my arm like a good little boy and see if +I can get away with it?" + +She looked at him thoughtfully. "What is the new thing you want to +write?" she asked. + +He smiled. "You're a wonder, Jennie," he said. "There is a new thing. +I'm simply swamped in it. It won't let me alone. It's been driving me +pretty nearly crazy. That's why it's been such perfect hell sticking to +this other thing. Jennie, it's another opera. A big one, full size. A +romantic fairy opera. I haven't got it in order yet. It isn't fit to +talk about. But it's about a princess, a little blue-eyed, pale-haired +princess, who is under a spell. She's dumb. She's dumb except in the +presence of her true lover. Do you see? They are trying to cure her and +they can't. But mysteriously in the night they hear her singing. Her +lover is with her, and they try to solve the mystery. Maybe they kill +him, I don't know. Or maybe they make him faithless to her. I don't know +whether there is a fairy story like that or whether I just made it up. +And I haven't worked it out at all. I haven't any words for it, no book, +nor anything. But I tell you it comes in waves, whole scenes from it. +I'd like a hundred hands to write it down with. I'd like to take one +header into it and never come up. And meanwhile I'm slugging away at +that other damned thing because Mrs. Wollaston and LaChaise want +it,--because it's the main chance." + +She asked why he didn't tell them about the new idea and get them to +adopt it instead, but he greeted this suggestion with an impatient laugh. + +"It would be absolutely impossible for Ravinia in the first place," he +said. "The thing would need as big a production as, oh, _PellĂ©as and +Melisande_. And then this woman could never sing it. She isn't the type. +This is different altogether from anything she could do. Oh, no, it's +quite hopeless until after I've succeeded with something else. But, oh, +my God, Jennie, if you could hear it!" + +She had finished her repairs on his coat and rising now held it up to +him. While he was groping for the sleeves, she asked quietly, "Who is the +princess, Tony? The dumb little princess with the blue eyes." + +For a second he stood just as he was, like one suddenly frozen, then he +settled into his coat, walked over to his work chair and dropped into it, +leaning forward and propping up his head with his hands. "Yes," he said. +"In a way, perhaps, there is some one. That's what I was going to tell +you about. She came in as quiet as a little ghost, just as Mrs. +Wollaston was beginning to sing and she sat down beside me without a +word. And somehow while we listened, we--we were the same person. I can't +make you understand that. It never happened to me before, nothing in the +least like it, nothing so--intimate. I felt that song go vibrating right +through her. She didn't speak at all, even after it was over, except to +say that we mustn't talk--while we were waiting for the people in the +other room to go away. And then Mrs. Wollaston came and got me. She +didn't see her at all. She had disappeared somehow by that time." + +He stopped but Jennie, it seemed, had nothing to say just then. She +turned away to her outdoor wrap but she laid it down again and stood +still when he went on. + +"You don't want to run away with the idea that I'm in love with her," he +said. "That isn't it. That's particularly--not it. I haven't an idea who +she is nor any intention of trying to find out. Even if I knew the way to +begin getting acquainted with her, I'm inclined to think I'd avoid it. +But as an abstraction--no, that's not what I mean--as a symbol of what +I'll find waiting for me whenever I get down to the core of things ... +I've got a sort of--superstition if I don't do anything to--to break the +spell, you know, that sometime she'll come back just the way she came +that night." + +With a little exaggeration of the significance of the act, she put on the +coat she had crossed the room to get. He got up and came over to help her +but he stopped with a sudden clenching of the hands, and a wave of color +in his face as he saw the look in hers. At that she came swiftly to meet +him, pulled him up in a tight embrace and kissed him. + +"Good luck, my dear," she said. "I must be running and so must you. I'd +take you with me only we go different ways. Carry your score along to the +Wollastons. That's the first step to the princess, I guess." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +IN HARNESS + + +The episode upon which March had built the opera he called _The Outcry_, +was one that was current during the autumn of 1914. A certain Belgian +town had been burnt and it had been officially explained that this was +done because the German officer who was billeted upon the burgomaster had +been shot. The story was that the burgomaster's son shot him because he +had raped his sister. The thing got complete possession of March's mind. +At first just the horror of it and later its dramatic and musical +possibilities. He saw, in orchestral terms, the sodden revelry in that +staid house--with its endless cellars of Burgundy. He saw the tight-drawn +terror in the girl's room where she lay in bed. He saw the room lighted +fitfully by the play of searchlights over the city; the sinister entrance +from a little balcony through the French widow, of the officer in +uniform, his shadow flung ahead of him by the beam of the searchlight. He +saw the man, blood--as well as wine--drunk, garrulous and fanatic with +the megalomania of the conquering invader. He saw the man's intention +made clear from the first, but the execution of it luxuriously postponed. +Safely postponed because of the terrified girl's acceptance of his +assurance that if anything happened to him, if a hand were raised against +him, her father and a dozen more hostages would be shot and the town +burned to the ground. Then came the girl's irrepressible outcry when he +first touched her; the brother's knock at the door; her frantic effort to +reassure him frustrated by the officer's drunken laugh; the forcing of +the door and the fight half in the dark; the killing of the girl and then +of her ravisher. + +The thing that wouldn't let March alone, that forced him into the +undertaking, was the declaration of the brutal philosophy of the +conqueror made by the officer while he gloated over the girl who was to +be his prey; the chance to put into musical terms that paranoiac delusion +of world conquest. One recognized in it, vaguely, some of 'Wagner's +themes and some of Straus', distorted and grown monstrous. + +The thing had haunted March, as I have said, and he had tried to find +somebody who would write him the book, the indispensable preliminary to +his getting to work. Failing here, he had audaciously made up his mind to +write it himself. It was not his first attempt to do, in the mere light +of nature, a thing commonly supposed to be impossible except at the end +of painful instruction. He had once experimented at painting in oils, he +had tried his hand at the stylus, he had made a few figurines in +modeling-wax. He wrote his play, then, by the simple process of building +first with painstaking accuracy, a model of his stage, the girl's room in +that burgomaster's house with the French windows giving upon the little +balcony. He modeled the furniture in plastiscene. He bought three little +dolls to represent his characters. And then he reported what he saw +happening in that room; what his characters did and what they said. By +the time he had finished this work, the music was all in his head. He +couldn't write it down fast enough. + +It had been one of the great experiences of his life, writing that opera. +Jennie's reminder that he had once believed it good, was a conservative +statement. LaChaise and Paula were deeply impressed by the power, both of +its music and its drama and saw possibilities in it for a sensational +success. The drawback, fatal unless it could be overcome, lay in the fact +that the dominant rĂ´le in it was that of the baritone. Dramatically the +soprano's part was good enough, but there was nowhere near enough for +her to sing. There was no reason though, they both asserted, and sent +March away from their conference at least half convinced, why the girl's +part could not be greatly amplified. There were various expedients;--a +preliminary scene between the girl and her brother; an apostrophe to an +absent lover; a prayer. Also instead of being frozen into terror-stricken +silence by her ravisher's monstrous purpose, she could just as well be +represented as making a desperate resistance. She could plead with him, +denounce him; attempt to take advantage of his drunkenness and trick him. +It could be made as good a woman's part as the big act of _Tosca_. + +March had assented to all this and gone to work. + +Paula did not tell him, as he had gloomily prophesied to Jennie, to take +the new first scene he brought her that Sunday out to the ash can. And, +indeed, it sounded so much better when they read it over together, that +he was for the moment reassured. But her attitude toward the opera was +different from the one she had taken toward the group of Whitman songs, +and this difference grew more marked at their subsequent sessions over +it. There had been about the songs the glamour of discovery. One does not +hasten to apply the assayer's acid to treasure trove. And, too, it was an +altruistic impulse which had prompted her to take up the songs. + +There aren't many people who can travel steadily, or very far, on that +motivation, and Paula was not one of them. From the moment when she took +the plunge, ignored--all but defied--her husband's wishes, and signed the +Ravinia contract, she ceased to be concerned for anything, broadly +speaking, but her own success. March's opera, then, was not, to her, the +expression of his genius but a potential vehicle for hers. She was +acutely critical of it. She knew what she wanted and it was not +thinkable that she should put up with anything less. + +She was not aware of this change of attitude. She was blessed with a +vigorous non-analytical mind that asked no awkward questions, +suggested no paralyzing doubts. The best thing that could possibly +happen to March's opera was that it should be made to fit her; that it +should demand precisely all her resources and nothing that was beyond +them. Obviously, since it was going to be her opera, a thing she was +going to wear. + +Had she been, as many eminent persons in her profession are, a mere +bundle of insensate egotisms complicated by a voice, she would have +driven March to flat rebellion in a week, all his good resolutions +notwithstanding. What made it tolerable was that she had a good musical +intelligence of her own, and a real dramatic sense. He could recognize, +what she wanted as an intelligible thing, consistent with itself. Only, +it was not his thing-not the thing he saw. By reason of its very +consistency it was never the thing he saw. + +"She wouldn't do it that way," he would protest. + +"I would," Paula would tell him. "I wouldn't lie there, whimpering." + +He was always arguing with her--wrangling, it almost came to, +sometimes--in defense of his own conception. For a sample: + +"Look at what she is; a burgomaster's daughter. That means prosperous, +narrow-minded, middle-class people. She's convent-bred, devout. She's +still young or she'd be married. She's altogether without experience. +She's frightened just as a child would be over what's going on in the +house. And the prayer she says when she goes to bed would be just the +nice little prayer a child would say, an Our Father or a Hail Mary, +whatever it might be. As simple as possible, on the surface, but with an +undertone of overmastering terror. The sort of Promethean defiance you're +talking about would be inconceivable to a child like that." + +"I suppose it would, to most of them," she admitted, "but this one's +going to be different. After all, it's the exceptional ones that usually +have operas written about them. I don't believe all the dancers in +Alexandria were like Thais, nor all the gipsy cigar-makers in Seville +like Carmen. I don't believe many little Japanese girls would feel about +Pinkerton the way Cio Cio San did. Why can't our Dolores be an +exception, too?" + +The only answer he could make to that was that it spoiled the other +figure, reduced him from a sort of cosmic monster to the mere custom-made +grand-opera villain. + +"What if it does?" she retorted. "This isn't being written for Scotti or +Vanni Marcoux. It's being written for me." That was the tonic chord they +always came back to. It was Paula's opera. + +March presently began to feel, too, that he was growing to be nothing +more than Paula's composer. It was important to the success of their +enterprise that his reputation should be intensively exploited among the +rich and influential who figured as patrons of the Ravinia season. She +went at the task of building it as ruthlessly as she remodeled his opera. + +Her demands upon him were explicit. In the first place he was to bring +her all his music, early as well as late, trivial as well as important, +in order that she might select from it what, if anything, might be +exploited at once. She had promised to give a recital just before Easter, +in aid of one of the local charities--it was one that boasted an +important list of patronesses--and if she could make an exclusive program +of his songs she would like to do so. Then, while it was too late to get +any of his compositions performed by the orchestra this season, it would +be a good thing to get Mr. Stock to read something in the hope of his +taking it for next year. An announcement, even a mere unofficial +intimation, that Anthony March (whose opera ... and so on)--was to be +represented on the symphony programs next season, would help a lot. + +What dismayed him most was her insistence--she was clear as a bell about +this--that he himself get up the accompaniments to some of the simpler of +his songs so that when she took him out to meet people who wanted to hear +a sample of his music then and there, they could manage, between them, +some sort of compliance. He nearly got angry, but decided to laugh +instead, over her demand that he be waiting, back stage, when she gave +her recital of his songs (which she did with great success) to come out +at the end and take his bow in his now discarded uniform. It was the only +reference she ever made to his shabby appearance. + +(It was steadily growing shabbier, too, since she left him hardly any +time at all for tuning pianos. She would have been utterly horrified had +she known what tiny sums he was living on from week to week. And it never +occurred to her when she suggested that a certain score of his ought to +be copied, that he could not afford to take it out to a professional +copyist and so sat up nights doing it himself. He did it rather easily, +to be sure, since it was one of the numerous things at which he had +earned a living.) + +There was only one of her many demands that he persistently refused to +comply with. And she took this refusal rather hard; acted more hurt than +angry about it, to be sure, but came back to it again and again. When she +discovered that he made no pretense of living at his father's house, she +asked for his real address so that she could always be sure of getting +at him when she wanted him. This he would not give her. If he did, he +said, it would only result in his staying away from there and doing his +work somewhere else. It was one of his simple necessities to know that he +couldn't be got at. He would make every possible concession. Would go, or +telephone, at punctiliously regular and brief intervals, to his father's +house to learn whether she had sent for him, but give up the secrecy of +his lair he would not. It wasn't possible. + +I think she compensated herself for this refusal by sending for him +sometimes when she did not really need him, just to be on the safe side, +and, on the same basis, engaged his attendance ahead from day to day. +Anyhow, she occupied, in one way or another, practically the whole of his +time; and the dumb little blue-eyed princess knocked at his door in vain. +Only in those hours when sheer fatigue had sent him to bed had she any +opportunity of visiting him. Sometimes she made white nights for him by +haunting those hours, refusing to go away; sometimes, by not coming at +all, she filled him with terror lest she had gone for good--would not +come back even when he was ready for her. When that panic was upon him he +hated Paula with a devouring hatred. + +Of the human original of his blue-eyed princess, he saw during those +weeks, nothing. On that first Sunday when he lunched at the house he +heard them speak of a member of the family, a daughter of John Wollaston, +named Mary, who had been living in New York and had recently returned but +was not lunching at home that day. He got the idea then that she might be +the girl who had so mysteriously come in and sat beside him while Paula +sang; and without any evidence whatever to support this surmise, it +became a settled conviction. But an odd shrinking, almost superstitious, +as he had confessed to Jennie, from doing anything that might break the +spell kept him from asking any questions. + +During the first week of his almost daily visits to the house, he got +repeated intimations of her, a glimpse once through an open door on the +third floor into a room that struck him as being, probably, hers. The +impression, once more, when he was coming down from the music room that +this was the door which he had just heard softly shut as if some one, the +princess herself, of course, who had stood listening to the music for a +while, had withdrawn there when she heard his step on the stairs. Once on +the settee in the hall he saw a riding crop and a small beaver hat that +he felt a curious certainty belonged to her and once out of a confusion +of young voices in the drawing-room, and a dance tune going on the +Victrola, he heard some one call out her name, hers he was sure though he +didn't hear her answer. Perhaps she had answered without speaking. The +dumb princess again. + +Then suddenly even these faint hints of her presence ceased, and he +remarked their absence with a troubled wonder until one day Paula +volunteered the statement that Mary had gone away on a visit for a month +or two, out to Wyoming, where a great friend of hers, Olive Corbett, and +her husband had a ranch. + +By asking a few intelligent questions, he could have found out a lot +more about her from Paula for she was disposed to talk freely enough +about the family life she was so oddly enclosed in, and their perpetual +quarrels about the opera never carried over into their breathing spells. +In the long hours of their almost daily sessions the occasional rests +made up quite a total and March accumulated a lot of information about +Paula herself. + +Indeed it was not quite as idle as that sounds. Paula talked to him +thirstily, gave him somehow the impression that she had had no one for a +good many years with whom she could converse without reservation in her +own idiom. + +She came, he learned, of a Virginia family which had migrated during her +early childhood to California. It was obvious that they were well-bred, +but equally so that they were not very competent. The victims, he judged, +of a lot of played-out southern ideas and traditions. They were still +living and March allowed himself to guess that they were one of the minor +reasons why Doctor John had to earn a lot of money. + +Paula with her splendid physique and gorgeous voice must have looked to +them like the family hope. They had managed at considerable sacrifice to +send her abroad, but evidently without any idea of the time and the money +it takes to erect even the most promising material into a genuine +success. After a year or two, she had been abandoned to make her way as +best she could. + +Even now that they were safely consigned to the past, Paula could not +talk about the shifts and hardships of that time with any relish. The +discouragements must have sunk in pretty deep. She hinted--it was not +the sort of topic she could discourse candidly about--that the +blackest of those discouragements had come from the amorous advances +of men who had it in their power to open opportunities to her but +wanted a _quid pro quo_. + +He asked her in that connection whether during those hard times she had +never felt inclined to fall in love on her own account. + +"I never cared a snap of my fingers for any man," she said with obvious +sincerity, "until I saw John." + +This slowness of her erotic development surprised him rather until he +evoked the explanation that her energies had been concentrated upon her +musical ambition. Music, since she was a real musician, had been a +genuine emotional outlet for her. + +March speculated rather actively upon the relation between Paula and her +husband. There was no dark room in the composer's mind. He was the other +pole from Aunt Lucile. All human problems set his mind at work. He was +not widely read in the literature of psychology and he had a rough +working theory which he regarded as his own, a dynamic theory. People got +started off in life with a certain amount of energy. It varied immensely +between individuals, of course, but one couldn't alter the total of his +own. Upon that store you ran until you were spent. What channels this +stream of energy cut for itself was partly a matter of luck, partly one +of self-determination. The important fact was that there was only so much +and that what went down one way did not also go down another. It might be +a hundred rivulets or one river, it couldn't be both. This philosophy was +largely responsible for the ordering of his own life, for his doing +without possessions, for the most part without friends, for his keeping +the brake set so tightly upon his sex impulses. + +John must have come into Paula's life, he reflected, at a time when the +musical outlet to her energies had been dammed up. Her main stream, like +that of the Mississippi, had cut a new channel for itself. Had there +been, he wondered, some similar obstruction in the main channel of John +Wollaston's emotional life? Anyhow, there was no doubt that for the five +years since this cataclysm had occurred, the course of true love had run +smooth and deep. But suppose now that, through LaChaise's intervention, +Paula's musical career was again opened to her, would the current turn +that way? Would John be left stranded? Had Paula herself any misgivings +to this effect? + +That she was deeply troubled about her present relation with John and in +general about John himself, would have been plain to a less penetrating +eye than Anthony's. There was no open quarrel between them. Wollaston +dropped into the music room sometimes, late in the afternoon, to ask how +the opera was getting along. His manner to March on these occasions was +one of, perhaps, slightly overwrought politeness, but the intention of it +did not seem hostile. Toward Paula he presented the image of humorous, +affectionate concern, the standard behavior of the perfect husband. + +It was Paula, on these occasions, who gave the show away, betraying by a +self-conscious eagerness to make him welcome, the fact that he was not. +She made the mistake of telling him he looked tired and worried, facts +too glaringly true to be bandied about in the presence of a stranger. He +looked to March as if he were approaching the elastic limit of complete +exhaustion. That it looked pretty much like that to Paula herself was +made evident from the way she once spoke about him, her eyes full of +tears, after he had left the room. + +"He's working so insanely hard," she said. "Nights as well as days. I +don't believe he's had five hours' consecutive sleep this week." + +When March wanted to know why he did it, she hesitated, but gave him, at +last, a candid answer. No one else would have answered it at all. + +"I don't think it can be because he feels he has to," she said. "To earn +the money, I mean. Of course, he's been buying a big farm, half of it, +for Rush. But he said the other day that if I needed any extra money for +this"--she nodded toward the score on the piano--"I was to let him know. +Of course, he isn't happy about it and I suppose it makes him take +things harder." + +Naturally enough, March agreed with her here. John Wollaston was clearly +a member of the gold coast class. It wasn't thinkable that his financial +difficulties could be real. The unreality of them was, of course, the +measure of the genuineness of his fear of losing Paula,--of seeing the +main current of her life shift once more to its old channel. Did Paula +see that, March wondered? What was it she foresaw? + +He got a partial answer one day in the course of one of their quarrels +about the opera. He had unguardedly given expression to his growing +despondency about it. + +"This thing can't go," he had said. "It's getting more lifeless from week +to week. We're draining all the blood out of it and this stuff we're +putting in is sawdust." + +She whipped round upon him in a sudden tempest. "It's got to go," she +said. "It's got to be made to go. If what you're putting into it is +sawdust, take it out. Put some heart into it." + +He had been staring gloomily at the score. Now he turned away from it. +"That's what I don't seem able to do," he said. + +She came up and took him by the shoulders so violently that it might +almost be said she shook him. "You can't let go like that. It's too late. +Everything I've got in the world is mixed up in it." She must have read +his unspoken thought there for she went on, "Oh, I suppose you'd say I'd +still have John if I did fail. Well, I wouldn't. He's mixed up in it, +too. He'd never forgive me if I failed. It's the fear I'll fail and make +myself look cheap and ridiculous that makes him hate it so. Well, I'm not +going to. Make up your mind to that!" + +Later, when he was leaving, under a promise to improve some of the +passages they had been arguing about, she reverted to this aspect of the +matter and added something. "John can see what a failure would mean. But +what the other thing--the big real success--would mean to both of us, he +hasn't the faintest idea of. He won't till I get it." + +"He's a famous person, himself, of course," March observed, not without a +gleam of mischief. + +She echoed the word quite blankly, and he went on to amplify. + +"That European Medical Commission that was out here a few weeks ago +attended some of his clinics in a body. I don't suppose there's a +first-class hospital anywhere in this country or in Europe where his name +isn't known. That operation he did on Sarah turned out to be a classic, +you know. He used a new technique in it which has become standard since." + +But it seemed to him that she still looked incredulous when he went away, +incapable of really digesting that idea at all. No, he wouldn't have bet +much on the chance that any great success of hers could reunite them. The +love life that they had been enjoying this last five years hadn't thrown +out any radicles to bind them together--children for instance. + +March wondered why there had been no children. He was not inclined to +accept the obvious explanation that she hadn't wanted any. She had spoken +once of her childlessness in a tone that didn't quite square with that +explanation. Nor had she said it quite as she would, had she felt that +her husband shared equally in her disappointment. It was all very +intangible, of course, just the way she inflected the sentence, "You see, +I haven't any children." Was it John that didn't want them? Well, he had +two of his own, of course. Had he shrunk from having this new passion of +his domesticated? And then he was a gynecologist. Was he, perhaps, afraid +for her? That explanation had a sort of plausibility about it for Anthony +March. If that were true, his caution had only brought him face to face +with a greater risk. March felt sorry for John Wollaston. + +But it quite truly never occurred to him to hold himself in the smallest +degree responsible for the husband's troubles. To a man with a better +developed possessive sense, it might have occurred that he was poaching +in another's preserves. When a husband made it plain that he chose to +keep a particularly rare and valuable possession such as a wife like +Paula must be considered, in the tower of brass LaChaise had talked +about, it became the duty of every other well-disposed male to take pains +to leave no keys, rope ladders or files lying about by which she might +effect her escape. But a consideration of this sort would not even have +been intelligible to March, let alone troublesome. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AN INTERVENTION + + +Mary could not have described the thing there was about old Nat's manner +of going by her door that led her to halt him and inquire what he was up +to. One sees, sometimes, one of his children gliding very innocently +along toward the nearest way out with an effect of held breath that +prompts investigation. In this sixty-year old child, upon whom the terror +of John Wollaston's desperate illness lay more visibly than on any other +member of the household, this look of gusto was especially striking. +Mary's question was prompted by no more serious an impulse than to share +with him a momentary escape from the all-enveloping misery. + +But she found old Nat unwilling to share his source of satisfaction with +her. He protested, indeed, with an air of deeply aggrieved innocence, +that nothing of the sort existed. A man was waiting now in the lower hall +who had come to make the customary inquiries. Nat had conveyed them to +Paula and was returning with her answer. This was so flagrantly +disingenuous that Mary smiled. + +"Who is the man?" she asked. + +The old servant shuffled his feet. "It's that good-for-nothing piano +tuner, Miss Mary," he told her reluctantly. "I reckon you don't know much +about him. He's been coming around a lot since you've been away. He's +been sticking to Miss Paula like a leech, right up to the day your father +got sick. Then he didn't come any more and I thought we were done with +him. But he came back to-day and asked me if Miss Paula was up in the +music room. He'd have gone right straight up to that room where Doctor +John is fighting for his life if I hadn't stopped him." + +"Did you tell him father was ill?" she asked, and was astonished at the +flare of passion this evoked from him. + +"It ain't no business of his, Miss Mary," he said grimly. "Nothing about +this family is any business of his." Then as if anxious to prevent the +significance of that from reaching her, he hurried on. "He was so sure +Miss Paula wanted to see him, I told him if he'd wait, I'd inform her +that he was here. I've done told her and she said he was to go away. She +couldn't be bothered with him. And then she said to me with tears in her +eyes, 'I wish I'd never seen him, Nat.' Those were her words, Miss Mary. +'I wish my eyes had never beheld him!' That's what she said to me not a +minute ago. I'm going down to fix him so she'll never see him again." + +"You needn't go down," Mary said decisively. "I'll see him myself." + +She had got home that morning summoned by a telegram, one of those +carefully composed encouraging telegrams that are a simple distillate of +despair. During the three days it had taken to accomplish her journey +from the ranch, she had gradually relinquished all hope of finding her +father alive. Rush, who met the train, had reassured her. It was a bad +case of double pneumonia. They were expecting the crisis within +twenty-four hours. The doctors gave him an even chance, but the boy was +more confident. "They don't know dad," he said. "He isn't going to die." + +On the way back to the house he had outlined the facts for her. His +father had driven out to the farm in his open roadster a week ago Sunday +to see how he and Graham were getting on--driven out alone, though he had +spoken the night before, over the telephone, of bringing Paula with him. +For some reason that hadn't come off. Dad had seemed well enough, then, +though rather tired and dispirited. The day had begun as if it meant to +be fine, for a change, but it had turned off cold again and begun to rain +while they were walking over the place. His father, he was afraid, had +got pretty wet. When they got back to the farm-house they found a +telephone message urgently summoning him to town, and he had driven away, +in the open car, without changing. + +Rush had meant to telephone but had neglected this--they were terribly +busy, of course, trying to get things done without any labor to do them +with. He had come home Wednesday, on a promise to Graham's kid sister +that he would attend a school dance of hers. He had dressed at home but +not dined there and had seen nothing of his father until very late, about +two o'clock in the morning, when he noticed a light in his room as he +passed on the way to his own. + +"I don't know why I stopped," he said. "He was talking and his voice +didn't sound natural, not as if he was telephoning nor talking to any +one in the room, either. He was trying to telephone--to the hospital to +send an ambulance for him. He hadn't any breath at all, even then, and +the thermometer he'd been taking his temperature with read a hundred +and four." + +"But--the _hospital_?" + +"I know," Rush agreed. "It's pretty rum. He stuck to it. Wanted to be got +straight out of the house without rousing anybody. He was a little bit +delirious, of course. I agreed to it to pacify him, but I telephoned +straight to Doctor Darby and he told me not to do anything till he got +around. It wasn't more than ten minutes before he came. Paula had roused +by that time, and she persuaded Darby against the hospital. She suggested +the music room herself and as soon as he saw it he said it was just the +place. They've got a regular hospital rigged up for him there and two men +nurses. But the main person on the job is Paula herself. The two men keep +watch and watch, but she's there practically all the time. They say she +hasn't slept in more than half-hour snatches since that first night. She +won't let any of us come near him--and Darby backs her up. The doctors +are all crazy about her. Say it'll be her doing if dad pulls through. +Well--she'd better make it!" + +There wasn't time to explore the meaning of that last remark for they +were then pulling up at the door. She laid it aside for future reference, +however. She was so fortunate as to meet Doctor Darby on the stairs and +so to get at once the latest and most authoritative report. + +He brightened at the sight of her but she thought he didn't look very +hopeful. He said though, that he believed her father was going to get +well. "Medically, he hasn't more than an even chance. He hasn't much +fight in him somehow. But that stepmother of yours means to pull him +through. She doesn't mean to be beaten and I don't believe she will be. +I've never seen the equal of her. It shows they're born, not made. She's +never had, your aunt assures me, any nursing experience whatever." + +Mary thought she detected a twinkle in Darby's eye over this mention of +Aunt Lucile, but it was gone before she could make sure. + +"You're to go up and see him for five minutes," he went on. "Paula's +keeping a look-out for you. He mustn't be allowed to talk, of course, but +she wants him to know you're back. She has an idea, and she's probably +right, that he is worrying about you." + +"What is there that I can do?" she asked. "To help, I mean." + +"Hope," he told her bluntly. "Pray if you can. Cheer up your aunt a bit, +if possible; she's in despair. Only don't try to take away any of her +occupations. That's about all." + +"In other words, nothing," she commented. + +"Well, none of us can do much more than that," he said, "excepting +always, Paula." + +It was not until she had spent that heart-tearing five minutes at her +father's bedside, while she talked cheerful little encouraging futilities +in a voice dry with the effort she had to make to keep it from breaking, +that she saw her aunt--and felt grateful for Doctor Darby's warning. Mary +had never thought of Lucile before as an old woman, but she seemed more +than that now,--broken and, literally, in despair--of her brother's life. +And beyond this there was a bitterness which Mary could not, at first, +account for. + +"Paula, I hear, has allowed you to see him. For five minutes! Well, that +is more than she has allowed me. Or any of us. It was a chance for +showing off, I suppose, that was more than she could resist." + +"I was a little afraid it might be that," Mary admitted. "Afraid of +finding her--carefully costumed for the part, you know. But she wasn't. +She didn't come into the room with me at all; just told me not to show I +was shocked by the way he looked and not to let him talk. And she seemed +glad I was back; not for me but because it might help him. It seems a +miracle that he's still alive, after almost a week of that, and I guess +it is she who has done it. They all say so." + +"Men!" the old woman cried fiercely. "All men! The two nurses as well. +There's something about her that makes idiots of all of them. She knows +it. And she revels in it. It's the breath of life to her. She has played +fast and loose with your father's happiness for it. And now she's playing +with his life as well. And feeling, all the while, that it is a very +noble repentance!" + +"Repentance for what?" Mary asked. "Rush said something like that. I +thought, before I went away, that father was getting reconciled to the +Ravinia idea. Do you think it was worrying about ..." + +"No, I don't," Lucile interrupted shortly. "Your father was exposed, +soaking wet, to a cold north wind, while he was driving forty miles in an +open car. That's the reason he took pneumonia. And it's the only reason. +I don't know what Rush may have been saying to you, but I've known your +father ever since he was born, and I can tell you that Paula might have +gone on making a fool of herself to the end of time without his dying of +it. He was--fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that +she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she +hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this +emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.--Meanwhile, +she is adding to her collection five new men!" + +"I don't believe," said Mary quietly, "that there is one of them she +knows exists. Or wouldn't poison," she added with a smile, "to improve +father's chance of getting well." + +This won a nod of grim assent. "There are plenty of them. She could +replace them easily enough. But her hunger for their worship is +insatiable. For a while your father's--infatuation satisfied her. She may +have tried to pull herself up to his level. I dare say she did. But even +at that time she could not abide Wallace Hood, though he was kindness +itself to her, simply because he kept his head. Unfortunately, this poor +young musician was not able to keep his." + +It seemed to Mary, even when allowance was made for the bitterness of the +desperate old woman, who then went on for the better part of an hour with +her bill of particulars, that this must be true. Paula must have lost her +head, at any rate. What Mary herself had seen the beginning of, must +have gone on at an accelerated speed until it was beyond all bounds. +There had been few hours when March might not come to the house and none +to which he did not stay. There were whole days when Paula was hardly out +of his company. She took him about with her to people's houses. She +talked about him when she went alone. Those who had at first not known +what to think, at last had come to believe that there was only one thing +they could. + +"I tried to suggest to her, quite early, before it had gone so far, that +she was in danger of being misunderstood. It only made her furious. And +John was hardly less so when I mentioned to him that I had spoken to her. +He would see nothing; kept a face of granite through it all." + +"Aunt Lucile," Mary asked, after a little silence, "do you think she has +really been--unfaithful to father?" + +Miss Wollaston hesitated. "Should you consider the conduct I have +described, to be an example of fidelity?" + +"I mean, in the divorce court sense," Mary persisted. + +"That," her aunt said, more nearly in her old manner than anything that +Mary had yet seen--"that is a matter upon which I have no opinion." + +It was a possibility that Mary had contemplated as early as that first +night of all, when Paula, having sung his song, had come herself to +find him in Annie's old bedroom where she had him hidden and with a +broken laugh had pulled him up in her arms and kissed him, unaware that +she was not alone with him. One kiss, as an isolated phenomenon, didn't +mean much, Mary allowed, but when a man and a woman who were going to +be left alone together a lot, started off that way, they were likely +to--get somewhere. And where the man was the composer of that love song +and the woman the singer of it, it was almost a foregone conclusion +that they would. + +But this was not the conclusion that she had come to when she stopped +old Nat on his way down-stairs to turn March out of the house. The +evidence, Rush's and Aunt Lucile's, might seem to point that way but it +didn't, somehow, make a convincing picture. I think, though, that in any +case, she would have gone down to see him. + +He had found himself a seat on a black oak settee in the hall around the +corner of the stairs and his attitude, when she came upon him, was very +like what it had been the other time, bent forward a little, his hands +between his knees, as if he were braced for something. + +"Mrs. Wollaston won't be able to see you to-day," she said. He sprang to +his feet and she added instantly, "I'm her stepdaughter, Mary Wollaston. +Won't you come in?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned and led the +way into the drawing-room. + +So far it had been rehearsed, on her way down-stairs, even to the chair +in the bow window which she indicated, having seated herself, for him to +sit down in. She had up to that point an extraordinarily buoyant sense of +self-possession. This left her for one panicky instant when she felt him +looking at her a little incredulously as if, once more, he wondered +whether she were really there. + +"I think, perhaps, you haven't heard of father's illness," she began--not +just as she had expected to. "Or did you come to ask about him?" + +"No," he said. "I hadn't heard. Is it--yes, of course it must +be--serious. I'm sorry." + +She was struck by the instantaneous change in his manner. From being, +part of him, anyhow, a little remote--wool-gathering would have been Aunt +Lucile's term--he was, vividly, here. It wasn't possible to doubt the +reality of his concern. As a consequence, when she began informing him of +the state of things she found herself pulled away, more and more, from +the impersonal phraseology of a medical bulletin. She told how the attack +had come on; how they had put up a bed for him in the music room, where +there was the most air, and begun what it was evident from the first +would be a life-and-death struggle; she quoted what Rush had told her +when he met the train. "I agree with Rush," she concluded. "They let me +see him, for a few minutes, this morning, just so he'd know that I had +come back. Yet it isn't possible not to believe that he will get well." + +When she had squeezed away the tears that had dimmed her eyes, she saw +that his own were bright with them. "He's more than just a great man," he +said gravely. Then, after a moment's silence, "If there's anything I can +do... It would be a great privilege to be of service to him. As errand +boy, any sort of helper. I had some hospital experience at Bordeaux." + +It was, on the face of it, just such an offer as any kindly disposed +inquirer would have made. Such as Wallace Hood, for example, had, in +fact, made, only rather more eloquently less than an hour ago. But Mary's +impulse was not to answer as she had answered Wallace with a mere polite +acknowledgment of helpless good intentions. In fact, she could find, for +the moment, no words in which to answer him at all. + +He said then, "I mustn't keep you." + +Even in response to that she made no movement of release. "There's +nothing, even for me to do," she said, and felt from the look this drew +from him that he must, incredibly, have caught from her some inkling of +what her admission really meant. + +He did not repeat his move to go, nor speak, and there was silence +between them for, perhaps, the better part of a minute. It was +terminated, startlingly, for her, by her brother's appearance in the +doorway. He had on his raincoat and carried his hat and an umbrella in +his hands. + +"Mary, I'm just going out" ... he began, then broke off short, stared, +and came on into the room. March rose, but Mary, after one glance at +Rush's face, sat back a little more deeply in her seat. Rush ignored her +altogether. + +"My sister has been away during the last few weeks," he said to March. It +had, oddly, the effect of a set speech. "If she had not been, I'm sure +she would have told you, as I do now ..." He stumbled there, evidently +from the sudden blighting sense that he was talking like an actor--or an +ass. "This isn't the time for you to come here," he went on. "This house +isn't the place for you to come. When my father's well enough to take +matters into his own hands again, he'll do as he sees fit. For the +present you will have to consider that I'm acting for him." + +Mary's eyes during the whole of that speech never wavered from March's +face. There was nothing in it at all at first but clear astonishment, but +presently there came a look of troubled concern that gave her an impulse +to smile. Evidently it disconcerted her brother heavily for at the end of +an appalling silence, not long enough however, to allow March to get his +wits together for a reply, Rush turned about abruptly and strode from the +room. A moment later they heard the house door close behind him. + +The two in the drawing-room were left looking at each other. Then, +"Please sit down again," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +NOT COLLECTABLE + + +The effect of Rush's interruption was rather that of a thunderclap, +hardly more. Recalling it, Mary remembered having looked again into +March's face as the street door banged shut to see whether he was +laughing. She herself was sharply aware of the comic effect of her +brother's kicking himself out of the house instead of his intended +victim, but she could not easily have forgiven a sign of such awareness +from March. + +He had betrayed none, had tried, she thought--his amazement and concern +had rendered him pretty near inarticulate--to tell her what the look in +his face had already made evident even to Rush; his innocence not only of +any amorous intent toward Paula but even of the possibility that any one +could have interpreted the relation between them in that way. He might +have managed some such repudiation as that had she not cut across his +effort with an apology for her brother. + +It had been a terrible week for them all, she said. Especially for Rush +and for his Aunt Lucile, who had been here from the beginning. Even the +few hours since her own return this morning had been enough to teach her +how nearly unendurable that sort of helplessness was. + +It must have been in this connection that he told her what had not got +round to her before, the case of his sister Sarah whom they had watched +as one condemned to death until John Wollaston came and saved her. "He +simply wouldn't be denied," March said. "He was all alone; even his +colleagues didn't agree with him. And my father, having decided that she +was going to die and that this must, therefore, be the will of God, +didn't think it ought to be tampered with. + +"I remember your father said to him, 'Man, the will of God this morning +is waiting to express itself in the skill of my hands,' and it didn't +sound like blasphemy either. He carried father off in his apron, just as +he was, to the hospital and I went along. I scraped an acquaintance +afterward with one of the students who had been there in the theatre +watching him operate and got him to tell me about it. They felt it was a +historic occasion even at the time; cheered him at the end of it. And +that sort of virtuosity does seem worthier of cheers than any scraping of +horsehair over cat-gut could ever come to. I wonder how many lives there +are to-day that owe themselves altogether to him just as my sister +does.--How many children who never could have been born at all except for +his skill and courage. Because, of course, courage is half of it." + +Upon Mary the effect of this new portrait of her father was electrifying; +eventually was more than that--revolutionary. These few words of March's +served, I think, in the troubled, turbid emotional relation she had got +into with her father, as a clarifying precipitant. + +But that process was slower; the immediate effect attached to March +himself. The present wonder was that it should have been he, a stranger, +equipped with only the meagerest chances for observation, who, turning +his straying search-light beam upon the dearest person to her in the +world, should thus have illuminated him anew. Even after he had gone it +was the man rather than the things he had said that she thought about. + +Amazingly, he had guessed--she was sure she had given him no hint--at the +part Paula was playing in their domestic drama. It had come pat upon what +he had told her of the lives her father had plucked from the hand of +death, the ironic, "he saved others, himself he can not save," hanging +unspoken in their thoughts. + +"Paula will be fighting for his life," he said. "Magnificently. That must +be one of your hopes." + +She had confirmed this with details. She got the notion, perhaps from +nothing more than his rather thoughtful smile, that he comprehended the +whole thing, even down to Aunt Lucile. Though wasn't there a phrase of +his,--"these uninhibited people, when it comes to getting things _done_ +..." that slanted that way? Did that mean that he was one of the other +sort? Wasn't your ability to recognize the absence of a quality or a +disability in any one else, proof enough that you had it yourself? It +would never, certainly, occur to Paula to think of any one as +"uninhibited." + +But the opposed adjective didn't fit him. She couldn't see him at all as +a person tangled, helpless, in webs of his own spinning;--neither the man +who had written that love song nor the man who had sat down in his chair +again after Rush had slammed the door. + +He wasn't even shy but he was, except for that moment when a vivid +concern over John Wollaston's illness brought him back, oddly remote, +detached. He might have been a Martian, when in response to her leading +he discussed Paula with her; how good a musician she was; how splendidly +equipped physically and temperamentally for an operatic career. "She has +abandoned all that now, I suppose," he said. "Everything that goes with +it. She would wish, if she ever gave us a thought, that LaChaise and I +had never been born." + +Mary would have tried to deny this but that the quality and tone of his +voice told her that he really knew it and that, miraculously, he didn't +care. She had exclaimed with a sincerity struck out of her by amazement, +"I don't see how you know that." + +"Paula's a conqueror," he had answered simply, "a--compeller. It's her +instinct to compel. That's what makes her the artist she is. Without her +voice she might have been a tamer of wild beasts. And, of course, a great +audience that has paid extravagantly for its pleasure is a wild beast, +that will purr if she compels it, snarl at her if she doesn't manage to. +She's been hissed, howled at. And that's the possibility that makes +cheers intoxicating. Left too long without something to conquer, she +feels in a vacuum, smothered. Well, she's got something now; the greatest +thing in the world to her,--her husband's life. She's flung off the other +thing like a cloak." + +Without, at the moment, any sense of its being an extraordinary question, +Mary asked, "Are you glad? That she has forgotten you, I mean." + +She was not able, thinking it over afterward, to recall anything that +could have served as a cue for so far-fetched a supposition as that. It +could have sprung from nothing more palpable than the contrast suggested +between Paula, the compeller, the _dompteuse_, and the man who had just +been so describing her. He was so very thin; he was, if one looked +closely, rather shabby, and beyond that, it had struck her that a haggard +air there was about him was the product of an advanced stage of +fatigue,--or hunger. But that of course, was absurd. Anyhow, not even the +sound of her question startled her. + +Nor did it him. There was something apologetic about his smile. "It _is_ +a reprieve," he admitted. "I left her a week ago," he went on to +explain,--"it must have been the day Doctor Wollaston fell ill--on a +promise not to come back until I had got this opera of mine into the +shape she wants. I came back to-day to tell her that it can't be +done--not by me. I have tried my utmost and it isn't enough. I haven't +improved it even from her point of view let alone from mine. She isn't an +easy person to come to with a confession of failure." + +"She's spoiling it," Mary said. "Why do you let her?" + +But March dissented from that. "If we agree that the thing's an +opera--and of course that's what it is if it's anything--then what she +wants it made over into is better than what I wrote. She's trying to put +the Puccini throb into it. She's trying to make better drama out of it. +LaChaise agrees with her. He said at the beginning that I relied too much +on the orchestra and didn't give the singers enough to do. And, of +course, it's easy to see that what a woman like Paula said or did would +be more important to an audience than anything that an oboe could +possibly say. When I'm with her, she--galvanizes me into a sort of belief +that I can accomplish the thing she wants, but when I go off alone and +try to do it...." He blinked and shook his head. "It has been a +first-class nightmare, for a fact, this last week." + +But Mary demanded again. "Why do you let her?" + +"I made a good resolution a while ago," he said. "It was--it was the +night she sang those Whitman songs. You see I've never been tied to +anything; harnessed, you know. Somehow, I've managed to do without. But +I've had to do without hearing, except in my own head, any of the music +I've written. There was an old tin trunk full of it, on paper, that +looked as if it was never going to be anywhere else. Well, I came to a +sort of conviction after I went away from here that night, that those two +facts were cause and effect; that unless I submitted to be harnessed I +never would hear any of it. And it seemed that night that I couldn't +manage to do without hearing it. Keats was wrong about that, you +know,--about unheard melodies being sweeter. They can come to be clear +torment. So I decided I'd begin going in harness. I suppose it was rather +naive of me to think that I could, all at once, make a change like that. +Anyhow, I found I couldn't go on with this. I brought it around +to-day,--it's out there in the hall--to turn it over to Paula to do with +as she liked. That's why it was so--incredible, when you came down the +stairs instead." + +He sprang up then to go, so abruptly that he gave her the impression of +having abandoned in the middle, the sentence he was speaking. This time, +however, rising instantly, she released him and in a moment he was gone. +There had been a word from him about her father, the expression of +"confident hopes" for his recovery, and on her part some attempt, not +successfully brought off she feared, to assure him of his welcome when he +came again. She didn't shake hands with him and decided afterward that it +must have been he who had avoided it. + +She was glad to have him go so quickly. She wanted him to go so that she +could think about him. It was with a rather buoyant movement that she +crossed the room to the piano bench and very lightly with her finger-tips +began stroking the keys, the cool smooth keys with their orderly +arrangement of blacks and whites, from which it was possible to weave +such infinitely various patterns, such mysterious tissue. + +A smile touched her lips over the memory of the picture her fancy had +painted the night Paula sang his songs, the sentimental notion of Paula's +inspiring him with an occasional facile caress to the writing of other +love songs. She might have been a boarding-school girl to have thought of +that. She smiled, too, though a little more tenderly, over his own +attempt--naive he had called it--to go in harness, like a park hack, +submissive to Paula's rein and spur. Pegasus at the plow again. She +smiled in clear self-derision over her contemplated project of saving +him from Paula. He didn't need saving from anybody. He was one of those +spirits that couldn't be tied. Not even his own best effort of submission +could avail to keep the harness on his back. + +It was most curious how comfortable she had been with him. During the +miserable month she had spent at home before she went to Wyoming with the +Corbetts, she had dreaded a second encounter with March and had +consciously avoided one. To meet and be introduced as the strangers they +were supposed by the rest of the family to be, to elaborate the pretense +that this was what they were--they who had shared those flaming moments +while Paula sang!--would be ridiculous and disgusting. But anything else, +any attempt to go on from where they had left off was unthinkable. In the +privacy of her imagination she had worked the thing out in half a dozen +ways, all equally distressing. + +She had not made good her resolution to quit thinking about him. She was +not able and did not even attempt to dismiss her adventure with him as a +mere regrettable folly to be forgotten as soon as possible. It had often +come back to her during sleepless hours of the long nights and had always +been made welcome. She didn't wish it defaced as she had felt it +necessarily must be by the painful anti-climax of a second meeting. + +The impulse upon which she had taken him out of old Nat's hands was +perhaps a little surprising now she looked back on it, but it had not +astonished her at the time. Of course, there, there was something +concretely to be done, an injustice to be averted from a possibly +innocent head. She doubted though if it had been pure altruism. + +Whatever its nature, the result of it had been altogether happy. She +_was_ glad she had come down to see him. There need be no misgiving now +about the quality of their future encounters, were there to be any such. +They were on solid ground with each other. + +How had that been brought about? How had they managed to talk to each +other for anyway fifteen or twenty minutes without either a reference to +their adventure or a palpable avoidance of it? It wasn't her doing. From +the moment when she got to the end of the lines she had rehearsed coming +down the stairs, the lead had been in his hands. Indeed, to the latter +part of the talk, what she had contributed was no more than a question or +two so flagrantly personal that they reminded her in review of some of +her childish indiscretions with Wallace Hood. How had he managed it? + +He hadn't been tactful. She acquitted him altogether of that. She +couldn't have endured tact this afternoon from anybody. Of course, the +mere expressiveness of his face helped a lot. The look he had turned on +Rush for example, that had stopped that nerve-racked boy in full career. +Or the look he gave her when he first learned of her father's illness. +That sudden coming back from whatever his own preoccupation might have +been to a vivid concern for her father. + +Well, there, at last, it was. That was his quality. A genius for more +than forgetting himself, for stepping clean out of himself into some one +else's shoes. Wasn't that just a long way of saying imagination? He had +illuminated her father for her and in so doing had given her a ray of +real comfort. He had interpreted Paula--in terms how different from those +employed by Aunt Lucile! He had comprehended Rush without one momentary +flaw of resentment. Last of all, he had quite simply and without one +vitiating trace of self-pity, explained himself, luminously, so that it +was as if she had known him all her life. + +One thing, to be sure, she didn't in the least understand--the very +last thing he had said. "That's why it was so incredible when you came +down the stairs instead." That had been to her, a complete non sequitur, +an enigma. But she was content to leave it at that. + +Such a man, of course, could never--belong to anybody. He was not +collectable. There would always be about him, for everybody, some last +enigma, some room to which no one would be given the key. But there was a +virtue even in the fringe of him, the hem of his garment. + +Was she getting sentimental? No, she was not. Indeed, precisely what his +little visit had done for her was to effect her release from a tangle of +taut-drawn sentimentalities. She hadn't felt as free as this, as +comfortable with herself, since she came home with Rush from New York. + +She had no assurance that he'd come to the house again of his own accord +or that Paula would send for him. But she was in no mood to distress +herself just now, even with that possibility. + +She crossed the room and got herself a cigarette, and with it alight she +returned to her contemplation of the piano keyboard. She didn't move nor +speak when she heard Rush come in but she kept an eye on the drawing-room +door and when presently he entered, she greeted him with a smile of +good-humored mockery. He had something that looked like a battered school +atlas in his hand. + +"What do you suppose this is?" he asked. "It was lying on the bench in +the hall." + +She held out a hand for it and together they opened it on the lid of the +piano and investigated. + +"It's the manuscript of his opera," she said. "He brought it around to +leave with Paula. To tell her he had done with it. He's been trying to +spoil it for her but he can't." + +"I suppose I made an infernal fool of myself," he remarked, after a +little silence. + +She blew, for answer, an impudent smoke ring up into his face. + +He continued grumpily to cover his relief that she had not been more +painfully explicit,--"I suppose I shall have to make up some sort of +damned apology to him." + +"I don't know," she said. "That's as you like. I don't believe he'd +insist upon it. He understood well enough." + +He looked at her intently. "Has there been any better news from father +since I went out?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "Except that there's been none. Every hour now that +we aren't sent for counts. What made you think there might have been?" + +He said he didn't know. She looked a little more cheerful somehow, +less--tragic. Evidently her visit to the Corbetts had done her good. + +His eye fell once more on the manuscript. "Did he go off and forget +that?" he asked. "Or did he mean to leave it for Paula? And what shall we +do with it,--hand it over to her or send it back?" + +Thoughtfully Mary straightened the sheets and closed the cover. "I'll +take care of it for him," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +HICKORY HILL + + +Pneumonia, for all it is characterized by what is called a crisis, has no +single stride to recovery, no critical moment when one who has been in +peril passes to safety. Steinmetz and Darby were determined that Mary and +all the household should understand this fully. She had waylaid them in +the hall as they were leaving the house together--this was seventy-two +hours or so after Anthony March's call--and demanded the good news she +was sure they had for her. There was a look about them and a tone in +their voices that were perfectly new. + +They would not be persuaded to say that her father was out of danger. +There was very little left of him. His heart had been over-strained and +this abnormal effect was now, in due course, transferred to the kidneys. +All sorts of deadly sequellae were lying in ambush. + +But the more discouraging they were, the more she beamed upon them. She +walked along with them to the door, slipping her arm inside Doctor +Darby's as she did so. "If you only knew," she said, "what a wonderful +thing it is to have the doctors stop being encouraging and try to +frighten you, instead. Because that means you really do think he's +getting well." + +"The balance of probability has swung to that side," Steinmetz admitted +in his rather affected staccato. "At all events he's out of my beat." His +beat was the respiratory tract and his treatment the last word in +vaccines and serums. + +She held Darby back a little. "Must we go on feeling," she asked, +"that anything could happen any minute? Or--well, could Rush go back +to the farm? Graham Stannard has gone to New York, I think, they're +partners, you know, so he must be rather badly wanted. And this +waiting is hard for him." + +Rush could go, of course, Darby assured her. "For that matter," he went +on with a quick glance at her, "why don't you go with him? Take your aunt +along, too. For a few days, at least. You couldn't do better." + +She demurred to this on the ground that it didn't seem fair to Paula. If +there was a period of Arcadian retirement down on the books for anybody, +it was Paula who was entitled to it. + +But Paula, as Darby pointed out, wouldn't take it in the first place, +and, surprisingly, didn't need it in the second. "She told me just now +that she'd slept eighteen hours out of the last twenty-four and was ready +for anything. She looked it, too." + +He understood very well her irrepressible shrug of exasperation at that +and interrupted her attempt to explain it. "It's another breed of animal +altogether," he said. "And at that, I'd rather have had her job than +yours. You're looking first rate, anyhow. But your aunt, if she isn't to +break up badly, had better be carried off somewhere." He glanced around +toward Steinmetz who had withdrawn out of ear-shot. "There are some +toxins, you know," he added, "that are even beyond him and his +microscopes." + +Mary had meant to broach this project at dinner but changed her mind and +waited until Aunt Lucile had withdrawn and she and Rush were left alone +over their coffee cups for a smoke. + +"Poor Aunt Lucile! She has aged years in the last three weeks. And it +shows more, now the nightmare is over, than it did before." + +"Is it over? Really?" he asked. + +"Well, we don't need miracles any more for him. Just ordinary good care +and good luck. Yes, I'd say the nightmare was over." + +"Leaving us free," he commented, "to go back to our own." + +"You can go back to the farm, anyhow," she said. "I asked Doctor Darby, +especially, and he said so. He wants me to go along with you and take +Aunt Lucile. Just for a week or so. Is there any sort of place with a +roof over it where we could stay?" + +He said, "I guess that could be managed." But his tone was so absent and +somber that she looked at him in sharp concern. + +"You didn't mean that the farm was your nightmare, did you?" she asked. +"Has something gone terribly wrong out there?" + +"Things have gone just the way I suppose anybody but a fool would have +known they would. Not worse than that, I guess." + +He got up then and went over to the sideboard, coming back with a +decanter of old brandy and a pair of big English glasses. She declined +hers as unobtrusively as possible, just with a word and a faint shake of +the head. But it was enough to make him look at her. + +"You didn't drink anything at dinner, either, did you?" he asked. + +She flushed as she said, "I don't think I'm drinking, at all, just now." + +"Being an example to anybody?" he asked suspiciously. + +She smiled at that and patted his hand. "Oh, no, my dear. I've enough to +do to be an example to myself. I liked the way it was out at the +Corbetts'. They've gone bone-dry. And,--oh, please don't think that I'm a +prig--I am a little better without it--just now, anyway. Tell me what's +gone wrong at the farm." + +"This is wonderful stuff," he said, cupping the fragile glass in his two +hands and inhaling the bouquet from the precious liquor in the bottom of +it. "It's good for nightmares, at any rate." After a sip or two, he +attempted to answer her question. + +"Oh, I suppose we'll come out all right, eventually. Of course, we've got +to. But I wish Martin Whitney had done one thing or the other; either +shown a little real confidence and enthusiasm in the thing or else +stepped on it and refused to lend father the money." + +"Lend?" Mary asked. "Did he have to borrow it?" + +He dealt rather impatiently with that question. "You don't keep sixty or +eighty thousand dollars lying around loose in a checking account," he +said. "Of course, he had to borrow it. But he borrowed it of Whitney, +worse luck--and Whitney being an old friend, pulls a long face over it +whenever we find we need a little more than the original figures showed. +That's enough to give any one cold feet right there. + +"Graham's father is rich, of course, but he's tighter than the bark on a +tree. He's gone his limit and he won't stand for anything more. He can't +see that a farm like that is nothing but a factory and that you can't run +it for any profit that's worth while without the very best possible +equipment. He wanted us to pike along with scrub stock and the old tools +and buildings that were on the place and pay for improvements out of our +profits. Of course, the answer to that was that there wouldn't be any +profits. A grade cow these days simply can't earn her keep with the price +of feed and labor what it is. We didn't figure the cost of tools and +modern buildings high enough--there _was_ such a devil of a lot of +necessary things that we didn't figure on at all--and the consequence +was that we didn't put a big enough mortgage on the place. Nowhere near +what it would stand. And now that we want to put a second one on, Mr. +Stannard howls like a wolf." + +The mere sound of the word mortgage made Mary's heart sink. She looked so +woebegone that Rush went on hastily. + +"Oh, that'll come out in the wash. It's nothing to worry about really, +because even on the basis of a bigger investment than we had any idea of +making when we went in, it figures a peach of a profit. There's no +getting away from that. That's not the thing about it that's driving +Graham and me to drink." + +He stopped on that phrase, not liking the sound of it, and in doubt about +asking her not to take it literally. She saw all that as plainly as if +she had been looking through an open window into his mind. He took +another deliberate sip of the brandy, instead, and then went on. + +"Why, it's the way things don't happen; the way we can't get +anything done." + +He did not see the sympathetic hand she stretched out to him; went back +to the big brandy glass instead, for another long luxurious inhalation +and a small sip or two. "It's partly our own fault, of course," he went +on, presently. "We've made some fool mistakes. But it isn't our mistakes +that are going to beat us, it's the damned bull-headed incompetence of +the so-called labor we've got to deal with." + +He ruminated over that in silence for a minute or two. "They talk about +the inefficiency of the army," he exclaimed, "but I've been four years in +two armies and I'll say that if what we've found out at Hickory Hill is a +fair sample of civilian efficiency, I'll take the army way every time. +There are days when I feel as if I'd like to quit;--go out West and get +a job roping steers for Bob Corbett, even if he is bone-dry." + +She thought if he played any longer with that brandy glass she must cry +out, but he drained it this time and pushed it away. With an effort of +will she relaxed her tight muscles. + +"I suppose I must have looked to you like a hopeless slacker," he said, +"or you wouldn't have asked Darby to send me back to work. No,--I didn't +mean to put it that way. I look like one to myself, that's all, when I +stop to think. Only you don't know how it has felt, this last six weeks, +to go on getting tighter and tighter in your head until you feel as if +you were going to burst. I went out and got drunk, once,--just plain, +deliberately boiled--in order to let off steam. It did me good, too, for +the time being." + +She didn't look shocked at that as he had expected her to--gave him only +a rather wry smile and a comprehending nod. "We're all alike; that's the +trouble with us," she said. "But you will take us out to Hickory Hill, +won't you? Aunt Lucile and I. I'll promise we won't be in the way nor +make you any more work." + +She saw he was hesitating and added, "At that, perhaps, I may be some +good. I could cook anyhow and I suppose I could be taught to milk a cow +and run a Ford." + +He laughed at that, then said a little uncomfortably that this wasn't +what he had been thinking about. "I suppose you're counting on Graham's +being in New York. He isn't. At least, he telegraphed me that he'd be +back at Hickory Hill to-morrow morning. I knew you'd been rather keeping +away from him and I thought perhaps..." + +"No, that's all right." She said it casually enough, but it drew a keen +look of inquiry from him, nevertheless. "Oh, nothing," she went on. "I +mean I haven't made up with him. Of course, I never quarreled with him +as far as that went. Only it's what I meant when I said just now that we +were all alike, father and you and I. We all get so ridiculously--tight +about things. Well, I've managed to let off steam myself." + +He patted her hand approvingly. "That trip to Wyoming did you a lot of +good," he observed.--"Or something did." + +"They're wonderfully easy people to live with, Olive and Bob," she said. +"They're immensely in love with each other I suppose, but without somehow +being offensive about it. And they have such a lot of fun. Olive has a +piebald cayuse, that she's taught all the _haute ecole_ tricks. He does +the statuesque poses and all the high action things just as seriously as +a thoroughbred and he's so short and homely and in such deadly earnest +about it that you can hardly bear it. You laugh yourself into stitches +but you want to cry too. And Bob says he's going to train a mule the same +way. If he ever does that pair will be worth a million dollars to any +circus.--Well, we'll be doing things like that out at Hickory Hill some +day. Because there is such a thing as fun left in the world." + +"We'll have some of it this week," he agreed, and in this rather +light-headed spirit they arranged details. + +The only building at Hickory Hill that had been designed for human +habitation was the farm-house and it was at present fully occupied and +rather more by a camp cook and his assistant, the farm manager and half +a dozen hands. The partners themselves slept in a tent. There was also a +cook tent near the house where three meals a day were prepared for +everybody, including the carpenters, masons, concrete men and well +diggers who were working on the new buildings. They drove out in Fords +from two or three near-by towns in time for breakfast and didn't go home +till after supper. The wagon shed of the old horse barn served as a +mess hall. + +There were some beds, though, two or three spare ones, Rush was sure, +that had never been used. Given a day's start on his guests, he would +promise some sort of building which, if they would refrain from inquiring +too closely into its past, should serve to house them. + +"A wood-shed," she suggested helpfully, "or a nicely swept-out hennery. +Even a former cow stable, at a pinch. Only not a pig-pen." + +"If our new hog-house were only finished, you could be absolutely +palatial in it. But I think I can do better than any of those. You leave +that to me.--Only, how about Aunt Lucile? She's--essential to the scheme, +I suppose. Can you deliver her?" + +"She'll come if it's put to her right,--as a sporting proposition. +She really is a good sport you know, the dear old thing. You leave +her to me." + +"Lord, I feel a lot better than I did when I sat down to dinner," he told +her when they parted for the night, and left her reflecting on the folly +of making mountains out of mole-hills. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LOW HANGS THE MOON + + +He broke his promise to be waiting for them Friday morning at the farm. +It was Graham who caught sight of their car, as it stopped in front of +the farm-house, and came plunging down the bank to greet them and explain +how unavoidable it had been that Rush should go to Elgin. + +He was somewhat flushed and a little out of breath but he seemed, after +the first uncomfortable minute, collected enough. He mounted the +running-board and directed the chauffeur to drive on across the bridge +and fork to the right with the main road up to a small nondescript +building on the far side of it. + +It was a part of the farm, he explained, indicating the wilderness off to +the left,--a part of what must once have been a big apple orchard. +Indeed, exploring it yesterday for the first time, he had found a +surprising number of old trees, which, choked as they were with +undergrowth, looked as if they were still bearing fruit. The building, +which they had never even entered until yesterday, had served as a +sorting and packing house for the crop, though the old part of +it--paradoxically the upper part--appeared to have been built as a +dwelling by some pioneer settler. A second story had been added +underneath by digging out the bank. + +It stood well back from the road, a grass grown lane with a turning +circle leading to it. It had what had once been a loading platform, wagon +high, instead of a veranda. The lower story, a single room which they +peered into through a crack in a warped unhinged door, seemed unpromising +enough, a dark cobwebby place, cumbered with wooden chutes from the floor +above by which, Graham explained, they rolled the apples down into +barrels after they had been sorted up-stairs. A carpenter had been busy +most of the morning, he added, flooring over the traps from which these +chutes led down. + +Mary, though, fairly cried out with delight, and even Miss Wollaston +beamed appreciation when, Graham, having led them up the bank and around +to the back of the building, ushered them in, at the ground level up +here, to the upper story of the building. There was a fireplace in the +north end of it with twin brick erections on either side which they +thought must have been used for drying apples. The opposite end, +partitioned off, still housed a cider mill and press, but they had +contrived, he said, a makeshift bedroom out of it. + +Along the east side of the room were three pairs of casement windows +which commanded a view of the greater part of the farm; across the road, +across Hickory Creek, across the long reach of the lower pasture and the +seemingly limitless stretches of new plowed fields. The clump of farm +buildings, old and new, was in the middle of the picture. Over to the +left not quite a mile away, behind what looked like nothing more than a +fold in the earth (the creek again, Graham explained. It swung an arc of +two hundred degrees or so, about the main body of their tillable land) +rose the heavily wooded slopes of Hickory Hill. + +"We were surprised at this place," he said, "when we opened it up +yesterday. It's the best view on the farm. It will be a fine place +to build a real country house, some day, if we ever make money +enough to do that." + +"It is a real country house already," Mary told him briskly. "You two, +living in a tent with a lovely old place like this just waiting for you! +Wait until Aunt Lucile and I have had a day at it and you'll see." + +He looked as if he believed her. Indeed, he looked unutterable things, +contemplating her, there in that mellow old room,--wrinkling her nose a +little and declaring that she could still smell apples. But all he said +was that he supposed the roof leaked, but it couldn't be very bad because +everything seemed quite decently dry and not at all musty. He added that +he must be getting back to work, but that an odd-job man, capable more or +less of anything, was at her disposal for as long as she wanted him. + +She went with him to the door when he made his rather precipitate +departure and stood, after she had waved him a temporary farewell, gazing +up at the soft sun-bathed slope with its aisles of gnarled trees. She +smiled at the sight of a decrepit long-handled wooden pump. She took a +long breath of the smell of the month of May. Then she turned, with Aunt +Lucile, to such practical matters as bedding, brooms and tea-kettles. + +There was more to do than a first look had led them to suppose, and +their schemes grew ambitious, besides, as they advanced with them, so +that, for all the Briarean prodigies of Bill, the odd-job man, they went +to bed dog tired at nine o'clock that night with their labors not more +than half complete. They slept--Mary did, anyhow, the deepest sleep she +had known in years. + +She waked at an unearthly--a heavenly hour. The thin ether-cool air was +quivering with the dissonance of bird calls; the low sun had laid great +slow-moving oblongs of reddish gilt upon the brown walls of the big room. +(She had left her aunt in undivided possession of the extemporized +bed-chamber.) She rose and opened the door and looked out into the +orchard. But what her eye came to rest upon was the old wooden pump. + +It was a triumph of faith over skepticism, that pump. Graham had +contemned it utterly, hardly allowing, even, that it was picturesque, but +Bill, the odd-job man had, with her encouragement, spent a patient hour +over it and in the teeth of scientific probability, lo, it had given +forth streams of water as clear as any that had ever miraculously been +smitten out of a rock. The partners had forbidden her to drink any of it +except boiled, until it had been analyzed. + +She looked about. She had the world to herself. So she carried her rubber +tub, her sponge and a bath-towel out to the warped wooden platform and +bathed _en plein air_, water and sun together. She came in, deliciously +shuddering, lighted a fire, already laid, of shavings and sticks, put the +kettle on to boil and dressed. She felt--new born that morning. + +This sensation made the undercurrent of a long fully filled day. She +almost never had time to look at it but she knew it was there. It +enabled her to take with equanimity the unlooked-for arrival (so far as +she and her aunt were concerned) of Graham's young torn-boy sister, +Sylvia. It made it possible for her to say, "Why, yes, of course! I'd +love to," when Graham, along in the afternoon asked her if she wouldn't +go for a walk over the farm with him. They spent more than an hour at +it, sitting, a part of the time, side by side atop the gate into the +upper pasture, yet not even then had the comfortable sense of pleasant +companionship with him taken fright. It was a security that resided, she +knew, wholly in herself. + +He was holding himself, obviously, on a very tight rein, and it was quite +conceivable that before her visit ended, he would bolt. There was a +moment, indeed--when he came with Rush to supper at the apple house and +got his first look at the transformation she had wrought in it--when that +possibility must have been in the minds of every one who saw his face. + +She had dramatized the result of her two days' labor innocent of any +intention to produce an effect like that. The partners when they came +dropping in from time to time had, learned nothing of her plans, seen +none of their accomplishments, so to-night the old-fashioned settle +which Bill had knocked together from lumber in the packing room and she +had stained, two of the sorting tables, fitted into the corners beside +the fireplace to make a dais, the conversion of another into a capital +dining table by the simple expedient of lengthening its legs, the rag +rug, discovered in the village, during a flying trip with Sylvia this +morning in her car and ravished from the church fair it had been +intended for, the sacks of sheeting Aunt Lucile had been sewing +industriously all day, covered with burlaps and stuffed with hay to +serve as cushions, the cheese-cloth tacked up in gathers over the +windows and hemmed with pins,--all this, revealed at once, had the +surprise of a conjurer's trick, or, if one were predisposed that way, +the entrancement of a miracle. + +She was a little entranced, herself, partly with fatigue for she had put +in, one after the other, two unusually laborious days, but partly no +doubt with her own magic, with this almost convincing simulation of a +home which she and her assistants had produced. It didn't matter that she +had gone slack and silent, because Sylvia, who just before supper had +shown a disposition to dreamy elegiac melancholy, rebounded, as soon as +she was filled with food, to the other end of the scale altogether and +swept Rush after her into a boisterous romp, which none of Aunt Lucile's +remonstrant asides to her nephew was effectual to quell. + +She was an amazing creature, this product of the latest generation to +begin arriving at the fringes of maturity, a reedy young thing, as tall +as Graham, inches taller than Rush. She had the profile of a young Greek +goddess and the grin of a gamin. She was equally at home in a +ballgown--though she was not yet out--or in a pair of khaki riding +breeches and an olive drab shirt. She was capable of assuming a manner +that was a genuine gratification to her great aunt or one that startled +her father's stable men. She read French novels more or less at random, +(unknown to her mother. She had a rather mischievous uncle who was +responsible for this development) and she was still deadly accurate with +a snowball. A bewildering compound of sophistications and innocence, a +modern young sphinx with a riddle of her own. + +Mary watched her tussling and tumbling about with Rush, pondering the +riddle but making no great effort to find an answer to it. Was she child +or woman? To herself what was she? And what did Rush think about her? +They were evidently well established on some sort of terms. Rush, no +doubt, would tell you--disgustedly if you sought explanation--that Sylvia +was just a kid. That he was fond of her as one would be of any nice kid +and that her rough young embraces, her challenges and her pursuits, meant +precisely what those of an uproarious young--well, nephew, say,--would +mean. Only his eagerness to go on playing the game cast a doubt upon that +explanation. + +They went out abruptly after a while, just as it was getting dark, to +settle a bet as to which of them could walk the farthest along the top +rail of a certain old fence. Miss Wollaston saw them go with unconcealed +dismay, but it was hard to see how even a conscientious chaperon could +have prevented it so long as the child's elder brother would do nothing +to back her up. To Mary, half-way in her trance, it didn't seem much to +matter what the relation was or what came of it. It was a fine spring +night and they were a pair of beautifully untroubled young animals. Let +them play as they would. + +Their departure, did, however, arouse Graham to the assumption of his +duties as host and he launched himself into a conversation with Miss +Wollaston; a fine example, Mary thought, of what really good breeding +means. Her aunt's questions about life in the navy were not the sort that +were easy to answer pleasantly and at large. They drew from him things he +must have been made to say a hundred times since his return and sometimes +they were so wide of the mark that it must have been hard not to stare or +laugh. He must have been wishing, too, with all his might down in the +disregarded depths of his heart, that the old lady would yield to the +boredom and fatigue that were slowly creeping over her. Soon! Before that +pair of Indians came back. But by nothing, not even the faintest +irrepressible inflection of voice was that wish made manifest. + +It broke over Mary suddenly that this would never happen. Aunt Lucile +might die at her post, but she'd never, in Graham's presence, retire +through a door which was known to lead to her bedroom. She rose and going +around to her aunt's chair, laid a light hand on her shoulder. But she +spoke to Graham. + +"Let's go out and bring in the wanderers," she said. "Aunt Lucile has had +a pretty long day and I know she won't be able to go to sleep until +Sylvia is tucked in for the night." + +When the door had closed behind them and they stood where the path, +already faintly indicated, led down to the road, he stopped with a jerk +and mutely looked at her. + +"Do you know where that fence of theirs is?" she asked. + +"Yes, I guess so," he said. Then--it was almost a cry--"Must we go there? +Right away?" + +"I don't know that we need." (Why should he be tortured like that! What +did it matter if the rigidity of some of her nightmare-born resolutions +got relaxed a little?) "Where do you want to go with me?" + +He didn't answer for a minute, but when he did speak his voice was +steady enough. "There's a place up on the top of this hill where the +trees open out to the east, a lovely place. I went up there last night +after Rush had turned in. There'll be a moon along in a few minutes and +you can see it come up, from there. Could we wait for it?--I suppose Miss +Wollaston..." + +"No, she'll be all right," Mary said. "Now that she thinks we're looking +for them." + +As she moved up the slope she added, "I've a sort of interest in the +moon, myself, to-night." + +"Perhaps if you'll take my hand--" he said stiffly. "It is dark here +under the trees." + +Her single-minded intention had been to make him a little happier. She +liked him better to-night than ever, and that was saying a lot. But this +elaborate covering up of what he really wanted under the pretended need +of guiding her, tried her patience. The pretense was for himself, too, as +much as for her. He was holding her off at arm's length behind him as if +they were scaling an Alp! + +In the spirit of mischief, half irritated, half amused, she crowded up to +his side and turned her hand so that their palms lay together. And she +said in a voice evenly matter-of-fact, "That's nicer, isn't it?" + +He didn't succeed in producing anything audible in answer to that, but he +began presently, and rather at random, to talk. As if--she reflected, +mutinously,--some fact that must on no account be looked at would emerge, +un-escapable, the moment he stopped. + +But the bewitching loveliness of the place he led her to made amends, +sponged away her irritation, brought back the Arcadian mood of the day. A +recently fallen apple tree just on the crest of the hill, offered in its +crotched arms a seat for both of them. With an ease which thrilled her he +lifted her in his hands to her place and vaulted up beside her. His arm +(excusably, again, for the hand was seeking a hold to steady him), crept +around behind her. + +Once more he began to talk,--of nature, of the farm, of how it was the +real way to live, as we were meant to. One couldn't, of course, cut off +the city altogether. There were concerts and things. And the +companionship of old friends. Even at that it would be lonely. They had +felt it already. That was why it was such a marvelous thing to have her +here. She made a different world of it. Just as she had made what seemed +like a home out of that old apple house. No one could do that but a +woman, of course ... + +She was no longer irritated by this. She barely listened, beyond noting +his circuitous but certain approach to the point of asking her, once +more, to marry him. + +Her body seemed drugged with the loveliness of the night, with fatigue, +with him, with the immediacy of him,--but her mind was racing as it does +in dreams. + +Nature was not, of course, the gentle sentimentalist Graham was talking +about, but one did get something out of close communion with her. A sense +of fundamentals. She was a--simplifier of ideas. Plain and +straightforward even in her enchantments. That moon they were waiting +for.... Already she was looking down upon a pair of lovers, somewhere,--a +thousand pairs!--with her bland unseeing face. And later to-night, long +after she had risen on them, upon a thousand more. + +Of lovers? Well perhaps not. Not if one insisted upon the poets' +descriptions. But good enough for nature's simple purposes. Answering to +a desire, faint or imperious, that would lead them to put on her harness. +Take on her work. + +Anthony March had never put on a harness. A rebel. And for the price of +his rebellion never had heard his music, except in his head. Clear +torment they could be, he had told her, those unheard melodies. Somehow +she could understand that. There was an unheard music in her. An +unfulfilled destiny, at all events, which was growing clamorous as the +echo of the boy's passion-if it were but an echo-pulsed in her throat, +drew her body down by insensible relaxations closer upon his. + +The moon came up and they watched it, silent. The air grew heavy. The +call of a screech-owl made all the sound there was. She shivered and he +drew her, unresisting, tighter still. Then he bent down and kissed her. + +He said, presently, in a strained voice, "You know what I have been +asking. Does that mean yes?" + +She did not speak. The moon was up above the trees, yellow now. She +remembered a great broad voice, singing: + +"Low hangs the moon. It rose late. +It is lagging-O I think it is heavy with love, with love" + +With a passion that had broken away at last, the boy's hands took +possession of her. He kissed her mouth, hotly, and then again; drew back +gasping and stared into her small pale face with burning eyes. Her head +turned a little away from him. + +"... Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me + My mate back again if you only would, + For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look. + O rising stars!..." + +The languor was gone. She shivered and sat erect, he watching her in an +agony of apprehension. She looked slowly round at him. + +"You haven't answered!" His voice broke over that into a sob. "Will you +marry me, Mary?" + +"I don't know," she said dully, like one struggling out of a dream. "I +will if I can. I meant to for a while, I think. But ..." + +He leaped to the ground and stood facing her with clenched hands. "I +ought to be shot," he said. "I'm not fit to touch you--a white thing like +you. I didn't mean to. Not like that. I meant ..." + +She stared for an instant, totally at a loss for the meaning--the mere +direction of what he was trying to say. Then, slipping down from the +branch, she took him by the arms. "Don't!" she cried rather wildly. +"Don't talk like that! That's the last impossibility. Listen. I'm going +to tell you why." + +But he was not listening for what it might be. He was still morosely +preoccupied with his own crime. He had been a beast! He had bruised, once +more, the white petals of a flower! + +It was not that her courage failed. She saw he wouldn't believe. That he +couldn't be made to believe. It was no use. If he looked at her any +longer like that, she would laugh. + +She buried her face in her arms and sobbed. + +He rose to this crisis handsomely, waited without a word until she was +quiet and then suggested that they go and find Rush and Sylvia. And until +they were upon the point of joining the other pair nothing more was said +that had any bearing on what had happened in the apple tree. But in that +last moment he made a mute appeal for a chance to say another word. + +He reminded her that she had said she would marry him if she could. This +was enough for him. More than he deserved. He was going back to the +beginning to try to build anew what his loss of self-control had wrecked. +She need say nothing now. If she'd wait, she'd see. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +A CLAIRVOYANT INTERVAL + + +It was still May and the North Carolina mountain-side that John Wollaston +looked out upon was at the height of its annual debauch of azalea blooms, +a symphonic romance in the key of rose-color with modulations down to +strawberry and up to a clear singing white. For him though, the invalid, +cushioned and pillowed in an easy chair, a rug over his knees, these +splendors and the perfume of the soft bright air that bathed them had an +ironic significance. + +He had arrived with Paula at this paradise early in the week, pretty well +exhausted with the ordinary fatigues of less than a day's journey in the +train. They were feeding him bouillon, egg-nogs and cream. On Paula's arm +he had managed this afternoon, his first walk, a matter of two or three +hundred yards about the hotel gardens, and at the end of it had been glad +to subside, half reclining into this easy chair, placed so that through +the open door and the veranda it gave upon, he could enjoy the view of +the color-drenched mountain-side. + +He had dismissed Paula peremptorily for a real walk of her own. He had +told her, in simple truth, that he would enjoy being left to himself for +a while. She had taken this assurance for an altruistic mendacity, but +she had yielded at last to his insistence and gone, under an exacted +promise not to come back for at least an hour. + +It offered some curious compensations though, this state of +helplessness--a limpidity of vision, clairvoyant almost. For a fortnight +he had been like a spectator sitting in the stalls of a darkened theatre +watching the performances upon a brilliantly lighted stage, +himself--himselves among the characters, for there was a past and a +future self for him to look at and ponder upon. The present self hardly +counted. All the old ambitions, desires, urgencies, which had been his +impulsive forces were gone--quiescent anyhow. He was as sexless, as cool, +as an image carved in jade. + +And he was here in this lover's paradise--this was what drew the tribute +of a smile to the humor of the high gods--with Paula. And Paula was more +ardently in love with him than she had ever been before. + +The quality of that smile must have carried over to the one he gave her +when she came back, well within her promised hour, from her walk. One +couldn't imagine anything lovelier or more inviting than the picture she +made framed in that doorway, coolly shaded against the bright blaze that +came in around her. She looked at him from there, for a moment, +thoughtfully. + +"I don't believe you have missed me such a lot after all," she said. +"What have you been doing all the while?" + +"Crystal-gazing," he told her. + +She came over to him and took his hands, a caress patently enough through +the nurse's pretext that she was satisfying herself that he had not got +cold sitting there. She relinquished them suddenly, readjusted his rug +and pillows, then kissed him and told him she was going to the office to +see if there were any letters and went out again. She was gone but a +moment or two; returning, she dropped the little handful which were +addressed to him into his lap and carried one of her own to a chair near +the window. + +He dealt idly with the congratulatory and well-wishing messages which +made up his mail. There was but one of them that drew even a gleam of +clearly focused intelligence from him. He gave most of his attention to +Paula. She was a wonderful person to watch,--the expressiveness of her, +that every nerve and muscle of her body seemed to have a part in. She +had opened that letter of hers with nothing but clear curiosity. The +envelope evidently had told her nothing. She had frowned, puzzled, over +the signature and then somehow, darkened, sprung to arms as she made it +out. She didn't read it in an orderly way even then; seemed to be trying +to worry the meaning out of it, like one stripping off husks to get down +to some sort of kernel inside. Satisfied that she had got it at last, +she dropped the letter carelessly on the floor, subsided a little deeper +into her chair and turned a brooding face toward the outdoor light and +away from him. + +"Are you crystal-gazing, too?" he asked. Unusually, she didn't turn at +his voice and her own was monotonous with strongly repressed emotion. + +"I don't need to. I spent more than a week staring into mine." + +That lead was plain enough, but he avoided, deliberately though rather +idly, following it up. The rustle of paper told her that he had turned +back to his letters. + +"Anything in your mail?" she asked. + +"I think not. You can look them over and see if I've missed anything. To +a man in my disarticulate situation people don't write except to express +the kindness of their hearts. Here's a letter from Mary designed to +prevent me from worrying about her. Full of pleasant little anecdotes +about farm life. It's thoroughly Arcadian, she says. A spot designed by +Heaven for me to rusticate in this summer when--when we go back to town. +Somehow, I never did inhabit Arcady. There's a letter from Martin +Whitney, too, that's almost alarmingly encouraging in its insistence that +I mustn't worry. If only they knew how little I did--these days!" + +"Well, that's all right then," she said. "Because those were Doctor +Darby's orders. You weren't to be excited or worried about anything. But, +John, is it really true that you don't? Not about anything?" + +The fact that her face was still turned away as she asked that question +gave it a significance which could not be overlooked. + +"It's perfectly true," he asserted. "I don't believe I could if I +tried. But there's something evidently troubling you. Let's have it. +Oh, don't be afraid. You've no idea what an--Olympian position one +finds himself in when he has got half-way across the Styx and come +back. Tell me about it." + +"You know all about it already. I told you the first day you could +talk--that I was going to give up singing altogether except just for +you,--when you wanted me to. I knew I'd been torturing you about it. I +thought perhaps you'd get well quicker,--want to get well more--if you +knew that the torture wasn't to go on. It was true and it is true. +Perhaps you thought it was just one of those lies that people tell +invalids--one of those don't-worry things. Well, is wasn't. + +"But you made me promise I wouldn't do anything--wouldn't break my +Ravinia contract--until we could talk it all out together. Your +temperature went up a little that afternoon and when Doctor Darby asked +me why, I told him. He said I mustn't, on any account, speak again to you +about it until you brought the subject up yourself. I don't know whether +he'd call this bringing it up or not, but anyway that's it. I've kept my +promise to you though," she concluded. "I haven't written. They still +think I am going to sing this summer." + +"I am very glad of that," he said quietly. "I thought the thing was +settled by our first talk. I didn't realize that you had taken it merely +as an--adjournment." + +She was still turned rigidly away from him, but the grip of one of her +hands upon the arm of a chair betrayed the excitement she was laboring +under, while it showed the effort she was making to hold it down. + +"I didn't think, though," he went on, "that that resolution of yours to +give up your whole career,--make ducks and drakes of it, in obedience to +my whim--was nothing more than one of those pious lies that invalids are +fed upon. I knew you meant it, my dear. I knew you'd have done +it--then--without a falter or a regret." + +"Then or now," she said. "It's all the same. No, it isn't! Now more than +then. With less regret. Without a shadow of a regret, John,--if it would +bring you back to me." + +The last words were muffled, for she had buried her face in her hands. + +He had heard the ring of undisguised passion in her voice without an +answering pulse-beat, sat looking at her thoughtfully, tenderly. The +reflection that occupied his mind was with what extravagant joy he would +have received such an assurance only a few weeks ago. On any one of those +last days before his illness fastened upon him;--the Sunday he had gone +to Hickory Hill alone because Paula had found she must work with March +that day; the evening when he had made his last struggle against the +approaching delirium of fever in order to telephone for an ambulance to +get him out of that hated house. What a curious compound of nerve ends +and gland activities a man's dreams--that he lived by, or died for--were! + +She pulled him out of his reverie by a deliberate movement of resolution, +taking her hands away from her face, half rising and turning her chair so +that she faced him squarely. + +"I want to know in so many words," she said, "why you're glad that I'm +still bound to that Ravinia thing. You seem to want me to sing there +this summer, as much as you hated the idea of my doing it before. Well, +why? Or is it something you can't tell me? And if I sing and make a +success, shall you want me to go on with it, following up whatever +opening it offers; just as if--just as if you didn't count any more in my +life at all?" + +Before he could answer she added rather dryly, "Doctor Darby would kill +me for talking to you like this. You needn't answer if it's going to +hurt you." + +"No," he said, "it isn't hurting me a bit. But I'll answer one question +at a time, I think. The first thing that occurred to me when you spoke of +the Ravinia matter was that I didn't want you to break your word. You had +told them that they could count on you and I didn't want you, on my +account, to be put in a position where any one could accuse you of having +failed him. My own word was involved, for that matter. I told LaChaise I +wouldn't put any obstacles, in your way. Of course, I didn't contract +lobar pneumonia on purpose," he added with a smile. + +The intensity of her gaze did not relax at this, however. She was waiting +breathlessly. + +"The other question isn't quite so easy to answer," he went on, "but I +think I would wish you to--follow the path of your career wherever it +leads. I shall always count for as much as I can in your life, but +not--if I can help it--as an obstacle." + +"Why?" she asked. "What has made the perfectly enormous difference?" + +It was not at all an unanswerable question; nor one, indeed, that he +shrank from. But it wanted a little preliminary reflection. She +interrupted before he was ready to speak. + +"Of course, I really know. Have known all along. You haven't +forgiven me." + +He echoed that word with a note of helplessness. + +"No," she conceded. "That isn't it, exactly. I can't talk the way you and +Mary can. I suppose you have forgiven me, as far as that goes. That's the +worst of it. If you hadn't there'd be more to hope for. Or beg for. I'd +do that if it were any good. But this is something you can't help. You're +kind and sweet to me, but you've just stopped caring. For me. What used +to be there has just--gone snap. It's not your fault. I did it myself." + +"No," he said quickly. "That's where you're altogether wrong. You didn't +do it. You had nothing to do with the doing of it." + +She winced, visibly, at the implication that, whoever was responsible, +the thing was done. + +"Paula, dearest!" he cried, in acute concern. "Wait! There are things +that can't be dealt with in a breath. That's why I was trying to think a +little before I answered." + +Even now he had to marshal his thoughts for a moment before he could go +on. It was too ridiculous, that look of tragic desperation she wore while +she waited! He averted his eyes and began rather deliberately. + +"You are dearer to me now--at this moment, as we sit here--than ever +you've been before. I think that's the simple literal truth. This matter +of forgiveness--of your having done something to forfeit or to destroy +my--love for you... Oh, it's too wildly off the facts to be dealt with +rationally! I owe you my life. That's not a sentimental exaggeration. +Even Steinmetz says so. And you saved it for me at the end of a period of +weeks--months I guess--when I had been devoting most of my spare energies +to torturing you. Myself, incidentally, but there was nothing meritorious +about that. In an attempt to assert a--proprietary right in you that you +had never even pretended to give me. That I'd once promised you I never +would assert. The weight of obligation I'm under to you would be +absolutely crushing--if it weren't for one thing that relieves me of it +altogether. The knowledge that you love me. That you did it all for the +love of me." + +She moved no nearer him. These were words. There was no reassurance for +her in them. One irrepressible movement of his hands toward her, the mere +speaking of her name in a voice warmed by the old passion, would have +brought her, rapturous, to his knees. + +"There's no such thing as a successful pretense between us, I know," he +said. "So I'll talk plainly. I'm glad to. I know what it is you miss in +me. It's gone. Temporarily I suppose, but gone as if it had never been. +That's a--physiological fact, Paula." + +She flushed hotly at that and looked away from him. + +"I don't know exactly what a soul is," he went on. "But I do know that a +body--the whole of the body--is the temple of it. It impenetrates +everything; is made up of everything. Well, this illness of mine has, for +these weeks, made an old man of me. And I'm grateful to it for giving me +a chance to look ahead, before it's too late. I want to make the most of +it. Because you see, my dear, in ten years--or thereabouts--the course of +nature will have made of me what this pneumonia has given me a foretaste +of. Ten years. You will be--forty, then." + +She was gazing at him now, fascinated, in unwilling comprehension. "I +hate you to talk like that," she said. "I wish you wouldn't." + +"It's important," he told her crisply. "You'll see that in a minute, if +you will wait. Before very long--in a month or so, perhaps--I shall be, I +suppose, pretty much the same man I was--three months ago. Busy at my +profession again. In love with you again. All my old self-assurance back; +the more arrogant if it isn't quite the real thing. So now's the time, +when the fogs one moves about in have lifted and the horizon is sharp, to +take some new bearings. And set a new course by them. For both of us. + +"There is one fact sitting up like a lighthouse on a rock. I'm +twenty-four years older than you. Every five years that we live together +from now on will make that difference more important. When you're +forty-five--and you'll be just at the top of your powers by then--I shall +be one year short of seventy. At the end, you see, even of my +professional career. And that's only fifteen years away. Even with good +average luck, that's all I can count on. It's strange how one can live +along, oblivious to a simple sum in arithmetic like that." + +She had been on her feet moving distractedly about the room. Now she came +around behind his chair and gripped his body in her strong arms. + +"You shan't talk like that!" she said. "You shan't think like that! I +won't endure it. It's morbid. It's horrible." + +"Oh, no, it's not," he said easily. "The morbidity is in being afraid +to look at it. It was morbid to struggle frantically, the way I did all +the spring, trying to resist the irresistible thing that was drawing +you along your true path. It was a cancerous egotism of mine that was +trying to eat you up, live you up into myself. That, thank God, has +been cut out of me! I think it has. Don't misunderstand me, though. I'm +not going to relinquish anything of you that I can keep;--that I ever +had a chance to keep." + +He took her hands and gently--coolly--kissed them. + +"Then don't relinquish anything," she said. "It's all yours. Can't you +believe that, John?" + +He released her hands and sank back slackly in his chair. "Victory!" he +said, a note of inextinguishable irony in his voice. "A victory I'd have +given five years of my life for last March. Yet I could go on winning +them--a whole succession of them--and they could lead me to nothing but +disaster." + +She left him abruptly and the next moment he heard her fling herself down +upon his bed. When he rose and disengaged himself from his rug, she said, +over an irrepressible sob or two, that he wasn't to mind nor come to her. +She wasn't going to cry-not more than a minute. + +He came, nevertheless, settled himself on the edge of the bed and took +possession of her hands again. + +"I wouldn't have told you all this," he said--"for you don't need any +lessons in arithmetic, child--if I dared trust myself to remember, after +the other thing had come back. Now I'm committed--don't you see?--not to +play the fool, tragically or ludicrously, as the case might be, trying to +dispute the inevitable. And I shall contrive to keep a lot, my dear. More +than you think." + +Later, the evening of that same day, he asked her what was in the letter +that had provoked their talk. Did they want her back in Chicago for +rehearsals or consultations? Because if they did there was no reason in +the world why she should not go. At the rate at which he was gaining +strength there would not be the slightest reason--he gave her his +professional word of honor--why she should not go back in a day or two. + +"I should have to go back," she said, "if I were going to sing March's +opera. There is such a lot of work about a new production that there +would be no time to spare." + +"But," he asked, "isn't March's opera precisely what you are going to +sing?" + +"No," she said rebelliously. "It's not. There wasn't anything in the +contract about that. I'll carry out the contract this summer. I'll keep +my word and yours, since that is what you want me to do. But I won't sing +'Dolores' for anybody." + +He did not press her for the reason. + +After a little silence, she said, "Lucile thought I'd fallen in love with +him. So did Rush, I guess,--and poor old Nat. Did you, John?" + +"I tried to, hard enough," he confessed. + +She stared. "Tried to!" + +"That would have been the easier thing to fight," he said. "There's +nothing inevitable about a man,--any man. I'd have stood a chance at +least, of beating him, even though he had a twenty-year handicap or so. +But the other thing,--well, that was like the first bar of the Fifth +Symphony, you know; Fate knocking at the door. Clear terror that is until +one can get the courage to open the door and invite Fate in." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE END OF IT + + +About a week later--just at the beginning of June, this was--Paula did go +back to Chicago, leaving her husband to go on gaining the benefit, for +another ten days or so, of that wine-like mountain air. It was an +unwelcome conviction that he really wanted her to go, rather than any +crying need for her at Ravinia that decided her to leave him. The need +would not be urgent for at least another fortnight since it had been +decided between her and LaChaise that she should make her debut in +_Tosca_, an opera she had sung uncounted times. + +Since their momentous conversation in which John had attempted to revise +the fundamentals of their life together, they had not reverted to the +main theme of it; had clarified, merely, one or two of its more immediate +conclusions. Paula was to carry out in spirit as well as in letter the +terms of her Ravinia contract exactly as if it were still to be regarded +as the first step of her reopened career. What she should do about the +second step in case it offered itself to her was a bridge not to be +crossed until they came to it. + +John had professed himself content to let it remain at that, but she +divined that there was something hollow in his profession. It was +possible, of course, that his restlessness represented nothing more than +a new stage in his convalescence. It didn't seem possible that after the +candors of that talk he could still be keeping something back from her. +Yet that was an impression she very clearly got. Anyhow, her presence was +doing him no good, and on that unwelcome assurance, she bade him a +forlorn farewell and went home. + +It was a true intuition. John heaved a sigh of relief when she was +gone. In his present enfeebled state she was too much for him. The +electrical vitality of her overpowered him. Even before his illness he +had had moments--I think I have recorded one of them--when her ardent +strength paralyzed him with a sort of terror and these moments were more +frequent now. + +There was, too, a real effort involved in presenting ideas to her +(intellectual ideas, if they may be so distinguished from emotional +ones). He didn't know, now, whether she had fully understood what he had +been driving at that day; whether anything had really got through to her +beyond a melancholy realization that his love had cooled. He had always +been aware of this effort, but in the days of his strength he hadn't +minded making it. + +Now he was conscious of wishing for some one like Mary,--indeed, for Mary +herself. They talked the same language, absolutely. Their minds had the +same index of refraction, so that thoughts flashed back and forth between +them effortlessly and without distortion. He thought of her so often and +wished for her so much during the first two days of his solitude that it +seemed almost a case for the psychical research people when he got a +telegram from her. + +It read: "Aunt Lucile worried you left alone especially traveling. Shall +you mind or will Paula if I come down and bring you back, Mary." + +There was a situation made clear, at all events. He grinned over it as +he despatched his wire to her. "Perfectly unnecessary but come +straight along so that we can play together for a week or two before +starting home." + +Play together is just what they did. Enough of his strength soon came +back to make real walks possible and during the second week, with a +two-horse team and a side-bar buggy, they managed, without any ill +effect upon him, an excursion across the valley and up the opposite +mountainside to a log cabin road-house where they had lunch. + +Mary, a born horsewoman, did the driving herself, thus relieving them of +the impediment to real companionship which a hired driver would have +been. In an inconsecutive, light-hearted way difficult to report +intelligibly, they managed to tell each other a lot. She let him see, +with none of the rhetorical solemnities which a direct statement would +have involved, her new awareness of his professional eminence. A dozen +innuendoes, as light as dandelion feathers, conveyed it to him; swift +brush-strokes of gesture and inflection sketched the picture in; an +affectionate burlesque of awe completed it, so that he could laugh at her +for it as she had meant he should. + +She told him during their drive what the source of her illumination was; +described Anthony March's visit on that most desperate day of all, the +vividness of his concern over the outcome of the fight and his utter +unconcern about the effect of it upon his own fortunes. She had been +reading Kipling aloud, out at the farm, to the boys and Aunt Lucile and a +memory of it led her to make a comparison--heedless of its +absurdity--between the composer and Kirn's lama. "He isn't, anyhow, tied +to the 'wheel of things' any more than that old man was." + +"I'd like to have come down that day and heard him talk," John said. +"Because it's the real thing, with him. Not words. He wouldn't be a bad +person to go to," he added musingly, "if one had got himself into a +real _impasse_--or what looked like one. Paula has chucked his opera, +you know." + +She nodded, evidently not in the least surprised and, no more, perturbed +by this intelligence. "He won't mind that," she explained. "The only +thing he really needs, in the world, is to hear his music, but this, you +see, wasn't his any more. He had been trying to make it Paula's. He had +been working over it rather hopelessly, because he had promised, but it +was like letting him out of school when he found that she had forgotten +all about him;--didn't care if she never saw him again." + +She caught, without an explanatory word, the meaning of the glance her +father turned upon her, and went straight on. "Oh, it seems a lot, I +know, to have found out about him in one short talk, but there's +nothing--personal in that. He doesn't, I mean--save himself up for +special people. He's there for anybody. Like a public drinking fountain, +you know. That's why he would be such a wonderful person--to go to, as +you said. No one could possibly monopolize him." + +She added, after a silence, "It seems a shame, when he wants so little +that he can't have that. Can't hear, for example, that opera of his the +way he really wrote it." + +"We owe him something," her father said thoughtfully. "He got rather +rough justice from Paula, anyhow. I suppose a thing like that could, +perhaps, be managed--if one put his back into it." + +She understood instantly, as before, and quite without exegesis, the +twinge of pain that went across his face. "You _will_ have a back to +put into things again, one of these days. It wants only courage to wait +for it, quite patiently until it comes. You've plenty of that. That's +one of he things Mr. March told me about you," she added with the +playful purpose of surprising him again. "Only I happened to know that +for myself." + +"It's more than I can be sure of," he said. "I've been full of bravado +with Paula, telling her how soon I was going to be back in harness again; +cock-sure and domineering as ever, so that she'd better make hay while +the sun shone. But it was I, nevertheless, who made her go home so that +she could start to work--when the whistle blew. Some one was going to +have to support the family, I told her, and it didn't look as if it were +going to be me." + +This speech, though it ended in jest, had begun, she knew, in earnest. He +meant her to understand that, and left her to judge for herself where the +dividing line fell. She answered in a tone as light as his, "Paula could +do it easily enough." But she was not satisfied with the way he took it. +The mere quality of the silence must have told her something. She turned +upon him with sudden intensity and said, "Don't tell me you're +worrying--about three great healthy people like us. You have been, +though. Whatever put it into your mind to spend half a thought on that?" + +"Why, it was a letter from Martin Whitney," he said. "Oh, the best meant +thing in the world. Nothing but encouragement in it from beginning to +end, only it was so infernally encouraging, it set me off. No, let me +talk. You're quite the easiest person in the world to tell things to. +I've been remiss, there's no getting away from that. I've never taken +money-making very seriously, it came so easily. I've spent my earnings +the way my friends have spent their incomes. Well, if I'd died the other +day, there wouldn't have been much left. There would have been my life +insurance for Paula, and enough to pay my debts, including my engagements +for Rush, but beyond that, oh, a pittance merely. Of course with ten +years' health, back at my practise, even with five, I could improve the +situation a lot." + +She urged as emphatically as she dared--she wanted to avoid the +mistake of sounding encouraging--that the situation needed no +improvement. The income of fifty thousand dollars would take care of +Paula, and beyond that,--well, if there were ever two healthy young +animals in the world concerning whom cares and worries were +superfluous, they were herself and Rush. + +He told her thoughtfully that this was where she was; wrong. "Rush, to +begin with, isn't a healthy young animal. That's what I couldn't make +Martin Whitney understand. He's one of the war's sacrifices precisely as +much as if he had had his leg shot off. He needs support; will go on +needing it for two or three years, financial as well as moral. He mustn't +be allowed to fail. That's the essence of it. He's--spent, you see; +depleted. One speaks of it in figurative terms, but it's a physiological +thing--if we could get at it--that's behind the lassitude of these boys. +It all comes back to that. That they're restless, irresolute. That they +need the stimulus of excitement and can't endure the drag of routine. +They need a generous allowance, my dear,--even for an occasional failure +in self-command, those two boys out at Hickory Hill." + +She had nothing to say to that, though his pause gave her opportunity. A +sudden surmise as to the drift of that last sentence, silenced her. And +it was a surmise that leaped, in the next instant, to full conviction. He +was pleading Graham's cause with her! Why? Was it something that had been +as near his heart as that, all along? Or had some one--Rush--or even +Graham himself--engaged his advocacy? + +She said at last, rather breathlessly (it was necessary to say something +or he would perceive that his stratagem had betrayed itself): "Well, at +the gloomy worst, Rush is taken care of. And as for me, I'm not a war +sacrifice, anyhow. That's not a possible conception--even for a worried +convalescent. Did you ever _see_ anything as gorgeous as that tree, even +in an Urban stage setting?" + +"No," he said, "the war wasn't what you were sacrificed to." + +She held her breath until she saw he wasn't going on with that. But he +seemed willing to follow her lead to lighter matters, and for the rest +of their excursion they carried out the pretense that there was nothing +like a cloud in their sky. + +That evening, though, after she had bidden him good night, she changed +her mind and came back into his room. There had been something wistful +about his kiss that, determined her. + +"Which of them wrote to you about me?" she asked. + +"Both," he told her. "Of course I should have known you'd guess. Forgive +me for having tried to--manage you. I'll show you both their letters if +you like. It's a breach of confidence, of course, but I don't know that I +could do better." + +"I'll read Rush's," she said. "Not the other." + +She carried it over to the lamp, and for a while after she had taken in +its easily grasped intent she went on turning its pages back and forth +while she sought for an end of the tangled skein of her thoughts to +hold on by. + +Finally, "Do you want me to marry him, dad?" she asked. Then, before he +could answer she hurried on. "I mean, would it relieve you from some +nightmare worry about me if I did?--This has to be plain talk, doesn't +it, if it is to get us anywhere?" + +"That's a fair question of yours," he said. But he wasn't ready at once +with an answer. "It _would_ be such a relief, provided you really wanted +to marry him. That goes to the bottom of it, I think. My responsibility +is to make it possible for you to--follow your heart. To marry or not as +you wish. To marry a poor man if you wish. But if Graham is your choice +and all that holds you back from him is some remediable +misunderstanding--or failure to understand ..." + +"I don't know whether it's remediable or not," she said; and added, "I +told him I would marry him if I could. Did he tell you that?" + +It was a mistake to have quoted that expression to her father. He took +it just as Graham had. Of course! What else could he think? She sat with +clenched hands and a dry throat, listening while he tried to enlighten +what he took to be her innocent misunderstanding. + +They had never spoken, she realized, about matters of sex. For anything +he really knew to the contrary she might have been as ignorant as a +child. He was actually talking as one talks to a child;--kindly, +tolerantly, tenderly, but with an unconscious touch of patronage, like +one trying to explain away--misgivings about Santa Claus! There were +elements, inevitably, in a man's love for a woman, that a young girl +could not understand. Nothing but experience could bring that +understanding home to her. This was what in one way after another, he was +trying to convey. + +But the intuition which, in good times or bad, always betrayed their +emotions to each other, showed him that he was, somehow missing the mark. +Her silence through his tentative little pauses disconcerted him heavily. +He ran down at last like an unwound clock. + +It was only after a long intolerably oppressive silence that she found +her voice. "The misunderstanding isn't what you think," she said. "Nor +what Graham thinks. It's his misunderstanding, not mine. He thinks that I +am--a sort of innocent angel that he's not good enough for. And the fact +is that I'm not--not innocent enough for him. Not an angel at all. Not +even quite--good." + +But she got no further. The plea for comprehension, for an ear that would +not turn away from her plain story, never was made. In a smother of words +he halted her. Affectionately, with a gentleness that achieved absolute +finality. She was overwrought. She carried paradox too far. In her +innocence she used a form of speech that she didn't know the meaning of, +and should be careful to avoid. Her troubles, with patience, would work +themselves out in the end. Meanwhile let her as far as possible stop +thinking about them. + +But she had got, during the intaken breath before he began to speak, a +sensation,--as sharp and momentary as the landscape revealed in a +lightning flash,--of a sudden terror on his part; as of one finding +himself on the edge of an abyss of understanding. For that one glaring +instant before he had had time to turn his face away he had known what +she meant. But he never would look again. Never would know. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +FULL MEASURE + + +Ravinia is one of Chicago's idiosyncrasies, a ten-weeks' summer season of +grand opera with a full symphony orchestra given practically +out-of-doors. Its open pavilion seats from fifteen hundred to two +thousand people and on a warm Saturday night, you will find twice as many +more on the, "bleachers" that surround it or strolling about under the +trees in the park. The railroad runs special trains to it all through the +season from town, and crammed and groaning interurbans collect their toll +for miles from up and down the shore. + +It had begun as an amusement park with merry-go-rounds, Ferris-wheels and +such--to the scandalized indignation of numerous super-urban persons +whose summer places occupied most of the district roundabout. They took +the enterprise into their own hands, abolished the calliope, put a +symphony orchestra into the bandstand and, eventually, transformed the +shell into a stage and went in for opera; opera popularized with a blue +pencil so that no performance was ever more than two hours long, and at +the modest price of fifty cents. + +Its forces, recruited chiefly from among the younger stars at the +Metropolitan, give performances that want no apologetic allowance from +anybody. It has become an institution of which the town and especially +the North Shore is boastful. + +Paula foresaw no easy conquest here. Her social prestige, part of which +she enjoyed as John Wollaston's wife and part of which she had earned +during the last four years for herself, counted as much against her as it +did in her favor. It was evident from the way the announcements of her +prospective appearance at Ravinia had been elaborated in the society +columns of the newspapers that it would arouse a lot of curiosity. It +would be one of the topics that everybody, in the social-register sense +of the word, would be talking about and in order to talk authoritatively +everybody--four or five hundred people this is to say--would have to +attend at least one of her performances. + +Nothing less than a downright unmistakable triumph would convince them. +She was a professional in the grain and yet in this adventure she would +be under the curse of an amateur's status, a thing she hated as all +professionals do. + +It was evidently from an instinct to cut herself off as completely as +possible from these social connections of hers that she rented for the +summer, a furnished house in the village of Ravinia, within a mile or so +of the park. John was rather disconcerted over this when she told him +about it. She greeted him with it as an accomplished fact upon his +return to Chicago with Mary. She made a genuine effort to explain the +necessity, but explanations were not in Paula's line and she didn't +altogether succeed. + +She made it clear enough, though, that she didn't want to be fussed by +the attentions of friends or family, of her husband least of all. She +didn't want to be congratulated nor encouraged. She didn't want to be +asked to little suppers or luncheons nor to be made the objective of +personally conducted tourist parties back stage. She didn't want to be +called to the telephone, ever, except on matters of professional business +by her Ravinia colleagues. + +All of this, John pointed out, could be accomplished at home. He, +himself, could deal with the telephoners and the tourists. This was about +all apparently that he was going to be good for this summer; but a +watchdog's duties he could perform in a highly efficient manner. + +"But a home and a husband are the very first things I've got to forget +about," cried Paula. "Oh, can't you see!" + +Darkly and imperfectly, he did. The atmosphere of the home in which one +has been guarded and pampered as a priceless possession was--must +be--enervating, and to one who was screwing up her powers to their +highest pitch for a great effort like this, it would be +poisonous--malarial! He would have been clearer about it, though, but for +the misgiving that, consciously or not, Paula was punishing him for +having insisted that she carry her contract through. Or--if that were too +harsh a way of putting it,--that she was coquetting with him. Having told +her down there in the South that he didn't care for her in a loverlike +way, he might now have an opportunity of proving that he did--over +obstacles! + +It gave him a twinge, for a fact, but he managed to ask good-humoredly if +this meant that he was to be barred from the whole show, from +performances as well as from rehearsals and the Ravinia house. + +"I won't care," she said with a laugh of desperation, "after I've once +got my teeth in. But until then... Oh, I know it sounds horrible but I +don't want even to--feel you; not even in the fringe of it. + +"I'll tell you who I would like, though," she went on over a palpable +hesitation and with a flush of color rising to her cheeks. "I can't live +all alone up there of course. I could get along with just a maid, but it +would be easier and nicer if I could have some one for a--companion. And +the person I'd choose, if she'd do it, is Mary." + +He said, not quite knowing whether to be pleased or not, that they could +ask her about it at all events. They were rather counting on her out at +Hickory Hill but he didn't know that that need matter. Only wasn't +Mary--family, herself, a reminder of home? + +"Not a bit," said Paula, with a laugh. "Not but what she likes me well +enough," she went on, trying to account for her preference (these +Wollastons were always concerned about the whys of things) "but she +stands off a little and looks on; without holding her breath, either. And +then, well, she'd be a sort of reminder of you, after all." + +Put that way, he couldn't quarrel with it, though there was a +challenge about it that chilled him a little. Watched over by his own +daughter (this was what it came to) Paula would be beyond +suspicion--even of Lucile. + +Mary, when the scheme was put up to her was no less surprised than +John had been, but she was pleased clear through, and with a +clean-cutting executive skill he had hardly credited her with, she +thought out the details of the plan and revised the rest of their +summer arrangements to fit. + +The Dearborn Avenue house should be closed and her father should move out +to the farm. The apple house was now remodeled to a point where it would +accommodate him as well as Aunt Lucile very comfortably. The boys and the +servants could live around in tents and things. She'd want only one maid +for the cottage at Ravina and the small car which she'd drive herself. + +The sum of all the activities that Mary proposed for herself added up to +a really exacting job; housekeeper, personal maid, chauffeur, chaperon +and secretary. It was with a rather mixed lot of emotions that John +thought of delivering her over to be tied to Paula's chariot wheels like +that. One of the two women who loved him serving the other in a capacity +so nearly menial! The thought of it gave him an odd sort of thrill even +while he shrank from it. Certainly, he would not have assented to it, had +it not been so unmistakably what Mary herself wanted. Her reasons for +wanting it he couldn't feel that he had quite fathomed. + +There was, as a matter of fact, nothing fine-spun about them. It was a +job in the first place and gave her, therefore, she mordantly told +herself, an excuse for continuing to exist. It was an escape from Hickory +Hill. (Clear cowardice this was, she confessed. That situation would have +to be met and settled one way or the other before long; but her dread of +both the possible alternatives had mounted since her frustrated attempt +to confide in her father.) The third reason which she avowed to +everybody, was simple excited curiosity for a look into a new world. The +mystery and the glamour of it attracted her. Paula's proposal gave her +the opportunity to see what these strange persons were like when they +were not strutting their little while upon the stage. + +Paula, of course, was, fundamentally, one of them. It was remarkable how +that simple discovery interpreted her. When you saw her surrounded by +them, working and quarreling with them, talking that horrible polyglot of +French, Italian and English, which she slipped into so easily, you +realized how exotic the environment of the Dearborn Avenue house must +have been to her and how strong a thing her passion for John Wollaston, +to enable her to endure five years of it,--of finikin social +observances,--of Aunt Lucile's standards of propriety! + +Mary took real comfort in her companionship; found an immense release +from emotional pressure in it. One might quarrel furiously with Paula +(and it happened Mary very nearly did, as shall be related presently, +before they had been in the cottage three days), but one couldn't +possibly worry one's self about her, couldn't torture one's self feeling +things with Paula's nerves. That was the Wollaston trick. What frightful +tangles the thing that goes by the name of unselfishness, the attempt to +feel for others, could lead a small group like a family into! + +Another thing that helped was that during the fortnight of rehearsal +before the season opened, there wasn't time to think. They were pelted +by perfectly external events, a necessity for doing this, an appointment +to do that, an engagement somewhere else. It was like being caught out +in a driving rain. You scuttled along-snatched a momentary shelter where +you could. + +Even getting the clothes Paula needed would have filled the time of a +woman of leisure to the brim. A bridal trousseau would have been nothing +to it. But with Paula these activities had to be sandwiched in with daily +rehearsals,--long ones, too,--hours with Novelli while she memorized +half-forgotten parts, interviews with reporters, struggles with +photographers, everything that the diabolic ingenuity of the publicity +man could contrive. He, by the way, regarded Paula as his best bet and +lavished his efforts upon her in a way that stirred her colleagues +(rivals, of course), to a frenzied exasperation, over his sinister +partiality to this "society amateur." + +(They all but enjoyed a terrible revenge, for as poetic justice narrowly +missed having it, the extent of her advance publicity and the beauty of +her clothes proved to be the rocks she went aground on. Only a lucky wave +came along and floated her off again.) + +Mary's quarrel with Paula, though it never came off,--never for that +matter got through to Paula's consciousness, even as an approach to +one,--had, all the same, a chain of consequences and so deserves to be +recorded. The opera management was supposed to supply Paula with a piano +and they found one already installed in the Ravinia house when they moved +in, a small grand of a widely advertised make. Paula dug half a dozen +vicious arpeggios out of it and condemned it out of hand. Then in the +midst of a petulant outburst which had, nevertheless, a humorous savor +(the management would promise and pretend till kingdom come. They'd even +take real trouble to get out of complying with her simple request for a +new piano), she pulled herself up short and stared at Mary. + +"What idiots we are! I am, anyhow. I'd forgotten all about March. He can +make a piano out of anything. When he's tuned this, I won't want another. +I've got his telephone number somewhere. You don't happen to remember it, +do you?--Why? What makes you look like that?" + +For Mary was staring at her--speechless. Paula's affairs had driven her +own pretty well out of her mind. She had stopped thinking about Graham. +She'd given over worrying about Rush. But she had not forgotten Anthony +March. The alternative possibility that Paula might have gone on with his +opera, that he might have been, but for what her father spoke of as rough +justice, attending rehearsals of it, hearing that big orchestra making a +reality of its unheard melodies, had been much in her mind. She had +wondered whether it was not really in Paula's. Along with a regret for +his downcast hopes. He was, in a way, the ladder she had climbed by. +Hearing her sing those wonderful songs of his was what had led LaChaise +to offer her this opportunity. And Paula didn't know, Mary was sure, of +anything that mitigated his disappointment. To her, he was merely one who +had tried and, pitiably, failed. She must, it seemed, have felt sorry +about it and Mary had considerately avoided all reference to him. + +Now it appeared that Paula had blankly forgotten all about him. +Remembered him only when she wanted him to tune the piano. She callously +proposed to exact this service of him, and if possible, over the +telephone! + +"I suppose," Mary said, when she had found her voice, "that I look the +way I feel. Paula, you _wouldn't_ do that!" + +"Why not?" Paula demanded. And then with a laugh, "I wouldn't forget to +pay him this time. And it would be nice to see him again, too. Because I +really liked him a lot." + +"Well, if you do like him, you wouldn't, would you, want to do +anything--cruel to him? Anything that he might take as--a willful insult? +Because it could be taken like that, I should think." + +She spoke with a good deal of effort. Paula's surprise, the +incredulous way she had echoed the word cruel, the fact that there was +still an unshaken good humor in the look of curiosity that she +directed upon her stepdaughter, all but overwhelmed Mary with a sudden +wave of helpless anger. + +What could one do with a selfishness as insolent as that? What was +there to say? + +Paula got up, still looking at her in that puzzled sort of way, came over +to her chair, sat down on the arm of it and took her by the shoulders. + +"You're trembling!" she said. "I suspect I am working you too hard. You +mustn't let me do that, you know. John will never forgive me if I do. +Why, about March, did you mean because I wouldn't sing his opera? He knew +all the time I wouldn't unless he could get it right. And he knew he +wasn't getting it right. He wanted to give it up long before he did, only +I wouldn't let him. But as for being insulted, bless you, he isn't like +that. And perhaps if he came I could get him all the pianos out here to +keep in tune. There must be dozens!" + +At that Mary laughed in a recoil of genuine amusement. She could imagine +that Anthony March would laugh himself. In one particular Paula was +unquestionably right. He wouldn't feel insulted. He was just the last +person in the world to be accessible to such a petty emotion. + +She returned Paula's hug and extricated herself from the chair. + +"You needn't worry about me, at all events," she said. "I'm not tired a +bit. But could we worry a little about Mr. March? About his opera, I +mean? Don't you suppose we could get Mr. LaChaise to put it on? The way +he originally wrote it.--I mean for somebody else to sing." + +"Fournier could sing it in a rather interesting way," Paula remarked +speculatively. "Only I don't believe he'd sing in English. Certainly +there's nobody else." + +"Perhaps if he saw the score ..." Mary began. + +"Gracious!" Paula broke in, a little startled, not much. "I haven't an +idea where that score is. I may have sent it back to him, but I don't +believe I did." + +"No," Mary told her. "It's here. When I closed up the house, I brought it +along. He might be interested enough in it I should think," she +persisted, "if you and Mr. LaChaise told him how good it was,--to learn +it in English. Or it might, I suppose,--the whole thing I mean,--be +translated into French. There might, anyhow, prove to be something we +could do." + +"Good heavens, child!" Paula said, "we're up to the eyes now, all three +of us. Will be for weeks as far as that goes. We simply couldn't think of +it." Through a yawn she added, "Not that it wouldn't be a nice thing to +do if we had time." + +Paula's notion of getting March to come up and tune her piano was not +damped at all by the wet blanket of Mary's objection to it. From town +that day, Mary having driven her in for more fittings and photographers, +Paula telephoned to the Fullerton Avenue house and later told Mary in an +acutely dissatisfied manner that she had got simply nowhere with the +person with whom she had talked. "She pretends,--oh, it was his sister +or his mother, I suppose,--that they don't know anything whatever about +him. Haven't seen him for ever so long. Haven't an idea how to get word +to him. If only I had time to drive out there ... But I haven't a minute +of course." + +Mary observed that she didn't see what good it would do to be told in +person what Paula had just learned over the telephone. She could drive +out there herself if there was any point in it, during the hour when +Paula was engaged with her dressmaker. + +Paula jumped at this suggestion. She was one of those persons whom +telephones never quite convince. So Mary, rather glad of the errand, +though convinced of its futility so far as Paula's designs were +concerned, drove out to the Fullerton Avenue house and presently found +herself in a small neat parlor talking to a neat old lady who was not, +perhaps, as old as she looked, about Anthony March. + +For anything that bore upon the obtainability of his service for the +Ravinia piano the telephone conversation would have done as well. His +mother had seen him for only a short time, a little more than a week ago +and judged from what he then said that he was upon the point of going +away, though not for a long absence--a month, perhaps. She had not asked +where he meant to go and he had volunteered nothing. It was possible that +he did not know himself. + +Mary remained in doubt, for the first five minutes or so of her call, +whether the stiff guarded precision of this was a mark of hostility to +the whole Wollaston clan or whether it was nothing but undiluted New +England reserve. She ventured a tentative, "I suppose he didn't say +especially why he was going," and on getting a bare negative in reply, +went on, a little breathlessly:--"I didn't mean that impertinently;--only +all of us were very much interested in him and we liked him too well, +especially father and I, to be content to lose track of him. I hope he +wasn't ill;--didn't go away because of that." + +"He told me that he was not," Mrs. March answered. "Though if I might +have had my way with him, I would have put him to bed for a week. +However," she added, with a fine smile, "I never did have my way with him +and neither has his father had his. And I judge it to be as well that we +have not." + +No, there was no hostility about it. She perceived the genuineness in her +visitor's concern and was perhaps really touched by it. But even so she +was sparing of details. Anthony had never lived a life regulated by rule +and habit. He worked at his music much too hard when the call, as she +termed it, was upon him, and obviously quite forgot to take proper care +of himself. And then he went away, as on this occasion, to recuperate in +his own manner. + +Mary adventured again just as she was getting up to take her leave. "It +must want a good courage," she said, "to let him go like that; not to +keep trying, at least, to hold him back in sheltered ways." + +She got a nod of acknowledgment of the truth of this, but no words at +all. But she found herself, afterward, in possession of an impression so +clear that one would think it must have needed a long exchange of +unreserved confidences to have produced it. The man's mother loved him, +of course; one might take that for granted. And was proud of him; of +course--perhaps--again. But beyond all that, she rejoiced in him; in his +emancipation from the line and precept which had so tightly confined her; +in his very vagabondage. + +She was not much in his confidence, though. Mary had made that out from +the way she had received her own resume of the status of his opera. His +mother had known nothing of his hopes, neither when Paula raised them +up nor later when she cast them down. It was odd about that--and rather +pitiable. She would have welcomed her son's confidences, Mary was sure, +with so real a sympathy, if he could only have believed it. But the +crust of family tradition was too thick, she supposed, to make even the +attempt possible. + +This failure of his fully to understand the person traditionally the +nearest and dearest to him in all the world had, upon Mary's mind, the +effect of, somehow, solidifying him; making him more completely human to +her--where it might have been expected to work the other way. It proved +the last touch she needed to quicken the concern she had from the +beginning felt for him into an entirely real thing, a motivating +principle. If it was possible to get that opera of his produced, she was +going to do it. + +She stopped at the Dearborn Avenue house on her way down-town to get her +little portable typewriter and carry it out to Ravinia with her. In the +odd hours of the next few days she copied March's libretto in English, +triple spaced, out of his score and this, with a lead pencil, she took to +carrying around with her to Paula's rehearsals, to her dressing-room, +everywhere. A phrase at a time, syllable by syllable, she began putting +it into French. + +On the last Saturday night in June the Ravinia season opened with _Tosca_ +sung in Italian; Paula singing the title part and Fournier as "Scarpia." +A veteran American tenor, Wilbur Hastings, an old Ravinia favorite, sang +"Cavaradossi." Taken as a whole, the performance was quite as good as any +one has a right to expect any opening night to be. The big audience which +went away good-naturedly satisfied, had had its moments of really +stirring enthusiasm. Fournier scored a well deserved triumph with a +"Scarpia" that was characterized by a touch of really sinister +distinction. Hastings, incapable as he was of subtleties or refinements, +did as usual all the obvious things pretty well and got the welcome he +had so rightly counted upon. But Paula fell unmistakably short of winning +the smashing success she had so ardently hoped for. + +She did not, of course, fail. Wallace Hood, to take him for a sample of +her admiring friends, went home assuring himself that her success had +been all he or any of the rest of them could have wished. And he wrote +that same night a letter to John Wollaston out at Hickory Hill saying as +much. Her beauty, he told John, had been a revelation even to him and +there could be no doubt that the audience had been deeply moved by it. +Her acting also had taken him by surprise. It was a talent he had not +looked for in her and he was correspondingly delighted by this +manifestation of it. In the great scene with Fournier when he stated the +terms of his abominable bargain to her, Wallace had hardly been able to +realize it was Paula that he saw on the stage. + +When it came to her singing (he knew John would want his most impartial +honest judgment)--here where he had been surest of her, she came nearest +to disappointing him. It was a shame, of course, to subject a lovely +voice like hers to singing in the great vacancy of all outdoors, to say +nothing of forcing it into competition with a shouter and bellower like +Hastings. But he felt sure when she was a little better accustomed to her +surroundings, she would rise superior even to these drawbacks. + +This was somewhere near the facts, though stated with a strong friendly +bias. Paula was nervous, never really got into the stride of her acting +at all. The strong discrepancy between Fournier's methods and Hastings' +served perhaps to prevent her getting into step with either. And she sang +all but badly. There had been only one rehearsal in the pavilion and at +that she had been content merely to sketch her work in, singing off the +top of her voice. When she really opened up at the performance, the +unfamiliar acoustics of the place frightened her into forcing, with the +result that she was constantly singing sharp. + +Paula herself, though disappointed, didn't feel too badly about it, +knowing that all her difficulties were merely matters of adjustment, +until she read what the critics said about her in the papers the next +morning. What they said was not on the face of it, severe;--came, indeed, +to much the same thing as Wallace Hood's verdict. But the picture between +the lines which they unanimously presented, was of a spoiled beauty, +restless for the publicity that private life deprived her of, offering in +a winning manner to a gullible public, a gold brick. + +Paula was furiously angry over this, justifiably, too. Her work had +been professional even in its defects and deserved professional +judgment. The case was serious, too, for if that notion of her once got +fairly planted in the minds of her public, it would be almost +impossible to eradicate it. + +But Anthony March had not been mistaken when he spoke of her as a +potential tamer of wild beasts. Her anger was no mere gush of emotions, +to spend itself and leave her exhausted. It was a sort that hardened in +an adamantine resolution. The next chance she got, she'd show them! +Unluckily, she wasn't billed to sing again until toward the end of the +week. It happened, however, that the Sunday papers, taking away with one +hand, gave in a roundabout but effective fashion with the other. + +The opera billed for that night was _Pagliacci_. A young American +baritone with a phenomenal high A, was to sing "Tonio" and a new Spanish +soprano was cast for "Nedda." When this young woman saw the Sunday papers +she, too, went into a violent rage. Her knowledge of English was not +sufficient to enable her to draw any comfort from the subtle cruelties +which the critics had inflicted on Paula in the news section. But the +music and drama supplements which had been printed days before, devoted +as they were to the opening of the season, simply made Paula the whole +thing. The Spanish young lady's rage was of a different quality from +Paula's. She wept and stormed. She demanded like Herodias, the head of +that press agent on a charger. Simply that and nothing more. And when she +failed to get it, she went to bed. + +The management, disconcerted but by no means at the end of its resources, +decreed a change of the bill to _Lucia_. They were ready to go on with +_Lucia_ which had been billed for Tuesday night. All they needed was to +bring the scenery out from town in a truck. This they ordered done; but +at five o'clock, about two miles south of the park, the truck went +through a bridge culvert and rolled all the way to the bottom of a +ravine. The driver escaped with his life but the production of _Lucia_ +was smashed to splinters. + +Mary chanced upon this piece of information and brought it straight to +Paula. "Tell them to go ahead with _Pagliacci_, then," Paula said. "I'll +sing 'Nedda' myself. Get LaChaise on the phone and let me talk to him." + +She did sing it without any rehearsal at all. And she gave a performance +which for most of the persons who saw it, made her the, and the only, +"Nedda"; though--or perhaps, because--she didn't give the part quite its +traditional characterization; adapted it with the unscrupulousness of the +artist to her own purpose. + +Paula's "Nedda" was a sulky slattern, indifferent, lazy, smoldering with +passion,--dangerous. The sensuous quality of her beauty had never been +more apparent than it was in the soiled cheap mountebank fineries which +she had worn for so many performances of the part in Europe. And this +beauty, of course, did a lot of the work for her. Explained the tragedy +all by itself. And, indeed, tragedy hung visibly over her from the moment +of her first entrance upon the stage in the donkey cart. She was the sort +of woman men kill and are killed for. + +She played the part with an extreme economy of movement, with a kind of +feline stillness which made her occasional explosions into action, as +when she attacked Tonio with the whip, literally terrifying. She sang it +carelessly and therefore in a manner absolutely gorgeous. She swept them +all, critics as well as the immense audience, clean off their feet. + +Also, by way of a foot-note, the managerial announcement that Madame +Carresford had volunteered for the part at six o'clock, to rescue them +from the necessity of closing the park and was to sing it absolutely +without rehearsal, exploded for all time the notion that there was +anything of the amateur about her. + +"You can do anything," LaChaise told her as she came out into the wings. +And he kissed her on both cheeks rather solemnly, in the manner of one +conferring a decoration. In full measure pressed down and running over, +that was how Paula's success came to her. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE WAYFARER + + +By the time Paula had got back to her dressing-room after the long series +of tumultuous curtain calls was over, the rush of her friends to express +their congratulations in person had begun. After the _Tosca_, performance +she had been adamant about seeing anybody but to-night with a laugh she +said, "I don't care. For a few minutes. If they're people I really know." + +So Mary took her station beside the Rhadamanthus at the stockade gate--in +a proper opera-house, he would have been the stage door-keeper--to pick +out the sheep from the goat-like herd of the merely curious who, but for +firm measures, would have stormed the place. Those who came down again, +pushed out by the weight of new arrivals, lingered about the gate talking +things over with Mary. It amused her to see how radically their attitude +had changed. Such people as the Averys, the Cravens and the Byrnes, who +in a social way had known Paula well, seemed to regard her now as a +personage utterly remote, translated into another world altogether. And +when they asked about John Wollaston, as most of them did, there was an +undertone almost of commiseration about their inquiries, though on the +surface this didn't go beyond an expressed regret that he hadn't been +here to witness the triumph. + +Mary drove them all away at last, even the lingerers in Paula's +dressing-room, left her safely in the hands of her dresser and went out +into the automobile park to get her car. Coming up softly across the +grass and reaching in to turn on the lights, she was startled to discover +that there was a man in it. But before she had time more than to gasp, +she recognized him as her father. + +"I didn't want to push my way in with the mob," he explained, after +apologizing for having frightened her. "The car, when I spotted it, +seemed a safe place to wait. And the privacy of it," he added, "will be +grateful, too, since I'm not perfectly sure that Paula won't refuse +outright to see me." + +Mary smiled at this and said she hoped he hadn't missed the performance. + +"No," he told her somberly, "I didn't miss--any of it." Then on a +different note, "Now we'll see whether those dogs of critics won't change +their tune." + +"Paula herself changed the tune," Mary observed. Then, "She's longing to +see you, of course. And there's no reason why you should wait. No one's +with her now except her dresser." + +She led the way, without giving him a chance to demur, to the gate to the +stockade and turned him over to the gatekeeper. + +"Please take Doctor Wollaston up to his wife's dressing-room," she said. +And with a momentary pleasure in having evaded introducing him as Madame +Carresford's husband, she turned away and went back to the car. + +For the moment the spectacle of her father in the rĂ´le of a young lover +touched her no more acutely than with a mild half-humorous melancholy. +She even paid the tribute of a passing smile to the queer reversal of +their rĂ´les, her own and his. She was more like a mother brooding over +the first love-affair of an adolescent son. It was so young of him, +younger, she believed, than any act she herself could be capable of, to +have come to Paula's performance without letting her know and waited +shyly alone in the dark while the herd of her acquaintances crowded in +and monopolized her. Pathetically young, almost intolerably pathetic in +a man in his middle fifties. She wondered if he had come up for _Tosca_ +the night before and gone away without a word. + +She had spoken quite without authority in assuring him of Paula's +welcome. Paula had not, she thought, spoken of him once either in +connection with her disappointment the night before or with her triumph +to-night. Yet that he would get a lover's welcome she had very little +doubt. It was his moment certainly. Paula left alone up there at last, +sated with an overwhelming success, tired, relaxed... + +With an effort of will Mary settled herself a little more deeply in the +seat behind the wheel and lighted a cigarette. She hated having to wait, +having to be found waiting when they came down together. She wished she +could just--disappear. It wasn't possible, of course. + +It was not very long before they came down. "She says I may stay two +days," John told Mary as they squeezed into their seats in the little +roadster. "Then, relentlessly, she's going to turn me out." But his voice +was beyond disguise that of a lover who has prospered. + +Mary drove them in almost unbroken silence all the way, down the ravine +road and up through the woods to the house in the village. Then she went +on with the car to their garage which stood in a yard of a neighbor, two +or three doors away. She rejected with curt good-humor her father's offer +to help her with this job. It was what she always did by herself, she +said, and took a momentary perverse pleasure, which she despised herself +for, in the obvious fact that this troubled him. + +Back in the cottage living-room, ten minutes later perhaps, she found him +alone and heard then, the explanation of his having come. They had got +the Sunday papers out at Hickory Hill as usual in the middle of the +morning but had found no reference to the performance of _Tosca_ the +night before. John had spent a good part of the day fretting over the +absence of any news as to how Paula's venture had succeeded and puzzling +over the lack of it in the papers. Then the obvious explanation had +struck one of the boys, that the papers that came out to Hickory Hill on +Sunday were an early edition. + +He had had old Pete drive him straight into town, at that, and there he +had found the news-stand edition containing the criticisms. The +unfairness of them had disturbed him greatly. Orders or no orders, he +hadn't been able to endure the thought of leaving Paula to suffer under +the sting of a sneer like that without making at least an effort to +comfort her. He had driven out to Ravinia without any idea that she was +to sing again that night; had been told of it at the park where he had +stopped for the purpose of picking up some one who could conduct him to +her house. Learning that she was about to sing again, he had exerted all +his will power and waited until this second ordeal should be over. + +"It was as much one for me as it could have been for her," he concluded. +"I don't know what stage fright is, but vicarious stage fright is the +devil. I never was so terrified in my life. I hope nobody I knew saw me. +I took pains they shouldn't, for I must have looked like a ghost." + +"There's nothing the matter with your looks now," she told him. "Hickory +Hill must be just the place for you." + +"It would be," he assented, "if it were possible for me to be +whole-heartedly there. By the way, we've got a visitor. Anthony March." + +She felt herself flush at that with clear pleased surprise. "Oh, that's +as nice as possible," she said. "But how in the world did it happen? How +did you find him? Paula was trying to and couldn't." + +"Was she?" Her father's voice, she thought, flattened a little on the +question. "Why, he found us. He turned up on foot--Friday morning, it +must have been--with a knapsack on his shoulders; came to the farm-house +door and asked if he should tune the piano. Luckily, I happened to be +about and caught him before he could get away. He was combining a walking +trip, he said, with his own way of earning a living and I persuaded him +to stay for a few days and make us a visit." + +The last part of that sentence, Paula, coming down into the room from +up-stairs, heard. + +"Who?" she asked. "Who's the visitor you've been persuading?" + +It was just a good-natured way of showing her interest in anything that +her husband might happen to be talking about. But when he answered, +"Anthony March," she came into focus directly. + +"Thank goodness, you've found him!" she said. "I had about given him +up.--And I really need him." + +"I thought," said John, "that you had given him up. Are you going to do +his opera, after all?" + +"Opera!" said Paula blankly, as if she had never heard of such a thing. +"No, I want him to see if he can fix this beastly piano they've given me +so that it's fit to work with." + +And John, after a moment-laughed. + +It was a shattering sort of laugh to Mary. She stared at the man who +uttered it as if he were--what he had for the moment become--a stranger. +He was not, certainly, the man who, down in North Carolina had talked +about March with her, regretted the "rough justice" he had had from Paula +and considered the possibility of repairing it. That momentary blank look +of his had shown that he perceived the insensitive egotism of his wife's +attitude. Not even now that her success was an established thing had she +a regretful thought for the man who had hoped to share it with her. She +had forgotten those hopes. All she remembered now about Anthony March was +that he could tune pianos better than any one else. + +This Mary's father saw and yet he laughed. A cruel laugh. He had felt +for the moment a recurrence of the old jealousy. In his relief from it, +he, a reassured lover, triumphed in the humiliation of one he had +supposed his rival. + +Mary managed to hide her face from him--superfluously because he wasn't +looking at her--and thought up, desperately, a few more questions about +how they were getting on at Hickory Hill. + +But she went on feeling from moment to moment more horribly in the way, +and at last with a simulated yawn she said she was going to bed. +"This--vicarious success is rather tiring," she told her father; "almost +as bad as vicarious stage fright." And then to Paula, "Is there any +reason, if you're going to keep father here for two days, why I shouldn't +steal a holiday?" + +"Go away, do you mean?" Paula asked with a faint flush. "Why,--where +would you go?" + +"I could drive over to Hickory Hill," Mary said, "either by myself in the +little car or with Pete in the big one. Whichever you wouldn't rather +have here." + +"I think that's a capital idea," John said. "Oh, you'd better take the +big car with Pete. It would be rather a long drive for you all by +yourself in the little one." + +This was not the real reason, of course. He wouldn't want a chauffeur +under foot while he was honeymooning about with Paula. + +Owing to a late start and an errand which at the last moment Paula wanted +done in Chicago, it was getting on toward four o'clock when Pete drove +Mary up to the loading platform of the old apple house at Hickory Hill. +The farm Ford was standing there idling in a syncopated manner and +apparently on the point of departure somewhere. Where, was explained a +moment later by the emergence of Sylvia Stannard in her conventional farm +costume of shirt and breeches with a two-gallon jug in each hand. + +"Oh," she said, "then the big car can take Miss Wollaston over to Durham, +can't it?--so she won't have to ride in the Ford which she hates. How do +you do? I'm awfully glad you've come. We weren't expecting you, were we? +Was anybody, I mean?" + +Mary allowed herself a laugh at this young thing with her refreshing way +of saying first whatever first came into her head and letting this serve +as a greeting, said she was sure the big car and Pete were equal to +taking her aunt to the four-miles-distant village. + +"That's all right then. I won't have to wait for her," said Sylvia, +letting down her jugs into the tonneau of the Ford. "I'll run +straight along with this. They must be simply perishing for it. Isn't +it hot, though!" + +Mary wanted to know who they were and what they were perishing for. + +"Lemonade," said Sylvia, "for the boys out in the hay field. It's +perfectly gorgeous out there but hot enough to frizz your hair." + +"Where is the hay field?" Mary asked. "Is it very far?" + +"It's just over in the northeast eighty," said Sylvia, with a rather +conscious parade of her mastery of bucolic vernacular. "But you don't +want to walk. It would be awfully jolly if you would come along with me." + +"Wait two minutes until I've said hello to Aunt Lucile and I will," said +Mary, and turned to go into the house. + +"Don't step on any of the piano," Sylvia called after her. "It's spread +all over the place." + +They had made a good many changes in the apple house since Mary had gone +to Ravinia, but the thing that drew a little cry of surprise from her was +this old square piano. The case of it stood snugly in the corner of the +west wall. But the works were spread about the room in a manner which +made Sylvia's warning less far-fetched than it seemed. + +The feeling that caught Mary at sight of it was more than just surprise. +Its dismantled condition brought to her a half-scared but wholly happy +reassurance that Anthony March was really here. + +Her journey to Hickory Hill had been, so she had told herself at +intervals during the day, merely a flight from her father and Paula. +There was no real reason for thinking that she would find March at the +end of it. Week-end visits usually ended Monday morning, and it was +probable that he would have gone hours before she arrived. She was +conscious now of having commanded herself not to be silly when she was +fretting over the late start from Ravinia and Paula's errand in town. It +_would_ be nice to see him again! He was probably out in the hay field +with the others. + +She gave her aunt a rather absent-minded greeting and a highly condensed +summary of her news. Her father was well and was stopping on with Paula +for a day or two. + +"He's taken over my job," she concluded mischievously, "maid, chauffeur +and chaperon. Paula doesn't mind now that she's made such an enormous hit +and she doesn't sing again until Thursday. Pete will take you in the big +car to Durham." + +"Well, that's Heaven's mercy," exclaimed Miss Wollaston. "I don't like to +drive with Sylvia in any car and I don't like riding in a Ford no matter +who drives. But Sylvia driving a Ford--her own car's broken down +somehow--is simply frightful." + +"She's waiting for me now," said Mary, "to take me out to the hay field. +I must run before she grows any more impatient." + +And run was precisely what she did, down the slope to where Sylvia +awaited her, a lighter-hearted creature altogether than she had supposed +this morning that it was possible for her to be. + +She got an explanation of the piano from Sylvia. She had gone with Rush +and Mr. March to an auction sale late Saturday afternoon at a farm three +or four miles away. Just for a lark. They hadn't meant seriously to buy +anything. But this old piano, Mr. March having sworn that he would make +it play despite the fact that half the keys wouldn't go down at all and +the rest when they did made only the most awful noises, they had bought +for eleven dollars, and had fetched home in the truck on Sunday. + +"I think he's terribly nice," Sylvia confided. "You know him, don't you? +He's quite old, of course.--Well, over thirty he says; but he's +awfully--don't you know--well preserved. There are a whole lot of things +he can do." + +Mary laughed. "That is remarkable. How old are you, you nice young thing? +Going on six? Lookout! You'll smash the lemonade!" + +"We're going to surprise them," Sylvia announced when they had arrived, +miraculously without disaster, at the northeast eighty. They had careened +through the wagon gate and halted under an oak tree at the edge of the +field. "I'll go and tell them I've brought the lemonade, but I won't say +anything about you. You keep out of sight behind the tree. Then Graham +won't want to go and brush his hair." + +It startled Mary to realize that she had forgotten all about Graham. Not +even the sight of his sister had recalled the--highly special nature of +the state of things between them nor suggested the need for preparing an +attitude to greet him with. At all events she wouldn't follow Sylvia's +suggestion and pop out at him from behind a tree. + +He was, it happened, the first person the child encountered in her flight +across the field; the others, indistinguishable at that distance, were in +a group a little farther away. Mary walked out to meet him when she saw +him coming toward her and competently gave the encounter its tone by +beginning to talk to him--about how hot it was and how nice the hay +smelled and how good it seemed to be back here at Hickory Hill--while +they were still a good twenty paces apart. You couldn't strike any sort +of sentimental note very well when you had to begin at a shout. Then she +led him back to the lemonade, gave him a cigarette and answered at length +and with a good deal of spontaneous vivacity his obligatory questions +about Paula and the opening of the Ravinia season. + +She was in the full tide of this--and was, since she had sat down upon a +small boulder Graham had insisted she take possession of, screened by the +trunk of the tree--when Sylvia hailed her brother from, not very far away +with the statement that Rush wouldn't stop for anything or anybody until +once more around the field. It was March, then, who was audibly coming +along with her. Mary rose, broke off about Paula, and moved the single +step it needed to give her sight of him. + +She saw nothing else but him. She saw his head go back as from the actual +impact of the sight of her. She saw the look, unmistakable as a blast +from a trumpet, that flamed into his face. And then her world swam. Paula +wasn't singing now, "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" Nor could Paula +come upon him now, from anywhere, and take him by the shoulders and kiss +his cheek and lead him away with her. This moment was not +Paula's--whatever the other had been. + +And the rest, standing there looking on, hadn't seen the bolt fall! They +were talking as idly and easily as if this were nothing but a hot summer +afternoon in the hay field. + +"I told him," she heard Sylvia saying, "that there was another nice old +person he knew here with the lemonade, who thought I was only about +six.--Were you surprised when you saw who she was?--I'm going to take +him back to the apple house with us, now that Mary's come, so that he +can have the piano ready to dance by to-night." This last, apparently, +to Graham. + +She even heard herself join in,--the voice was hers anyhow--when Graham, +commenting upon the view across the field, remarked that it was so +intensely farm-like that it had almost the look of a stage setting. + +"It is like something," she said then. "It's like the first act of _Le +Chemineau_. We ought to have a keg of cider instead of two jugs of +lemonade and we should have brought it in a wheelbarrow instead of in +the Ford." + +"Well, we couldn't take Mr. March back in a wheelbarrow," Sylvia said, +"so I'm glad it isn't the first act of whatever-you-call-it. Because he's +simply got to fix the piano well enough for jazz." + +Mary couldn't remember that he spoke a word, but he got into the back +seat of the Ford with her when Sylvia slid under the wheel. + +"If you'll promise," Sylvia said to March at the end of the breathless +mile back to the apple house, "if you'll promise to go straight to work +at it and never stop until it'll play the _Livery Stable Blues_, then +I'll go back to the hay field and see that Rush gets some of the lemonade +before those laborers drink it all up. You'll see to him, won't you, +Mary? Stand right over him and be severe, so that we can dance to-night. +You aren't as excited about it as you ought to be. I think I'll come in +and start him." + +And this she did while the Ford executed a little jazz rhythm of its own +outside. She didn't stay more than a minute or two though. When she saw +him fairly occupied, tools in hand, over his task, she darted away again +with a last injunction to severity upon Mary. + +She had seen nothing. The two were left alone. + +Mary sat where she could watch his fine skilled hands at work. The +negligent precision with which they accomplished their varied tasks +occupied her, made it possible to continue for a while the silence she +needed until her world should have stopped swimming; until the blindness +of that revelation should have passed. + +She had been wrong about him again. He was not an Olympian. (But, of +course, Olympians themselves weren't, if it came to that; not always.) +He could never, she had been telling herself since that day when they +had had their one talk together, belong to any one. He did not--save +himself up for special people. He was just there, the same for +everybody, like, she had half humorously observed to her father, a +public drinking fountain. + +If that was the rule, she, Mary Wollaston, was the exception to it. Not +Paula with her opulent armory, but she who had listened with him, +clinging to him, while Paula sang; she, who had talked to him while Paula +fought for her husband's life; she, whom he had come upon in the shade of +the oak tree at the edge of the hay field; she who sat near him, silent +now. This was the meager total that outweighed those uncounted hours of +Paula's. Somehow she had acquired a special significance for him. + +Was she trying to evade saying that he had fallen in love with her. What +was the good--except that it sounded sweet--of using a phrase which could +be packed like a hand-bag with anything you chose to put into it? Graham +was in love with her. That boy in New York, whom she had found in a +panic of lonely terror lest he should prove a coward in the great ordeal +he was facing overseas had been for a few hours in love with her. What +would be the content of the phrase for a man like this? + +Was she in love with him? Her thoughts up to now had been deep, +submerged, almost formless, but this question came to the surface and +touched her lips with a smile. Well, and what did the phrase mean to her? + +All she could think of as she sat so still watching him, was those fine +hands of his, working as skillfully and swiftly as her father's ever +worked but at this humble task. She kept her eyes away for just a +little longer from his face. She wanted those hands. She wanted them +with an intensity that made it impossible at last to let the silence +endure any longer. + +"Paula..." she said, and stopped in sheer surprise that her voice had +come at all; then began again, "Paula wanted you to tune her piano. +At Ravinia. I was angry, at that, until she reminded me that you +wouldn't be." + +His hand laid down the small, odd shaped tool it held, but the next +moment picked it up again. + +"I shouldn't have minded tuning her piano," he told her. + +"I know," she said. "I knew as soon as I had had a minute in which +to--gather you up. And when I had done that, I helped her try to find +you. I had a special reason, a different one from Paula's, for hoping +that we could. And for my reason," she went on, trembling a little +and finding it harder to make her words come steadily, "it +isn't--yet, too late. + +"You see if you were there with her where she could see you every +day--there'd be a lot of pianos there she said; enough to keep you +going--she'd remember you again. She is like that. Lots of people are, I +suppose. When she doesn't see you, she forgets. But if she remembered how +much she liked you and how good your opera was,--the real one, the one +you wrote for yourself--she might do something about it.--To get it +played--so that you could hear it. Now that she's had a great success, +she could do almost anything quite easily, I think. Infinitely more than +I. I've been trying, but I haven't got very far." + +He laid down the tool once more and locked his hands together. "You have +been trying?" he repeated. The tension, like the grip of his hands, was +drawing up almost unbearably. + +"There's a French baritone there, Fournier, who could play your officer's +part. As you meant it to be played, I think. But he doesn't sing in +English. I thought it might be possible, if you didn't mind its being +sung in French, to translate it. That's one of the things I've +been--trying to do." + +And then with a gasp and a sob, "Oh, don't,--don't hurt them like that!" +she reached out and took the hands she wanted. + +He responded to the caress, as before, so quickly that one could +hardly have known where it began; only Mary did know. She looked up +then into his face, steadily, open-eyed, though she could not see much +for the blur. + +"This time," he said, laboriously,--"this time it isn't the song." + +She shook her head. + +"I couldn't have waited, like that," he told her, three breaths later, +"except for being afraid that if I tried to touch you, you wouldn't be +there at all. Like a fairy story;--or a dream. I have never been sure +that the other time wasn't." + +"It's real enough," she said. "You're sure now, aren't you?" + +His answer, the one she meant him to make, was to draw her up into a +deep embrace, his lips upon hers. + +"What does it mean?" he asked, when they had drawn back from it. + +She smiled at that. "You don't need ask. That's the Wollaston trick, to +ask for meanings and reasons." She added, a moment later, "It means +whatever it says to your heart." + +It was at her half-humorous suggestion that he went back, presently, to +work at the piano. She settled contentedly near him where with an +outstretched hand she could occasionally respond to his touch. They +hadn't, either of them, very much to say. + +Once the work was interrupted, when he asked, rather tensely, "Do you +want me to come to Ravinia?" + +She found herself at a loss for a categorical reply. She'd have thought +that a whole-hearted yes would have been the only thing she could say. + +"I don't want you--tortured any more with unheard melodies," she answered +after a moment's reflection. + +His nod, decisive as it was, struck her as equivocal. But she was too +happy to probe into anything this afternoon. There would be plenty of +time; unstinted hours. It was with no more than a mild regret that she +heard, under the windows, the return of the big car with Aunt Lucile. +This inextinguishable happiness expressed itself in the touch of impudent +mischief with which she slipped up close behind Anthony March and, in the +last possible instant before her aunt's entrance into the room, bent down +and kissed him; then flashed back to her decorously distant chair. + +It was funny how calm she was. This day that was closing down over the +hill behind the apple house couldn't be, it seemed, the same that had +dawned over the lake at Ravinia. The whole Ravinia episode, even as she +told Lucile and March about it, seemed remote, like something out of a +book; but became for that very reason, rather pleasant to dwell upon. +Sylvia came in pretty soon for a critical survey of what March had +accomplished with the piano, volunteered to help and attempted to. But +having pled some of Anthony's arrangements of loose parts, she was +sacked off the job and sent back to the hay field to bring the boys in +for supper. + +After supper the excitement over the piano increased. They all gathered +round March like people watching a conjurer's trick when he slid the +action into place and proved, chromatically, that every hammer would +strike and every key return. + +"But it isn't tuned at all," Sylvia wailed. "It will be hours before you +can play on it." + +"Minutes," March corrected with a grin. And they watched, amazed,--but +less so really than an ordinary piano tuner would have been,--at the way +he caught octaves, fifths and fourths, sixths and thirds up and down that +keyboard like a juggler keeping seven tennis balls in the air. + +"There you are," he said suddenly, before it seemed that he could be +half-way through and began playing a dance. + +"But you can play tunes!" cried Sylvia. "I thought you only did terribly +high-brow things. That's what Rush said." + +"I was pianist in the best jazz orchestra in Bordeaux," March told her. + +He stayed there at the piano quite contentedly for more than an hour. +Some of the musical jokes he indulged in (his sense of humor expressed +itself more easily and impudently in musical terms than in any other) +were rather over his auditors' heads. Parodies whose originals they +failed to recognize, experiments in the whole-tone scale that would have +interested disciples of Debussy, but his rhythms they understood and +recognized as faultless. + +And Mary danced. With Graham when she must, with Rush when she could. The +latter happened oftener than you would have supposed. + +"Those Wollastons can certainly dance," Sylvia remarked to her brother. +"I wonder they'll have anything to do with us. Let's just watch them for +a minute.--Here, we'll turn the piano around so Mr. March can see, too." + +It was queer, Mary reflected, how easy it was for her and also, she was +sure, for her lover, to acquiesce in a spending of the hours like that; +how little impatient she was of the presence of these others that kept +them apart. She gave no thought to any maneuver, practicable or +fantastic, for stealing away with him, not even when, as the party +broke up for the night it became evident that chance was not going so to +favor them. + +She realized afterward that there had been something factitious about her +tranquillity. What he had said in the moment before their first embrace +had been on that same note. He had been afraid to touch her for fear +that--as in a fairy story, or a dream,--she wouldn't be there. All that +afternoon and evening, despite an ineffable security in their miracle, +she had walked softly and so far as the future was concerned, avoided +trying to look. + +Something in his gaze when he said good night to her, gave her a +momentary foreboding, though she told herself on the way up to the tent +she was to share with Sylvia that this was nothing but the scare that +always comes along with a too complete happiness. + +But in the morning when her aunt told her that March had gone, she +realized that it had been more than that. + +It was in the presence of the others who had gathered in the apple house +for breakfast that she heard the news, and this was perhaps a mercy; for +the effort she had to make to keep from betraying herself rallied her +forces and prevented a rout. + +To the others his having gone like that seemed natural enough,--likably +characteristic of him, at any rate. In his note to Miss Wollaston he had +merely said that he realized that he must be off and wished to make the +most of the cool of the morning. He hoped she would understand and pardon +his not having spoken of his intention last night. + +"It's the crush Sylvia had on him that accounts for that," Graham +observed. "He was afraid of the row she'd make if he let on." + +Sylvia's riposte to this was the speculation that Mary had scared him +away, but one could see that her brother's explanation pleased her. + +"Anyhow," she concluded, "he was good while he lasted." + +What held Mary together was the obvious fact that none of them saw--no +more than they had seen--anything. Not one curious or questioning glance +was turned her way. A sense she was not until later able to find words +for, that she was guarding something, his quite as much as her own, from +profaning eyes, gave her the resolution it needed to carry on like that +until she could be alone. Naturally,--or at all events plausibly--alone. +She wouldn't run away from anybody. + +Toward eleven o'clock chance befriended her. She hid herself in the old +orchard, lay prone upon the warm grass, her cheek upon her folded +forearms, and let herself go. She did not cry even now. Grief was not +what she felt, still less resentment. + +She was lonely as she had never been before, and frightened by her +loneliness. All the familiar things of her life seemed far away, unreal. +She wanted a hand to hold;--his--oh, one of his!--until she could find +her way into a path again. + +She had known, she reflected,--somewhere in the depths of her she had +known--from the first moment of their meeting, that he would go away. +This was why she had been so careful not to look beyond the moments as +they came; not to tempt Nemesis by asking nor trying for too much. + +There happened to be, rather uncannily, a genuine proof that this was +true. While she had been still dazed with that first look of his, there +in the oak shade at the edge of the field, she had said that it was like +the first act of _Le Chemineau_. That had been speaking all but with the +tongue of prophecy. Deeply as the story had impressed her when she heard +it, she had spoken with no conscious sense of the likeness between that +wayfarer--whom neither love nor interest nor security could tempt away +from the open road which called him,--and Anthony March. It was an inner +self that knew and found a chance to speak. It was that same self who had +answered for her when he asked whether she wanted him to come to Ravinia. + +He had come to his decision then, with just that nod of the head. And +she, forlorn, was glad he had cast this temptation aside. That he was +plodding now sturdily along his highway. She flushed with shame at the +thought of him, ubiquitous among those egotists at Ravinia, enlisting +their interest, reminding Paula how much she liked him. + +Why had he not hated her for suggesting such a thing? He had loved her +for it, she knew, because he understood the longing to comfort and +protect him which lay behind it. But that sort of comfort was not for +him. The torture of the unheard melodies, instead. + +He did love her. This, utterly, she knew. His going away, even with no +farewell at all, cast no flaw upon the miraculous certainty of that. +Their one unreserved embrace remained the symbol of it. + +She pressed her hands to her face and with a long indrawn breath +surrendered to the memory of it. It was hers--for always. + +The family were sitting at dinner when she came down to the apple +house, and after a rather startled look at her, demanded to know where +she had been. + +"Asleep in the orchard," she said. "And not altogether awake yet." + +But she knew she must get away from them. The look she saw in Graham's +face would have decided that. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +A CASE OF NECESSITY + + +She told Rush when they left the table, that she had some shopping to do +in town for Paula and meant to go on the afternoon train. She was +expected back at Ravinia to-morrow anyhow. Beyond trying to persuade her +to let Pete drive her in he made no protest, but she could see that he +was troubled about it and she wasn't much surprised to find Wallace Hood +waiting on the station platform when her train got in. + +She didn't, very much, mind Wallace. There was no appearance of his being +there in the rĂ´le of guardian because she wasn't considered safe to leave +to herself. You could always trust Wallace to do a thing like that +perfectly. + +It was a great piece of luck for him he told her. He had called up +Hickory Hill to congratulate John upon Paula's enormous success; had +learned from Rush of Mary's visit and that she was even then on the way +to Chicago. He had just dropped round at the station in the hope of being +able to pick her up for dinner. She had some shopping to do he understood +and he wouldn't detain her now. + +"Oh, nothing that matters a bit," said Mary. "It was an excuse merely, +for running away from Hickory Hill." + +There was something to be said for a man like Wallace as a confidant. He +was perfectly safe not to guess anything on his own account. He seemed +touched by her candor and hugged her arm against his side as they walked +along, a gesture of endearment such as he hadn't indulged in for half a +dozen years. + +"So if you have nothing better to do," she went on, "we can begin +our evening now. Though I suppose I had better find, first, a place +to sleep." + +"Frederica Whitney's in town for a day or two, just for a flying visit +to Martin. She'd be glad to take you in, I'm sure." + +"Oh, I think not," said Mary. "Not if I can get anything with four walls +at the Blackstone." + +She thought from his glance at her that he attached some special +significance to her unwillingness to go to the Whitney house and hastened +to assure him this was not the case. + +"Frederica's a dear. Only I just happen to feel like not being anybody's +guest to-night. Oh, and I didn't mean you by that either." + +"It's nice to be nobody in that sense," he said. + +His next suggestion was that he get his car, start north up the shore +with her, have dinner at one of the taverns along the road and deliver +her in good season for a night's sleep in the cottage at Ravinia. + +But this suggestion was declined rather more curtly. + +"To-morrow is as soon as I want to go there," she said. "Pete's going +over then to get father so I shall go on duty. But meanwhile I'll let him +enjoy his holiday in peace." + +He made no further demur to telephoning over to the Blackstone. + +On his coming back presently with the news that he had a room for her, +she said, "Then we've nothing on our minds, have we? Except finding a +place for dinner that's quiet and--not too romantic. I _am_ glad you came +to meet me." + +She was quite sincere about this. It would have been ghastly she +reflected, to have spent the evening alone in a hotel bedroom with her +own thoughts, if those she had entertained on the train coming in were a +fair sample. + +He was being just as nice to her as possible. By his old-fashioned +standards, no hotel was a proper place for a young girl to spend a night +in alone. Yet beyond offering two alternative suggestions, he forbore +trying to dissuade her. So when he chose the Saddle and Cycle as their +anchorage for the evening, she endorsed his choice with the best +appearance of enthusiasm she could muster, though she'd rather have gone +to a place where three out of four of the other diners wouldn't in all +probability be known to her. + +Arriving, however, in the unclassified hour between tea and dinner, they +found they had the place pretty much to themselves and settled down in a +secluded angle of the veranda for a leisurely visit. They began on Paula, +of course, her retrieved failure and her sensational success. How sorry +Wallace was not to have been there for her "Nedda." (He didn't go in much +for Sunday entertainments of any sort, Mary remembered.) Well, it had +been just as splendid as everybody said it was. That was one thing, at +any rate, that had been put beyond discussion. Even the pundits were, for +the moment anyhow, silenced. + +He was curious as to how the intimate details of this strange life she +had a chance to observe, struck her. How she liked Paula's colleagues; to +what extent the glamour evaporated when one was behind the scenes. + +She satisfied him as well as she could, though her opportunities, she +said, were a good deal narrower than he took them to be. She had, +herself, so much to do as Paula's factotem that there wasn't much leisure +for loafing about. And this launched her into a humorously exaggerated +account of what was involved in being secretary, chauffeur and chaperon +to a successful opera star. But she pulled up when she saw he was taking +it seriously. + +"It's shocking she should work you like that," he said in a burst of +undisguised indignation. "Of course, it's precisely what Paula would do. +She has very little common consideration, I'm afraid, for anybody." + +Mary could not remember having heard him speak like that, in all the +years she'd known him, of anybody; she was sure he never had so spoken of +any one who bore the name of Wollaston. Taken aback as she was she +changed her tune altogether and tried to reassure him. + +"But that's what I'm there for, Wallace dear! To be worked. And you've +no idea how I like having something to do which amounts, in a small way, +to a job." + +"It's too hard for you, though," he persisted. "It isn't what you were +trained for. And it's rather, as I said,--shocking. If it was all +understood from the first, then so much the worse for the understanding. +I hope your father, when he went up there, didn't discover what your +duties were supposed to be." + +"No," Mary said rather dryly, "I don't believe he did." + +"Well," he said thoughtfully, at the end of a short silence, "I am +profoundly thankful that she's made so--solid a success." + +Up to this moment none of their talk had been quite real to Mary. She had +betrayed no inattention to him and when it had come her turn to carry on +the conversational stream she had done so adequately and even with a +certain vivacity. But it had meant no more than an occupation; something +that passed the time and held her potential thoughts at bay. + +This last observation of his, though, struck a different note. He had +done full justice to his pleasure in Paula's success at the very +beginning of their talk. Now he meant something by it. Leaning forward a +little for a keener look at him, she asked what it was that he meant. + +He was a little surprised to be brought to book like that, but he made +hardly an effort to fence with her. "I was glad, I meant, for purely +non-sentimental reasons. Her success may prove, I suppose, a practical +solution of some difficulties." + +"Practical?" she echoed. "You don't mean,--yes, I suppose you do +mean,--money difficulties. Do you mean that Paula's going to be invited +to support the family now?" She finished with a little laugh and he +winced at it. "Father said something like that to me one day while I was +down south with him," she explained. "Only he said it as a joke,--a sort +of joke. That's why I laughed." + +"He talked to you then about his affairs?" Wallace asked. "May I ... Do +you mind telling me what he said?" + +"Of course not, if I can remember. He'd been remiss, he said, about +making money. He said that if he had died, then when he was so ill, there +wouldn't have been, beyond his life insurance which was for Paula, much +more than enough to pay his debts. Practically nothing for Rush and me is +what that came to. I pointed out to him that we could take care of +ourselves, and he said that anyway as soon as he could get back into +practise, he'd begin to make a lot of money and save. It must be a good +deal worse,--the whole situation I mean--than I took it to be, for you to +mean that seriously about Paula." + +She had managed an appearance of composure but in truth she was badly +shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she +respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old +friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the +look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's +solvency, was terrifying. She hid her hands under the table so that he +shouldn't see they were trembling. She wanted the truth from him now, +rather than vaguely comforting generalties, and if she betrayed her real +feelings, these latter were what she would drive him back upon. + +"Can you tell me," she asked after a pause, "exactly how bad it is?" + +He couldn't furnish details. He told her though that there couldn't be +any doubt her father's affairs were more involved than his summary of +them had made them appear. "He isn't a very good bookkeeper, of +course,--never was; and he has never taken remonstrances very seriously. +Why, about all I know is that Martin Whitney is worried. He tried to +dissuade John from going in anywhere near so heavily on the Hickory Hill +project.--And that, of course, was before we had any reason to suppose +that his ability to earn money was going to be ..." + +It was apparent that he discarded the word that came to his tongue here +and cast about for another; "interfered with," was what he finally hit +upon. "Then he's your aunt's trustee and I believe that complicates the +situation, though just how much I don't know. Rush didn't get a letter +from Martin this morning, did he?" + +"I don't know," Mary said numbly. + +"I thought perhaps," he explained, "that might be the reason why you +didn't want to go to their house tonight. Rush doesn't quite understand +Martin's position nor do justice to it. Martin wants to have a really +thorough talk with him I know, as soon as possible." + +"Wallace ..." Mary asked, after another silence, "what was the word +you didn't say when you spoke of father's earning power +being--interfered with? Was it--cut off? Do you mean that father +isn't--ever going to be well?" + +Startled as he was, he did not attempt a total denial; answered her, +though with an effort, candidly. + +"It's not hopeless, at all," he assured her. "It really is not. If he'll +rest, live an outdoor life for the next year or two, he has a good chance +to become a well man again. It's probable that he will,--practically so. +But if he attempts to take up his practise in the autumn it will simply +be, so Darby declares, suicide." + +"That means tuberculosis, I suppose," she said. + +He nodded; then involuntarily he reached his hands out toward her, a +gesture rare with him and eloquent equally of sympathy and consternation. +He hadn't in the least meant to tell her all that--nor indeed any of it. +Her hands met his with a warm momentary pressure and then withdrew. He +had, for a fact, pretty well forgotten where they were. + +"If you knew," she said, "how kind you've been not to try to--spare me. +No, don't bother. I'm not going to cry. Just give me a minute..." + +It was less than that before she asked, in a tone reassuringly steady, +"Does father know, himself?" + +"He's been warned, but he's skeptical. Steinmetz says there's nothing +surprising about that. It's his all but universal experience with men of +his own profession. Of course this summer out at Hickory Hill is so much +to the good. And if he can get sufficiently interested to stay there the +year round, why, there's no knowing. The investment in that farm may +prove the wisest one he ever made." + +"If it were only possible,"--she was quoting what her father had said to +her the other night at Ravinia,--"for him to be whole-heartedly there! +And he could be--for it's a place one can't help loving and he and Rush +are wonderful companions--he could be whole-heartedly there if it weren't +for Paula." + +It was precisely at this point, he indicated to her, that Paula could +come in by relieving him of the necessity of getting back into practise. +Martin would look out for the fixed indebtedness on the farm. He would +probably be willing, in case John made it his home and put his own mature +judgment at the disposal of the two young partners, to finance still +further increases in the investment. But for the ordinary expenses of +living during the next year or two, Paula should cease being a burden and +become a support. "Do you think," he finished by asking, "that she has +any idea what the situation really is?" + +Mary replied to this question a little absently. "Father insisted that +she carry out the Ravinia contract. She told me so herself and seemed, I +don't know why, just a little resentful about it. But I'm sure she can't +have any idea that there was a need for money at the back of it. It has +irritated her rather whenever she has caught me economizing up there. And +father will never tell her any more pointedly than he has, you can be +sure. Some one of us will have to do it." + +"You're on very good terms with her, aren't you?" Wallace asked. He +added instantly, though with an effort, "I'm willing to tell her if you +wish me to." + +She smiled very faintly at that for she knew how terrifying such a +prospect would be to him. "Whoever told Paula," she said, "she'd +eventually attribute it, I think, back to me. So I may as well, and +rather better, do it directly." + +The tension slackened between them for a while after that. The talk +became casual. Wallace, it was easy to see, was enormously relieved. Mary +had been put in unreserved possession of the facts and had endured them +better than he could possibly have hoped. He began chatting about the +farm again, not now as an incubus but as a hopeful possibility. Both the +boys had real mettle in them and might be expected to buckle down and +show it. Rush would forget the disillusionment of his holiday hopes when +the necessities of the case were really brought home to him. And as for +Graham ... + +Wallace broke off short there, flushed, and made a rather panicky effort +to retrieve the slip. He was in the family enough to be a part of the +Graham conspiracy. Poor Graham, distracted by her innocent inability to +make up her mind to marry him! He would be all right as soon as her +maidenly hesitations should have come to an end, and she'd made him the +happiest man in the world with the almost inevitable yes. + +She had gone rather white by the end of a long silence. Finally: + +"Wallace," she began in a tone so tense that he waited breathlessly for +her to go on, "do you remember I asked you once, the day I came home from +New York, if you couldn't find me a job? I know you didn't think I meant +it and I did not altogether--then. But I mean it now. I need +it--desperately.--Wallace, I can't ever marry Graham. I know I can't. And +I can't go on being dependent on father while he's dependent on Paula." + +He caught at a straw. "Paula is really very fond of you," he said. + +"Yes, in a way," Mary agreed; "though she sometimes has regarded me a +little dubiously. But if she ever saw me--coming between her and father, +or father turning ever so little away from her--toward me, whether it was +any of my doing or not, she'd--hate me with her whole heart. It may not +be very logical but it's true." + +Then she brought him back from the digression. "Anyhow, it's on my own +account, not Paula's--nor even father's--that I want a job. Father will +feel about it, of course, as you do and so will Rush and--and the rest. +And I don't want it to hurt anybody more than necessary. I'd rather stay +here but I suppose on their account I'd better go away. And you know so +many people--in so many places. There's your sister in Omaha. I remember +how much trouble you said she had finding a nursery governess. I'd be +pretty good at that I think. I could teach French and--I'd be nice to +children." + +For a moment she wildly thought she had won him. She saw the tears come +into his eyes. + +"Anything I have in the world, my dear, or anything I can command is +yours. On any terms you like." + +But there he disposed of the tears and got himself together, as if he'd +remembered some warning. She could imagine Rush over the telephone, "Of +course, she's terribly run down with that damned war work of hers; not +quite her real self, you know." + +She saw him summon a resolute smile and heard the familiar note of +encouragement in his voice. "We'll think about it," he told her. "After +all, things aren't, probably, as black as they look. And sometimes when +they look darkest it's only the sign that they're about to change their +faces altogether. Anyhow, we've stared at them long enough to-night, +haven't we? And all I meant was to take you out for a jolly evening! +Don't you think we might save it, even yet? Is there anything at the +theatres you'd like to see?" + +"Some musical show?" she asked. "Yes, I'd like that very much. +Thank you." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE DRAMATIST + + +Mary returned to Ravinia--went on duty, as she put it to Wallace--the +following afternoon rather taut-drawn in her determination to have things +out with Paula at once. But the mere attitude and atmosphere of the +place, as before, let her down a little. + +It was restful to have her days filled up with trivial necessary duties; +an hour's errand running in the small car; a pair of soiled satin +slippers to clean with naptha; a stack of notes to answer from such +unknown and infatuate admirers as managed to escape the classification +feebleminded and were entitled therefore to have the fact recognized +(this at a little desk in the corner while Novelli at the piano and Paula +ranging about the room, ran over her part in half-voice in the opera she +had rehearsed yesterday with the orchestra and was to sing to-night), a +run to the park for a visit to Paula's dressing-room in the pavilion in +order to make sure, in conference with her dresser, that all was in order +for to-night; a return to the cottage in time to heat Paula's milk (their +maid of all work couldn't be trusted not to boil it); then at seven, +driving Paula to the park for the performance, spending the evening in +her dressing-room or in the wings chatting sometimes with other members +of the force whom she found it possible to get acquainted with; +occasional incursions into the front of the house to note how something +went or, more simply, just to hear something she liked; driving Paula +home again at last, undressing her; having supper with her--the most +substantial meal of the day--talking it over with her; and so, like Mr. +Pepys--to bed. + +It might shock Wallace Hood, a schedule like that, but there were days +when to Mary it was a clear God-send. + +She decided within the first twenty-four hours to wait for some sort of +lead from Paula before plunging into a discussion of her father's +affairs. It would take the edge off if the thing weren't too glaringly +premeditated. Paula just now was doing all she could. Mary opened all her +mail and would know if any offer came in that involved future plans. She +accepted the respite gratefully. + +She had a use to put it to. For the first two or three days after her +return, she had not been able to turn to anything that associated itself +with Anthony March without such an emotional disturbance as prevented her +from thinking at all. The mere physical effect of those sheets of score +paper was, until she could manage to control it, such as to make any +continuance of the labor of translating his opera, impossible. + +By a persistent effort of will she presently got herself in hand however +and went on not only with her translation but with the other moves in her +campaign to get _The Outcry_ produced. Her first thought was that +something might be accomplished directly through LaChaise. Her simple +plan had been to make friends with him so that when she urged the +arguments for producing this work, they'd be--well--lubricated by his +liking for her. + +She began saying things to him on a rather more personal note, things +with a touch of challenge in them. There was no gradual response to this +but suddenly--a week or ten days after her return from Hickory Hill this +was--he seemed to perceive her drift. He turned a look upon her, the +oddest sort of look, startled, inquiring, lighted up with a happy though +rather incredible surmise. It was an exclamatory look which one might +interpret as saying, "What's this! Do you really mean it!" + +Mary got no further than that. She didn't mean it, of course, a serious +love-affair with LaChaise, and she tried for a while to feel rather +indignant against an attitude toward women which had only two categories; +did she offer amorous possibilities or not. An attitude that had no half +lights in it, no delicate tints of chivalry nor romance. LaChaise would +do nothing for the sake of her blue eyes. He had no interest whatever in +that indeterminate, unstable emotional compound that goes, between men +and women, by the name of friendship. + +She tried to call this beastly and feel indignant about it, but somehow +that emotion didn't respond. She had more real sympathy for and +understanding of an attitude like that than she had for one like +Graham's. It was simpler and more natural. It involved you in no such +labyrinths of farfetched absurdities and exasperating cross-purposes as +Graham's did. + +It was characteristically,--wasn't it?--a Latin attitude; or would it be +fairer to say that its antithesis as exemplified by Graham was a northern +specialty? She extracted quite a bit of amusement from observing some of +the results of individual failures to understand this fundamental +difference, all the more after she had Jimmy Wallace to share +observations with. He was a dramatic critic, but he consented to take a +fatherly, or better avuncular, interest in the Ravinia season during the +month of his musical colleague's vacation. + +The special episode they focused upon was Violet Williamson's flirtation +with Fournier. She was a pretty woman, still comfortably on the east side +of forty, socially one of the inner ring, spoiled, rather, by an +enthusiastic husband but not, thanks to her own good sense, very +seriously. James Wallace was an old and very special friend of hers and +she commandeered his services as soon as he appeared at Ravinia, in her +campaign for possession of the French baritone. + +Mary had reflected over this and talked it out pretty thoroughly with +Jimmy before it occurred to her that she might be able to turn it to her +own account--or rather to her lover's. For that matter, why not, while +she had him under her hand, recruit Jimmy as an aid in the campaign? + +"Do you mind being used for ulterior purposes?" she asked him. + +He intimated that he did not if they were amusing, as any of Mary's were +pretty sure to be. + +"I'm interested in an opera," she told him, "or rather, I'm very much +interested in a man who has written one. Father and I have agreed that +he's a great person and everybody seems willing to admit that he's a +musical genius. Paula considered the opera, but gave it up after she had +kept him working over it for weeks because the soprano part wasn't big +enough. It would be just the thing for Fournier." + +Jimmy raised the language difficulty. "The book's in English, I +suppose," he said. + +"It's been translated into French," Mary said, and then admitted +authorship by adding, "after a fashion; as well as an amateur like me +could do it." She didn't mind a bit how much Jimmy knew. Not that he +wasn't capable of very acute surmises but that whatever he brought up he +wouldn't have the flutters over. + +"Does Fournier like it himself?" he wanted to know. "Does he see the +personal possibilities in it, I mean?" + +"I haven't shown it to him yet," Mary said. "I want him to hear about it +in just the right way first. If Paula would only say just the right +thing! She means to but she forgets. LaChaise would back her up, I think, +if she took the lead. Otherwise ... well, he isn't looking for trouble, +I suppose, and of course, it would mean a lot." + +"Somebody has to put his back into an enterprise of that sort," +Jimmy observed. + +"I can't, directly," she said, "not with LaChaise nor with Mr. Eckstein. +But you see," she went on, "if Violet happened to hear, from somebody who +was in the way of getting inside information, about a small opera that +had a sensational part for a baritone, she'd work it and make her husband +too, and since he's one of the real backers and a friend of Mr. +Eckstein's, they'd be likely to accomplish something." + +"Lead me to it," said Jimmy. "Give me your inside information and leave +Violet to me." + +He got a little overflow from the fulness of her heart at that that would +have rewarded him amply for a more arduous and less amusing prospect than +he was committed to. It was always touch and go whether this summer +plunge into musical criticism wouldn't bore him frightfully. Pretentious +solemnities of any kind were hard for him to tolerate and an opera season +is, of course, stuffed with these, even a democratized blue-penciled +out-of-doors affair like this. It was a great relief to find him a mind +as free from sentimental resonances as Mary Wollaston's swimming about in +it. They saw eye to eye over a lot of things. + +They were in whole-hearted agreement for example about a certain +impresario, Maxfield Ware, who created a sensation among the company and +staff by turning up ostentatiously unaccounted for from New York and +looking intensely enigmatical whenever any one asked him any questions. +He was a sufficiently well-known figure in that world for surmises to +spring up like round-eyed dandelions wherever he trod. + +It wasn't long before everybody knew, despite the concealments which his +ponderous diplomacy never cast aside, that his objective was Paula. She +divined this before he had made a single overt move in her direction and +pointed it out to Mary with a genuine pleasure sounding through the tone +of careless amusement she chose to adopt. + +"You wouldn't have anything to do with a person like that, would you?" +Mary was startled into exclaiming. "Of course, if he were genuinely what +he pretends to be and the things he boasts were true...." + +"Oh, he's genuine enough," said Paula. "A quarter to a half as good as he +pretends and that's as well as the whole of that lot will average. Though +he isn't the sort you and John would take to, for a fact." + +It was not the first time Mary had found herself bracketed with her +father in just this way. It wasn't a sneering way, hardly hostile. But +Mary by the second or third repetition began reading an important +significance into it. Paula in her instinctive fashion was beginning to +weigh alternatives, one life against the other, a thing it wasn't likely +she had ever attempted before. + +There was a tension between John and Paula which Mary saw mounting daily +over the question of his next visit to Ravinia. Paula wanted him, was +getting restless, moody, as nearly as it was possible for her to be +ill-natured over his abstention. Yet it was evident enough that she had +not invited him to come; furthermore, that she meant not to invite him. +Once Mary would have put this down to mere coquetry but this explanation +failed now to satisfy altogether. There was something that lay deeper +than that. Some sort of strain between them dating back, she surmised, to +the talk her father had referred to down in North Carolina in the jocular +assertion that he had told Paula she would have to begin now supporting +the family. Had the same topic come up again during his visit to Ravinia? + +The perception of this strain in their relation increased Mary's +reluctance to bring the topic up herself, in default of a lead from +Paula, out of nowhere. It almost seemed as if Paula consciously avoided +giving her such a lead, sheered away whenever she found they were +"getting warm" in that direction. + +There were hours when the undertaking she had committed herself to with +Wallace Hood seemed fantastic. Between two persons like her father and +Paula a meddler could make such an incalculable amount of mischief. All +the current maxims of conduct would support her in a refusal to +interfere. It was exclusively their affair, wasn't it? Why not let them +settle it in their own way? + +Yet there were other hours when she put her procrastinations down to +sheer cowardice. This occurred whenever she got a letter from her aunt at +Hickory Hill. + +Miss Wollaston was a dutiful but exceedingly cautious correspondent, but +beneath the surface of her brisk little bulletins were many significant +implications. Rush had made two or three trips to town for consultations +with Martin Whitney ... Doctor Steinmetz, presence unaccounted for, had +been a guest one day at lunch... Graham's father had come out one +Saturday and after he had been exhaustively shown over the place the men +had talked until all hours.... The building program was to be curtailed +for the present; to be resumed, perhaps when prices weren't so high nor +labor so hard to get.... The new Holstein calves had come. Mary had been +told, hadn't she, of the decision to constitute the herd in this manner +instead of buying all milking cows.... Sylvia, declaring that Rush and +Graham had got too solemn to live with, had finally obeyed her mother +and gone home to the Stannards' summer place at Lake Geneva. + +Mary read these letters to Paula as they came in the hope of provoking +some question that would make it possible to tell John Wollaston's wife +the tale of his necessities, but nothing of the sort happened. Paula did +observe (a little uneasily?) apropos of Steinmetz' visit: + +"John says he's taken quite a fancy to him. He told me he was going to +get him to come out if he could." + +The other casts brought up nothing whatever. + +As it happened Mary paid dear for her procrastination. Paula sent her +into town one day with a long list of errands, a transparently factitious +list, which, taken in connection with an unusual interest she displayed +in the item of lunch, made it more than sufficiently plain to Mary that +for the day she wasn't wanted at Ravinia. + +She concealed, successfully she thought, the shock she felt at these new +tactics of Paula's, studied the list and said she thought she should be +able to return on the three o'clock train. She made a point however of +not coming back until the four-fifteen. It was nearly six before she got +back to the cottage, but the contented lazy tone in which Paula from +up-stairs answered her hail, made it plain that her tardiness had not +been remarked. However Paula had spent her day, the upshot of it was +satisfactory. + +"Shall I come up?" Mary asked. + +"Come along," Paula answered. "I'm not asleep or anything and besides I +want to talk to you." + +"I think I got everything you want," Mary said from Paula's doorway, "or +if not exactly, what will do just about as well." + +Paula, stretched out on the bed rather more than half undressed, with the +contented languor of a well fed lioness yet with some passion or other +smoldering in her eyes, made no pretense at being interested in Mary's +success in executing her commissions. + +"I had Max to lunch to-day," she said. "I knew you hated him and then it +was complicated enough anyway. I suppose it might have been better if I'd +told you so right out instead of making up all those things for you to do +in town, but I couldn't quite find the words to put it in somehow and I +had to have it out with him. He's been nagging at me for a week and he's +going away to-morrow. He's given me until then to think it over." + +There was no use trying to hurry Paula. Mary took off her hat, lighted a +cigarette and settled herself in the room's only comfortable chair before +she asked, "Think what over?" + +"Oh, the whole thing," said Paula. "What he's been harping on for the +last week.--He _is_ a loathsome sort of beast," she conceded after a +little pause. "But he's right about this. Absolutely." + +Was her father ever fretted, Mary wondered, by this sort of thing? Did +his nerves draw tight, and his muscles, too, waiting for the idea behind +these perambulations to emerge? + +"I can imagine a lot of things that Mr. Maxfield Ware would be right +about," she observed. "Which one is this?" + +"About me," said Paula. "About what I'd have to do if I wanted to get +anywhere. He thinks I've a good chance to get into the very first class, +along with Garden and Farrar and so on. And unless I can do that, there's +no good going on. I'd never be happy as a second rater. Well, that's +true. And my only chance of getting to the top, he says, is in being +managed just right. I guess that's true, too. He says that if I take this +Metropolitan contract that LaChaise has been talking about, go down to +New York as one of their 'promising young American sopranos' to sing on +off-nights and fill in and make myself generally useful, I simply won't +have a chance. They wouldn't get excited about me whatever happened. +They'd go on patronizing me and yawning in my face no matter how good I +was. I'd do just as well, he says, so far as my career is concerned, to +stay right here in Chicago and get Campanini to give me two or three +appearances a season;--make a sort of amateur night of it for the gold +coast to buzz about. I'd have a lot easier time that way and it would +come to the same thing in the end. And he says that unless I want to go +in for his scheme, that's what I'd better do. Well, and he's right. I can +see that, plainly enough." + +Mary refrained from asking what Max's scheme was. She'd learn, no doubt, +in her stepmother's own good time. She nodded a tentative assent to Max's +general premises and waited. + +"He certainly was frank enough," Paula went on after a while. "He wants +to make a real killing he says. Something he's never quite brought off +before. He says the reason he's always failed before is that he's had to +go and mix a love-affair up with it somehow. He's either fallen in love +with the woman or she with him or if it was a man he was managing, they +both went mad over the same woman. Something always happened anyhow to +make a mess of it. But he says he isn't interested in me in the least in +that way and that he can see plainly enough that I'm not in him. But +imagine five years with him!" + +She broke off with a shudder, not a real shudder though. The sort one +makes over a purely imaginary prospect. Some expression of her feeling +must have betrayed itself in Mary's face, for Paula, happening to look at +her just then, sat up abruptly. + +"Oh, I know," she said. "It's all very well, but that's the sort of +person you have to go in with and that's the sort of scheme you have to +go into if you're going to get anywhere. Something of the sort anyhow,--I +never heard of one exactly like this. But this is what he proposes: we're +each to put up twenty thousand dollars. That's easy enough as far as I'm +concerned because what I put up isn't to be spent at all. It's just to be +turned over to somebody--some banker like Martin Whitney--as a guarantee +that I won't break my contract. He says he wouldn't take on anybody in my +position without a guarantee like that. He's to spend the money he puts +up for publicity and other things but he's to get paid back out of what I +earn. He's to be my manager absolutely. I'm to go wherever he says; carry +out any contracts he makes for me. He's to pay my expenses and guarantee +me ten thousand a year beyond that. If he doesn't pay me that much, then +it's he that breaks the contract. And of course, he can't make me do +anything that would ruin my voice or my health. He says he's going to +work me like a dog. That's what he thinks I need. He says he can get me +in with the Chicago company for their road tour before their regular +season opens here. He won't let me sing either in Chicago or New York +until I've landed, but he wants me to go to New York this winter and +coach with Scotti, if we can get him. Then go to Mexico City in the +spring and then down to Buenos Aires for their winter season there. +That's July and August, of course, when it's summer up here. By that time +he thinks we'll be ready for Europe; London or Paris. He's rather in +favor of London. He knows all the ropes and he'll buy the people that +have to be bought and square the people that have to be squared and work +the publicity. He says he's the best publicity man in the world and I +guess he knows. Then after a year or two over there, he thinks we'll be +ready to come back to the Metropolitan and clean up." + +"And what," asked Mary, "is his share of the clean-up to be?" + +"Oh, a half," said Paula; "we'd be equal partners. That's fair enough, I +suppose. I sat there all through lunch while he was talking, hating him; +hating his big blue chin, and his necktie and his great shiny +finger-nails and the way he ate, and feeling, of course, perfectly +frightfully unhappy. I told him I'd let him know what I would do sometime +before to-morrow noon, and as soon as I could I got rid of him. And then +I came up here and cried and cried. And that's something I haven't done +for a long while. I felt as if he was a big spider that had been running +about all over me tying me up in his web. And as if I was a fly and +couldn't get out. There is something spidery about him, you know. The way +he goes back and forth and the way he's so patient and indirect about it +all. It seemed like the end of the world to me before he finished, as if +I never was going to see John again. Oh, I cried my eyes out. Well, and +then about an hour ago I came to. I realized that I hadn't signed his +horrible contract and that I needn't. And that when this beastly season +was over,--and it isn't going to last much longer, thank goodness,--I +could go home to John and lock up the piano and never look at a score +again. It was like coming out of a nightmare." + +Mary dared not stop to think. She took the plunge. + +"There's something about father you've got to be told. I promised Wallace +Hood weeks ago that I'd tell you. I guess he and Martin Whitney think you +know about it by now." + +"Something I've got to be told about John?" Paula echoed incredulously. +"Why, I was talking with him over the telephone not ten minutes before +you came in." + +"Oh, I know. It's nothing like that," Mary said. "But they say he has +tuberculosis. Not desperately, not so that he can't get well if he takes +care of it. If he lives out-of-doors and doesn't worry or try to work. +But if he takes up his practise again this fall, they say,--Doctor +Steinmetz says,--that it will be--committing suicide. That's one thing. +And the other is that he's practically bankrupt. Anyhow, that for a year +or two, until he can get back into practise, he'll need help. That's why +Wallace and Mr. Whitney wanted you told about it." + +There hadn't been a movement nor a sound from Paula. Mary, at the end of +that speech was breathless and rather frightened. + +Finally Paula asked, "Does he know about it?--his health I mean." + +"He's been told," Mary answered, "but he doesn't believe it. They nearly +always are skeptical, Doctor Steinmetz says." + +"He's probably right to be. He's a better doctor than six of Steinmetz +will ever be." + +Another pause; then, once more from Paula, "Did he tell you about the +other thing,--about his money troubles,--when you were down in North +Carolina with him?" + +Mary flushed at the hostile ring there was to that. "He told me a +little," she said, "but not much more, I thought, than he had already +told you." + +"Told me?" Paula swung herself off the bed and on to her feet in one +movement. "He told me nothing." + +"He urged you to carry out your Ravinia contract, didn't he?" Mary asked, +as steadily as she could. + +Paula stood over her staring. "Oh," she exclaimed, and, a moment later +she repeated the ejaculation in a drier tone and with a downward +inflection. She added presently, "I'm not clever the way you are at +taking hints. That's the thing it will be just as well for you both to +remember." She began bruskly putting on her dressing-gown. "I'm going +down-stairs to telephone to Max," she explained. "He's got the paper all +drawn up, not the final contract but an agreement to sign one of the sort +I told you about. I'm going to tell him that if he will bring it back +with him now, I'll sign it." + +Mary stood between her and the door. "Don't you think it would be--fairer +to wait?" she asked; "before you signed a thing like that. Until at +least, you were no longer angry with me for having told you too much or +with father because he had told you too little." + +Paula pulled up at that and stood looking at her stepdaughter with a +thoughtful expression that was almost a smile. "I am angry," she +admitted, "or I was, and just exactly about that. It's queer the way you +Wollastons, you and your father, anyhow, are always--getting through to +things like that. What you say is fair enough. I guess you're always +fair. Can't help being, somehow. But I can't put off telephoning to Max. +You see I called up John at Hickory Hill an hour ago. I told him I had +made up my mind to stop singing. I told him I didn't want any career. +That I just wanted to--belong to him. And I asked him to come to me as +fast as he could. He's on the way now. So it's important, you see, that +Max should get here first." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +TWO WOMEN AND JOHN + + +Paula seemed calm enough after that one explosion but she moved along +toward the accomplishment of her purpose, to get herself thoroughly +committed to Max before John's arrival, with the momentum of a liner +leaving its pier. Mary made two or three more attempts at dissuasion but +their manifest futility kept her from getting any real power into them. +She was, to tell the truth, in a panic over the prospect of that +evening;--her father arriving triumphant in Paula's supposed surrender to +find Maxfield Ware with his five years' contract in his pocket. And the +responsibility for the disaster would be attributed to herself; was +indeed so attributable with a kind of theatrical completeness seldom, to +be found in life. It didn't often happen that any one was as entirely to +blame for a calamity to some one else as Mary was for this _volte-face_ +of Paula's. + +She did not run away altogether. Paula, indeed, didn't know that she had +fled at all, for Maxfield Ware's tardiness about coming back the second +time supplied her with a pretext. + +It was nearly eight o'clock before he came and Paula, who was momentarily +expecting John's arrival by then, was in an agony of impatience to sign +his papers and get him out of the house again. Ware may have divined her +wish and loitered out of mischievous curiosity as to the cause of it. Or +he may, merely, have been prolonging an experience which he found +agreeable. Anyhow, he wouldn't be hurried and he wouldn't go. But Paula +finally turned a look of despairing appeal upon Mary who thereupon +announced her intention of going to to-night's performance in the park. +She would drive, of course, and would be glad to take Mr. Ware along. +Or, for that matter, she would set him down first wherever he might want +to go. He smiled upon her with the fatuous smile of one who finds he has +made an unexpected conquest and said he would be delighted to accompany +Miss Wollaston anywhere. + +She took him, driving pretty fast, to the Moraine Hotel and was glad the +distance was not greater, for after various heavy-handed and unquenchable +preliminaries he kissed her as nearly on the mouth as possible, clinging +to a half-lit cigar the while, just before she whipped around into the +hotel drive. She avoided a collision with one of the stone posts narrowly +enough to startle him into releasing her,--he hadn't realized the turn +was so close--and stopped at the lighted carriage door with a jerk that +left him no option but to get out at once. + +She nodded a curt good night and drove back to the park; went to one of +the dressing-rooms and washed her face. Then she came around in front to +hear Edith Mason sing _Romeo and Juliet_. She didn't get just the effect +she anticipated from this lovely performance because Polacco, who is Miss +Mason's husband, came and sat down beside her--there was nothing spidery +about him, thank goodness--and in a running and vivacious commentary +expressed his lively contempt for this opera of Gounod's. At its best it +was bad _Faust_. Its least intolerable melodies were quotations from +_Faust_,--an assertion which he proved from time to time by singing, and +not very softly either, the original themes to the wrath of all who sat +within a twenty-five foot radius of them. + +Mary felt grateful to him for giving her something that was not +maddening to think about and after the performance went with him and his +wife to supper so that it was well after midnight before she returned to +the cottage. + +It was an ineffable relief to find it dark. Her habit on warm nights was +to sleep on the gloucester swing in the screened veranda and she made it +her bed to-night, though beyond a short uneasy doze of two, she didn't +sleep at all. + +At half past eight or so, just after she had sat down to breakfast, +she heard her father coming down the stairs. She tried to call to him +but could command no voice and so waited, frozen, until he appeared in +the doorway. + +"I thought I heard you stirring down here and that it perhaps meant +breakfast. Paula won't be down, I suppose, for hours. She fell asleep +about four o'clock and has been sleeping quietly ever since." + +This was exactly like Paula, of course. She was the vortex of the +whole tempest, but when she had thoroughly exhausted the emotional +possibilities of it she sank into peaceful slumber like a baby after +a hard cry. + +No wonder she was too much for these two Wollastons who sat now with dry +throats and tremulous hands over the mockery of breakfast! Mary, although +she knew, asked her father whether he wanted his coffee clear or with +cream in it and having thus broken the spell, went on with a gasp: + +"I'm glad Paula isn't coming down. It gives you a better chance to tell +me just how you feel about my having interfered. I did run away last +night. You guessed that, I suppose. But it wasn't to evade it altogether. +My--whipping, you know." + +It had an odd effect on both of them, this reference to her childhood; +her hand moved round the table rim and covered his which rested on the +edge of it. + +"Did your mother ever punish you?" he asked. "Corporeally? It's my +recollection that she did not. I was always the executioner. I doubt now +if that was quite fair." + +"Perhaps not," she asserted dubiously. "In general it isn't fair of +course. It probably wasn't in the case of Rush. But with me,--I don't +think I could have borne it to have mother beat me. It would have seemed +an insufferable affront. I'd have hated her for it. But there was a sort +of satisfaction in having you do it." + +After another moment of silence she smiled and added, "I suppose a +Freudian would carry off an admission like that to his cave and gnaw over +it for hours." + +He stared at her, shocked, incredulous. "What do you know about Freud?" +he demanded. + +"One couldn't live for two years within a hundred yards of Washington +Square without knowing at least as much about it as that," she told +him,--and was glad of the entrance of the maid with another installment +of +the breakfast. There was no more talk between them during the meal. But +at the end of it she faced him resolutely. + +"We must have this out, dad. And isn't now as good a time as any?" + +He followed her out into the veranda but the sounds from the dining-room, +where the maid had come in to clear away the breakfast, disturbed him so +Mary suggested a walk. + +"Get your hat and we'll go over to the lake. I know a nice place not far, +an open field right at the edge of the bluff with one big tree to make it +shady. At this hour of the morning we are sure to have it all to +ourselves." + +He said as they walked along, "I've no reproaches for you. Not this +morning. I've thought over a lot of ground since four o'clock." + +He said nothing more to the point until they reached the spot which Mary +had selected as their destination--it lived up handsomely to all her +promises--and settled themselves under the shade of the big tree. + +"I suppose," he added then, "that I ought to forgive Whitney and Hood. +Their intentions were the best and kindest, of course. But I find that +harder to do." + +He sat back against the trunk of the tree, facing out over the lake; +she disposed herself cross-legged on the grass near by just within +reaching distance. She offered him her cigarette case but he declined. +Of late years, since his marriage to Paula, he had smoked very little. +As a substitute, now, he picked up a forked bit of branch, and began +whittling it. + +"I'm as much to blame as they are," she said, presently. "More, really. +Because, if I hadn't procrastinated-o-ut of cowardice, mostly,--until +yesterday, when she was half-way over the edge, it might never have come +to Maxfield Ware at all. After the situation had dramatized itself like +that, there was only one thing she could do. Of course, they didn't +foresee that five years' contract, any more than I did." + +He nodded assent, though rather absently to this. "I'm not much +interested in the abstract ethics of it," he said. "It's disputable, of +course, how far any one can be justified in making a major interference +in another's life; one that deprives him of the power of choice. That's +what you have done to me--the three of you. If the premises are right, +and the outcome prosperous, there's something to be said for it. But in +this case ..." + +"They aren't mistaken, are they, dad? Wallace and Mr. Whitney?--Or Doctor +Steinmetz?" + +"Why, it's reasonable to suppose that Whitney understands my financial +condition better than I do. I mean that. It's not a sneer. But what he +and Hood don't allow for is that I've never tried to make money. +They've no idea what my earning power would be if I were to turn to and +make that a prime consideration. A year of it would take me out of the +woods, I think." + +She waited, breathless, for him to deal with the third name. She was +pretty well at one with Paula in the relative valuation she put upon her +father's opinion and that of the throat and lung specialist. + +"Oh, as for Steinmetz," John Wollaston said, after a pause, querulously, +"he's a good observer. There's nothing to be said against him as a +laboratory man. But he has the vice of all German scientists; he doesn't +understand imponderables. Never a flash of intuition about him. He +managed to intimidate Darby into agreeing with him. Neither of them takes +my recuperative powers into account." + +He seemed to feel that this wasn't a very strong line to take and the +next moment he conceded as much. + +"But suppose they were right," he flashed round at her. "Am I not still +entitled to my choice? I've lived the greater part of my life. I've +pulled my weight in the boat. It should be for me to choose whether I +spend the life I have left in two years or in twenty. If they want to +call that suicide, let them. I've no religion that's real enough to make +a valid argument against my right to extinguish myself if I choose." + +She wasn't shocked. It was characteristic of their talks together, this +free range among ethical abstractions, especially on his part. + +"You act on the other theory though," she pointed out to him. "Think of +the people you've patched together just so that they can live at most +another wretched year or two." + +"That's a different thing," he said. "Or rather it comes to the same +thing. The question of shortening one's life is one that nobody has a +right to decide except for himself." + +Then he asked abruptly. "What sort of person is Maxfield Ware?" + +She attempted no palliations here. + +"He kissed me last night," she said, "taking his cigar out of his mouth +for the purpose. He's not a sort of person I can endure or manage. Paula +hates him as much as I do, but she can manage him. He'd never try to +kiss her like that." + +"Oh, God!" cried John. "It's intolerable." He flung away his stick, got +to his feet and walked to the edge of the bluff. "Think of her working, +traveling,--living almost,--with a man like that! You say she can manage +him; that she can prevent him from trying to make love to her. Well, what +does that mean, if you're right, but that she--understands him; his talk; +his ideas; his point of view. You can't make yourself intelligible to a +man like that; she can. It's defilement to meet his mind anywhere--any +angle of it. She's given him carte blanche, she says, to manage the +publicity for her. Do you realize what that means? He's licensed to try +to make the public believe anything that he thinks would heighten their +interest in her. That she dresses indecently; that she's a frivolous +extravagant fool; that she has lovers. You know how that game is played." + +Mary did know. She ran over a list of the great names and opposite every +one of them there sprang into her mind the particular bit of vulgar +rĂ©clame that had been in its day some press agent's masterpiece. She was +able further to see that Paula would regard the moves of this game with a +large-minded tolerance which would be incomprehensible to John. After +all, that was the way to take it. If you were a real luminary, not just a +blank white surface, all the mud that Mr. Maxfield Ware could splash +wouldn't matter. You burnt it off. None of those great names was soiled. + +She tried to say something like this to her father, but didn't feel sure +that she quite had his attention. He did quiet down again however and +resumed his seat at the foot of the tree. Presently he said: + +"She's doing it for me. Because my incompetence has forced it upon her. +She'd have taken the other thing; had really chosen it." Then without a +pause, but with a new intensity he shot in a question. "That's true, +isn't it? She meant what she said over the telephone?" As Mary hesitated +over her answer he added rather grimly, "You can be quite candid about +it. I don't know which answer I want." + +"She meant every word she said over the telephone," Mary assured him. +"You couldn't doubt that if you had seen her as I did afterward." + +She didn't pretend though that this was the complete answer. The +reflective tone in which she spoke made it clear that there was more to +it than that. + +"Go on," John said, "tell me the rest of it. I think, perhaps, you +understand her better than I do." + +Mary took her time about going on and she began a little doubtfully. "I +always begin by being unjust to Paula," she said. "That's my instinct, I +suppose, reproaching her for not doing what she would do if she were +like me. But afterward when I think her out, I believe I understand her +pretty well." + +"Paula exaggerates," she went on after another reflective pause. "She +must see things large in order to move among them in a large way. Her +gestures, those of her mind I mean, are--sweeping. If she weren't so +good-natured, our--hair-splitting ways would annoy her. Then it's +necessary for her to feel that she's--conquering something." + +That last word was barely audible and the quality of the silence which +followed it drew John Wollaston's gaze which had been straying over the +lake, around to the speaker. She had been occupying her hands while she +talked, collecting tiny twigs and acorn cups that happened to be within +reach but now she was tensely still and paler than her wont, he thought. + +"You needn't be afraid to say what's in your mind," he assured her. + +"It wasn't that," she told him. "I realized that I had been quoting +somebody else. Anthony March said once of Paula that if she had not been +an artist she might have been a _dompteuse_." + +John settled himself more comfortably against his tree trunk. A contact +like this with his daughter's mind must have been inexpressibly +comforting to him after a night like the one he had just spent. Its +rectitude; its sensitiveness; the mere feel and texture of it, put his +jangling nerves in tune. + +"Is Ware the wild beast she has an inclination to tame in this +instance?" he asked. + +"He's nothing but a symbol of it," Mary said. Then she managed to get the +thing a little clearer. "What she'd have done if she'd been like us and +what we'd have had her do--Mr. Whitney and Wallace and I,--would have +been to make a sort of compromise between her position as your wife and a +career as Paula Carresford. We'd have had her sign a contract to sing a +few times this winter with the Metropolitan or the Chicago company, go on +a concert tour perhaps for a few weeks, even give singing lessons or sing +in a church choir. That would probably have been Mr. Whitney's idea. +Rather more than enough to pay her way and at the same time leave as much +of her to you as possible. + +"But that's the last thing in the world it would be possible for Paula to +do. She must see a great career on one side,--see herself as Geraldine +Farrar's successor,--and on the other side she must see a perfect +unflawed life with you. So that whichever she chooses she will have a +sense of making the greatest possible sacrifice. She couldn't have said +to you what she did over the telephone if Mr. Ware hadn't convinced her +that a great career was open to her and she couldn't have signed his +contract if it had not involved sacrificing you." + +She propped herself back against her hands with a sigh of fatigue. +"There's some of the hair-splitting Paula talks about," she observed. + +"It may be fine spun," her father said thoughtfully, "but it seems to me +to hold together. Isn't there any more of it?" + +"Well, it was balanced like that, you see," Mary went on; "set for the +climax, like the springs in a French play, when I came along at just the +moment and with just the word, to topple it over. Being Paula, she +couldn't help doing exactly what she did. So, however it comes out, I +shall be the one person she won't be able to forgive." + +She knew from the startled look he turned upon her that this last shot +had come uncannily close. She fancied she must almost literally have +echoed Paula's words. If she needed any further confirmation she would +have found it in the rather panicky way in which he set about trying to +convince her that she was mistaken, if not in the fact at least in the +permanence of it. + +She insisted no further, made indeed no further attempt at all to carry +the theme along and though she listened and made appropriate replies when +they were called for, she let her wordless thought drift away to a dream +that it was Anthony March who shared this shade and sunshine with her and +that veiled blue horizon yonder. It was easier to do since her father had +drifted into a reverie of his own. They need not have lingered for they +had sufficiently talked away all possible grounds of misunderstanding, +even if they had not reconciled their disagreement. + +It occurred to her to suggest that they go back, but she dismissed the +impulse with no more than a glancing thought. It was his burden, not +hers, that remained to be shouldered at the cottage and it might be left +to him to choose his own time for taking it up. Paula seldom came down +much before noon anyhow. + +As for John Wollaston, he was very tired. Paula's volcanic moments always +exhausted him. He never could derationalize his emotions, cut himself +free; and while he felt just as intensely as she did, he had to carry the +whole superstructure of himself along on those tempestuous voyages. In +the mood Paula had left him in this morning, there was nothing in the +world that could have satisfied and restored him as did his daughter's +companionship. The peace of this wordless prolongation of their talk +together was something he lacked, for a long while, the will to break. + +It was not far short of noon when they came back into the veranda +together. He had walked the last hundred yards, after a look at his +watch, pretty fast and after a glance into both the down-stairs rooms, he +called up-stairs to his wife in a voice that had an edge of sudden +anxiety in it. Then getting no response, he went up, two at a time. + +Mary dropped down, limp with a sudden premonition, upon the gloucester +swing in the veranda. The maid of all work, who had heard his call, came +from the kitchen just as he was returning down the stairs. Mrs. Wollaston +had gone away, she said. Pete had reported with the big car at eleven +o'clock and Paula, who apparently had been waiting for him, had driven +off at once having left word that she would not be back for lunch. + +"All right," John said curtly. "You may go." + +He was so white when he rejoined Mary in the veranda that she sprang up +with an involuntary cry and would have had him lie down, where she had +been sitting. But the fine steely ring in his voice stopped her short. + +"Have you any idea," he asked, "where she has gone or what she has gone +to do? She came down," he went on without waiting for her answer,--"and +looked for me. Waited for me. And thanks to that--walk we took, I wasn't +here. Well, can you guess what she's done?" + +"It's only a guess," Mary said, "but she may have gone to see +Martin Whitney." + +"Martin Whitney?" he echoed blankly. "What for? What does she want of +him?" + +"She spoke of him," Mary said, "in connection with the money, the twenty +thousand dollars..." + +He broke in upon her again with a mere blank frantic echo of her words +and once more Mary steadied herself to explain. + +"Her agreement with Mr. Ware required her to put up twenty thousand +dollars in some banker's hands as a guarantee that she would not break +the contract. She mentioned Martin Whitney as the natural person to +hold it. So I guessed that she might have gone to consult him about +it;--or even to ask him to lend it to her. As she said, it wouldn't +have to be spent." + +"That's the essence of the contract then. It's nothing without that. +Until she gets the money and puts it up. Yet you told me nothing of it +until this moment. If you had done so--instead of inviting me to go for a +walk--and giving her a chance to get away..." + +He couldn't be allowed to go on. "Do you mean that you think I did +that--for the purpose?" she asked steadily. + +He flushed and turned away. "No, of course I don't. I'm half mad +over this." + +He walked abruptly into the house and a moment later she heard him at the +telephone. She stayed where she was, unable to think; stunned rather than +hurt over the way he had sprung upon her. + +He seemed a little quieter when he came out a few minutes later. +"Whitney left half an hour ago for Lake Geneva," he said. "So she's +missed him if that's where she went. There's nothing to do but wait." + +He was very nervous however. Whenever the telephone rang, as it did of +course pretty often, he answered it himself, and each time his +disappointment that it was not Paula asking for him, broke down more or +less the calm he tried to impose upon himself. He essayed what amends +good manners enabled him to make to Mary for his outrageous attack upon +her. It went no deeper than that. The discovery that Paula was gone and +simultaneously that he need not have lost her obliterated--or rather +reversed--the morning's mood completely. + +It was after lunch that he said, dryly, "I upset your life for you, half +a dozen years ago. Unfairly. Inexcusably. I've always been ashamed of it. +But it lends a sort of poetic justice to this." + +She made no immediate reply, but not long afterward she asked if she +might not go away without waiting for Paula's return. "It would be too +difficult, don't you think?--for the three of us, in a small house +like this." + +He agreed with manifest relief. He asked if it was not too late to drive +that afternoon to Hickory Hill, but she said she'd prefer to go by train +anyhow. That was possible she thought. + +He did not ask, in so many words, if this was where she meant to go. +There was no other place for her that he could think of. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE SUBSTITUTE + + +It was a good guess of Mary's that Paula had gone to borrow the twenty +thousand dollars but it was to Wallace Hood, not to Martin Whitney, that +she went for it; and thereby illustrated once more how much more +effective instinct is than intelligence. + +Martin, rich and generous as he was, originator as he was of the edict +that Paula must go to work, would never have been stampeded as Wallace +was in a talk that lasted less than half an hour, into producing +securities to the amount that Paula needed and offering them up in escrow +for the life of Maxfield Ware's contract. + +Wallace was only moderately well off and he was by nature, cautious. His +investments were always of the most conservative sort. This from habit +as well as nature because his job--the only one he had ever had--was +that of estate agent. But Paula's instinct told her that he wouldn't +find it possible to refuse. I think it told her too, though this was a +voice that did not make itself fairly heard to her conscious ear, that +he would be made very fluttered and unhappy by it whether he granted her +request or not. + +What he would hate, she perceived, was the suddenness of the demand and +the irrevocable committal to those five years; the blow it was to those +domesticities and proprieties he loved so much. The fact that he would be +made sponsor for those unchartered excursions to Mexico, to South +America, and so on, under the direction of a libidinous looking +cosmopolite like Maxfield Ware. + +Why she wanted to put Wallace into the flutters she couldn't have told. +She was, as I say, not quite aware that she did. But he had been running +up a score in very minute items that was all of five years old. The fact +that all these items went by the name of services, helpful little acts of +kindness, made the irritation they caused her all the more acute. + +I don't agree with Lucile Wollaston's diagnosis, that Paula could not +abide Wallace merely because he refused to lose his head over her, but +there was a grain of truth in it. What she unconsciously resented was the +fundamental unreality of his attitude to her. Actually, he did not like +her, but the relation he had selected as appropriate to the first Mrs. +Wollaston's successor was one of innocent devotion and he stuck, +indefatigably, to the pose. So the chance to put his serviceability to +the proof in consternating circumstances like these, afforded her a +subtle satisfaction. He'd brought it upon himself, hadn't he? At least it +was he and no other who had put Mary up to the part she had played. + +None of this, of course, came to the surface at all in the scene between +them. She was gentler than was her wont with him, very appealing, subdued +nearer to his own scale of manners than he had ever seen her before. But +she did not, for a fact, allow him much time to think. + +He asked her, with a touch of embarrassment, whether John was fully in +her confidence concerning this startling project, and if she had won his +assent to it. + +"He knows all about it," she said--and with no consciousness of a +_suppressio veri_ here. "We hardly talked of anything else all last +night. I didn't get to sleep till four. He doesn't like it, but then you +couldn't expect he would. For that matter neither do I. Oh, you don't +know how I hate it! But I think he sees it has to be. Anyhow, he didn't +try very hard to keep me from going on with it--And Mary, of course, is +perfectly satisfied." + +Even his not very alert ear caught something equivocal in those last +sentences, and he looked at her sharply. + +"Oh, I'm worn to ribbons over it!" she exclaimed, and this touch of +apology served for the tearing edge there had been in her voice. "I +couldn't let him see how I feel about it. It would be a sort of relief to +have it settled. That's why I came straight to you to-day." + +He tried, but rather feebly, to temporize. We mustn't let haste drive us +farther than we really wanted to go. The matter of drawing the formal +contract, for instance, must be attended with all possible legal +safe-guards, especially when we were dealing with a person whose honor +was perhaps dubitable. + +"I thought we might go round to see Rodney Aldrich about it, now," she +said. "He's about the best there is in that line, isn't he? Why don't you +telephone to his office and find out if he's there." + +This seemed as good a straw as any to clutch at. The chance of catching +as busy a man as Aldrich with a leisure half hour was very slim. The +recording angel who guarded his wicket gate would probably give them an +appointment for some day next week, and this would leave time for a +confirmatory talk with John. But, unluckily, Rodney was there and would +be glad to see Mrs. Wollaston as soon as she could be brought round. + +"Then, that's all right," Paula said with a sigh of relief. "So if you +really believe I'll keep my word and don't mind putting up the money for +me, it's as good as settled." + +There was one more question on his tongue. "Does John know that you have +come to me for it?" But this, somehow, he could not force himself to ask. +Implicitly she had already answered it--hadn't she? + +"Of course I believe, in you, in everything, my dear Paula. And I'm very +much--touched, that you should have come to me. And my only hope is that +it may turn out to have been altogether for the best." + +And there was that. + +It was not until late that night that his misgivings as to the part Mary +might have played in this drama really awoke, but when they did he +marveled that they had not occurred to him earlier. He recalled that Mary +had prophesied during their talk at the Saddle and Cycle that Paula would +attribute to her the suggestion--whoever might make it--that an operatic +career for John's wife was desirable and necessary for financial reasons. +She had said too, in that serious measured way of hers, "If Paula ever +saw me coming between her and father, whether it was my doing or not, she +would hate me with her whole heart." + +Had that prediction been justified? There were half a dozen phrases that +Paula had allowed herself to use this afternoon, which added up to a +reasonable certainty that it was altogether justified. It was not easy +for him to admit to himself that he didn't like Paula; that he knew her +and had long known her for a person incapable of following any lead save +that of her own primitive straightforward desires. + +His self-communings reached down deeper into him than they had done for +many a long year. He convicted himself, before his vigil was over, of +flagrant cowardice in having allowed Mary to undertake the burden of that +revelation. What harm would it have done any one, even himself, beyond an +hour's discomfort, to have drawn down Paula's lightnings on his own head? +Her enmity, even though it were permanent, could not seriously have +changed the tenor of his ways. + +But to Mary, such a thing could easily be a first-class disaster. Could +John be relied upon to come whole-heartedly to her defense. No, he could +not. Indeed--this was the thought that made Wallace gasp as from a dash +of cold water in the face--John's anger at this interference with his +affairs and at the innocent agent of it was likely to be as hot as his +wife's. Momentarily anyhow. What a perfectly horrible situation to have +forced the girl into;--that fragile sensitive young thing! + +And now above all other times, when, for some reason not fully known to +him, she was finding her own life an almost impossibly difficult thing to +manage. He remembered the day she had come back from New York; how she +had flushed and gone pale and asked him in a moment of suddenly tense +emotion if he couldn't find her a job. It had been that very night, +hadn't it?--when Paula had given that recital of Anthony March's +songs--that she had disappeared out of the midst of things and never come +back during the whole evening. When one considered her courage a flight +like that told a good deal. + +Then there had been that something a little short of an engagement with +Graham Stannard, which must have distressed her horribly;--any one with a +spirit as candid as hers and with as honest a hatred of all that was +equivocal. The family had seemed to think that it would all come out +right in the end somehow, yet the last time she had talked with him she +had said, cutting straight through the disguise his thought had hidden +itself behind, "I know I can't ever marry Graham." + +And it was a young girl harassed with perplexities like these, whom he +had permitted in his stead to beard the lioness. Well, if there was +anything in the world, any conceivable thing, that he could do to repair +the consequences of his fault, he would do it. If that lovers' +misunderstanding with Graham could, after all, be cleared away it would +be the happy, the completely desirable solution of the problem. But if it +could not ... A day-dream that it was he who stood in Graham Stannard's +shoes, offering her harbor and rest and a life-long loyalty, formed the +bridge over which he finally fell asleep. + +She called him to the telephone the next morning while he was at +breakfast; just to tell him she was in town, she said, and to ask him if +he had heard anything from his sister in Omaha as to whether she wanted a +nursery governess. He had to admit, of course, that he had not even +written to her, and felt guiltier and more miserable than ever. + +"Do write to-day, though, won't you?" she urged. "And give me the best +character you can. Because I am going to get some sort of job just as +soon as possible." + +In reply to the inarticulate noise of protest he made at this she went +on, "Our family has simply exploded. I fled for my life last night. So +you see I'm really in earnest about going to work now." + +"I want to come and see you at once," he said. "Where are you?" + +"At home," she answered, "but I'm going out this minute for the day. If +you'd like a picnic tea here at half past five, though, come and I'll +tell you what I've been doing." + +He asked if this meant that she was staying all by herself in the +Dearborn Avenue house without even a servant, and at his lively horror +over this she laughed with an amusement which sounded genuine enough to +reassure him somewhat. She ended the conversation by telling him that she +had left her father with the impression that she was going straight to +Hickory Hill. She was writing Aunt Lucile a note saying she meant to stay +in town for a few days. "But if you get any frantic telephone calls in +the meantime, tell them I'm all right." + +He wondered a good deal, as his hours marched past in their accustomed +uneventful manner, what she could be doing with hers. It was an odd +locution for her to have employed that she was "going out for the day." +He couldn't square it with any sort of social activity. The thing that +kept plaguing his mind despite his impatient attempts to dismiss it as +nonsense, was the possibility that she was actually looking for that job +she'd talked about. Answering advertisements! + +Toward four, when he had stopped trying to do anything but wait for his +appointment with her, Rush and Graham came in, precipitately, and asked +for a private talk with him. He took them into his inner office, relieved +a little at the arrival of reenforcements but disappointed too. + +"If you're anxious about Mary," he began by saying, "I can assure you +that she is all right. She's at the Dearborn Avenue house, or was last +night and will be again later this afternoon. I talked to her on the +phone this morning." + +"Thank God!" said Rush. + +Graham dropped into a chair with a gesture of relief even more +expressive. + +Rush explained the cause of their alarm. Old Pete had driven in to +Hickory Hill around two o'clock with a letter, addressed to Mary, from +Paula, and on being asked to explain offered the disquieting information +that she had left Ravinia for the farm, the afternoon before. They had +driven straight to town and to Wallace as the likeliest source of +information. + +In the emotional back-lash from his profound disquiet about his sister, +suddenly reassured that there was nothing--well, tragic to be +apprehended, Rush allowed himself an outburst of brotherly indignation. +He'd like to know what the devil Mary meant by giving them a fright like +that. Why hadn't she telephoned last night? Nothing was easier than +that. Or more to the point still, why hadn't she come straight out to +the farm as she had told her father she meant to do, instead of spending +the night in town? + +Wallace would have let him go on, since it gave him a little time he +wanted for deciding what line to take. But Graham, it seemed, +couldn't stand it. + +"Shut up, Rush!" he commanded. (You are to remember that he was three +years his partner's senior.) "Mary never did an--inconsiderate thing in +her life. If she seems to have forgotten about us, you can be dead sure +there's a reason." + +"I agree with Stannard," Wallace put in, "that she wants to be dealt +with--gently. She must have been having a rather rotten time." + +He hadn't yet made up his mind how far to take them into his confidence +as to what he knew and guessed, but Rush made an end of his hesitation. + +"Tell us, for heaven's sake, what it's all about.--Oh, you needn't +mind Graham. He's as much in it as any of us. I suppose you know how +he stands." + +Wallace was conscious of an acute wish that they had not turned up until +he'd had a chance to see Mary, but somehow he felt he couldn't go behind +an assurance like that. So he told them what he had pieced together. + +Rush grunted and blushed and said he'd be damned, but it was not a +theme--this contention between his father and his stepmother--that he +could dwell upon. He got hold at last of something that he could be +articulate about, and demanded to know why, in these circumstances, Mary +hadn't come straight to them at Hickory Hill instead of camping out, for +the night, all by herself in the Dearborn Avenue house. + +"She has an idea she must find a job for herself," Wallace said, feeling +awkwardly guilty as if he had betrayed her; but the way Rush leaped upon +him, demanding in one breath what the deuce he meant and what sort of job +he was talking about, made it impossible to pull up. + +He recounted the request Mary had made of him, concerning his sister in +Omaha, and, last of all, stated his own misgiving--nothing but the merest +guess of course--that she had been putting in this day answering +advertisements. "She said she'd give me a picnic tea at five-thirty and +tell me what she'd been doing." + +"Well, it'll be no picnic for her," Rush exploded angrily. "I'll see her +at five-thirty myself. She must be plumb out of her head if she thinks +she'll be allowed to do a thing like that." + +Once more, before Wallace could speak, it was Graham who intervened. "I +want you to leave this to me," he said gravely. "I don't know whether I +can settle it or not, but I'd like to try." He turned to Wallace. +"Would you mind, sir, letting me go to tea with her at half past five +in your place?" + +It is possible that, but for Wallace's day-dream of himself offering +Mary the shelter and the care she so obviously needed, he might have +persisted in seeing her first and assuring her that he was to be +regarded as an ally whatever she decided to do. Her voice as she had +said, "I know I can never marry Graham" echoed forlornly in his mind's +ear. But a doubt faint and vague as it was, of his own disinterestedness +held him back. Graham was young; he was in love with her. That gave him +right of way, didn't it? + +So he assented. It was agreed that Rush should dine with Wallace at his +apartment. Graham, if he had any news for them should communicate it by +telephone. Instantly! + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE + + +The instinct to conceal certain moods of depression and distress together +with the histrionic power to make the concealment possible may be a +serious peril to a woman of Mary Wollaston's temperament. She had managed +at the telephone that morning to deceive Wallace pretty completely. Even +her laugh had failed to give her away. + +She was altogether too near for safety to the point of exhaustion. She +had endured her second night without sleep. She had not really eaten an +adequate meal since her lunch in town the day Paula had engineered her +out of the way for that talk with Maxfield Ware. + +There was nothing morbid in her resolution to find, at the earliest +possible moment, some way of making herself independent of her father's +support. Having pointed out Paula's duty as a bread winner she could not +neglect her own, however dreary the method might be, or humble the +results. In any mood, of course, the setting out in search of employment +would have been painful and little short of terrifying to one brought up +the way Mary had been. + +A night's sleep though and a proper breakfast would have kept the thing +from being a nightmare. As it was, she felt, setting out with her +clipping from the help-wanted columns of a morning paper, a good deal +like the sole survivor of some shipwreck, washed up upon an unknown +coast, venturing inland to discover whether the inhabitants were +cannibals. Even the constellations in her sky were strange. + +Where, then, was Anthony March? Nowhere above her horizon, to-day at all +events. The memory of him had been with her much of the two last +sleepless nights. She had told over the tale of her moments with him +again and again. (Did any one, she might have wondered, ever love as +deeply with so small a treasury of golden hours for memory to draw upon?) +But she could not, somehow, relate him at all to her present or her +future. Her love for him was an out-going rather than an in-coming thing. +At least, her thoughts had put the emphasis upon that side of it; upon +the longing to comfort and protect him, to be the satisfaction to all his +wants. Not--passionately not--to cling heavily about his neck, drag at +his feet, steal his wayfarer's liberty,--no, not the smallest moment of +it! This present helplessness of hers then, which heightened her need for +him, served also to bolt the doors of her thoughts against him. + +Her recollection of the next few hours, though it contained some +vignettes so sharp and deeply bitten in as to be, she fancied, +ineffaceable, was in the main confused. She must have called upon ten or +a dozen advertisers in various suburban districts of the city (she +avoided addresses that were too near home and names where she suspected +hers might be known). Her composite impression was of flat thin voices +which she could imagine in excitement becoming shrill; of curious +appraising stares; of a vast amount of garrulous irrelevancy; of a note +of injury that one who could profess so little equipment beyond good will +should so disappoint the expectation her first appearance had aroused. +The background was a room--it seemed to have been in every case the +same--expensively overfurnished, inexpressive, ill-fitting its uses, like +a badly chosen ready-made coat. The day was not without its humors, or +what would have been humors if her spirit could have rebounded to them. +Chiefly, the violent antagonism she found aroused in two or three cases +by the color of her hair. + +The residuum of her pilgrimages was three addresses where she might call +about the middle of next week, in person or by telephone, to learn the +advertiser's decision. Well it would convince Wallace Hood that she was +in earnest. That was something. + +Wallace's coming to tea became, as the day wore on, more and more +something to look forward to. All the things about him which in more +resilient hours she had found irritating or absurd, his neutrality, his +appropriateness, his steady unimaginative way of going always one step +at a time, seemed now precisely his greatest merits. The thought of tea +in his company even aroused a faint appetite for food in her and lent +zest to her preparations for it. When she stopped at the neighborhood +caterer's shop for supplies she bought some tea cakes in addition to the +sandwiches she had ordered in the morning. She had managed to get home +in good enough season to restore the drawing-room somewhat to its +inhabited appearance, to set out her tea table, put on her kettle, and +then go up-stairs and change her dress for something that was not wilted +by the day's unusual heat. She was ready then to present before Wallace +an _ensemble_ which should match pretty well her tone at the telephone +this morning. + +But when she answered the ring she supposed was his and flinging open the +door saw Graham Stannard there instead, she got a jarring shock which her +overstrung nerves were in no condition to endure. + +"I persuaded Mr. Hood to let me come to tea in his place," he said. +"It was rather cheeky of me to ask him, I'm afraid. I hope you will +forgive me." + +The arrest of all her processes of thought at sight of him lasted only +the barest instant. Then her mind flashed backward through a surmise +which embraced the whole series of events. An alarm at Hickory Hill over +her failure to arrive (which somehow they had been led to expect), a +dash by Graham (Rush not available, perhaps), into town for news. To +Wallace Hood, of course. And Wallace had betrayed her. In the interest of +romantic sentiment. The happy ending given its chance. A rich young +adoring husband instead of a job as nursery governess in Omaha! + +It took no longer for all that to go through her mind than Graham needed +for his little explanatory speech on the door-step. There he stood +waiting for her answer. The only choice she had was between shutting the +door in his face without a word, or graciously inviting him to come in +and propose to her--for the last time, at all events. It was not, of +course, a choice at all. + +"I'm afraid it's a terribly hot day for tea," she said, moving back from +the doorway to make room for him to come in. "Wallace likes it, though. I +might make you something cold if only I had ice, but of course there +isn't any in the house. It's nice and cool, though, isn't it; from having +been shut up so long?" + +Anything,--any frantic thing that could be spun into words to cover the +fact that she had no welcome for him at all, not even the most wan little +beam of friendly tenderness. She had seen the hurt look come into his +eyes, incipient panic at the flash of anger which had not been meant for +him. She must float him inside, somehow, and anchor him to the tea table. +There she could get herself together and deal with him--decently. + +He came along, tractably enough, sat in the chair that was to have +been Wallace's, and talked for a while of the tea, and how hot it was +this afternoon, and how beautifully cool in here. It was hot, too, out +at Hickory Hill but one thought little of it. The air was drier for +one thing. He and Rush had commented on the difference as they drove +in to-day. + +"Oh, Rush came in with you, did he?" she observed. + +He flushed and stammered over the admission and it was easy to guess why. +The fact that her brother, as well as Wallace, was lurking in the +background somewhere waiting for results gave an official cast to his +call that was rather--asinine. She came to the rescue. + +"I suppose he and Wallace had something they wanted to talk about," she +commented easily, and he made haste to assent. + +She steadied herself with a breath. "Did Wallace tell you," she asked, +"about our explosion at Ravinia over Paula's new contract? And how +furious both father and Paula are with me about it? And how I'm out +looking for a job? He didn't say anything about his sister, did he; +whether he'd written to her to-day or not?" + +"Not whether he'd written. But he told us the rest. How you wanted to go +to work. As a nursery governess." + +He paused there but she did not break in upon it. She had given him all +the lead he needed. With the deliberate care that a suddenly tremulous +hand made necessary he put down his teacup and spoke as if addressing it. + +"I think you're the bravest--most wonderful person in the world. Of +course, I've known that always. Not just since I came back last spring. +But this, that Mr. Hood told us this afternoon, somehow--caps the climax. +I can't tell you how it--got me, to think of your being ready to do--a +thing like that." + +The last thing she would have done voluntarily was to put any obstacles +in his way. Her program, on the contrary was to help him along all she +could to his declaration, make a refusal that should be as gentle as was +consistent with complete finality, and then get rid of him before +anything regrettably--messy ensued. But to have her courage rhapsodized +over like this was a thing she could not endure. + +"It's nothing," she said rather dryly, "beyond what most girls do +nowadays as a matter of course. I'm being rather cowardly about it, I +think--on account of some silly ideas I've been more or less brought up +with perhaps, but..." + +"What if they do?" he broke in; "thousands of them at the stores and in +the offices. It's bad enough for them--for any sort of woman. But it's +different with you. It's horrible. You aren't like them." + +She tried to check herself but couldn't. "What's the difference? I'm +healthy and half-educated and fairly young. I have the same sort, pretty +much, of thoughts and feelings. I don't believe I like being clean and +warm and well-fed and amused and admired any better than the average girl +does. I ought to have found a job months ago, instead of letting Rush +bring me home from New York. Or else gone to work when I came home. But +every one was so horrified..." + +"They were right to be," he interrupted. "It is a horrible idea. Because +you aren't like the others. You _haven't_ the same sort of thoughts and +feelings. A person doesn't have to be in love with you to see that. Your +father and Rush and Mr. Hood all see it. And as for me--well, I couldn't +endure it, that's all. Oh, I know, you can act like anybody else; laugh +and dance and talk nonsense and make a person forget sometimes. But the +other thing is there all the while--shining through--oh, it can't be +talked about!--like a light. Of--of something a decent man _wants_ to be +guided by, whatever he does. And for you to go out into the world with +that, where there can't be any protection at all ... I can't stand it, +Mary. That's why I came to-day instead of Mr. Hood." + +She went very white during that speech and tears came up into her eyes. +Tears of helpless exasperation. It was such a cruelly inhuman thing to +impose an ideal like that upon a woman. It was so smug, so utterly +satisfactory to all romantic sentimentalists. Wallace would approve every +word of it. Wallace had sent him to say just this;--was waiting now to be +told the good news of his success. + +The fact is worth recalling, perhaps, that away back in her childhood +Wallace had sometimes reduced her to much this sort of frantic +exasperation by his impregnable assumption that she was the white-souled +little angel she looked. Sitting here in this very room he had goaded her +into committing freakish misdemeanors. + +She was resisting now an impulse of much the same sort, though the +parallel did not, of course, occur to her. It was just a sort of +inexplicable panic which she was reining in with all her might by telling +herself how fond she really was of Graham and how terrible a thing it +would be if she hurt him unnecessarily. She dared not attempt to speak so +she merely waited. She was sitting relaxed, her head lowered, her chin +supported by one hand. This stillness and relaxation she always resorted +to in making any supreme demand upon her self-control. + +He looked at her rather helplessly once or twice during the silence. Then +arose and moved about restlessly. + +"I know you don't love me. I've gone on hoping you could after I suppose +I might have seen it wasn't possible. You've tried to and you can't. I +don't know if one as white as you could love any man--that way. Well, I'm +not going to ask any more for that. I want to ask, instead, that we be +friends. I haven't spoiled the possibility of that, have I?" + +She was taken utterly by surprise. It didn't seem possible that she had +even heard aright and the face he turned to, as he asked that last +question, was of one pitiably bewildered, yet lighted too by a gleam of +gratitude. + +"You really mean that, Graham?" she asked in a very ragged voice. "Is +that what you came to-day to tell me?" + +"I mean it altogether," he said earnestly. "I mean it without +any--reservations at all. You must believe that because it's the--basis +for everything else." + +She repeated "everything else?" in clear interrogation; then dropped back +rather suddenly into her former attitude. Everything else! What else was +there to friendship but itself? + +He turned back to the window. "I've come to ask you to, marry me, Mary, +just the same. I couldn't be any good as a friend, couldn't take care of +you and try to make you happy, unless in the eyes of the world I was your +husband. But I wouldn't ask,--I promise you I wouldn't ask +anything,--anything at all. You do understand, don't you? You'd be just +as--sacred to me ..." + +Then he cried out in consternation at the sight of her, "Mary! +What is it?" + +The tension had become too great, that was all. Her self-control, +slackened by the momentarily held belief that it was not needed, +had snapped. + +"I understand well enough," she said. "You would say good night at my +bedroom door and good morning at the breakfast table. I've read of +arrangements like that in rather nasty-minded novels, but I didn't +suppose they existed anywhere else. I can't think of an existence more +degradingly sensual than that;--to go on for days and months and years +being 'sacred' to a man; never satisfying the desires your nearness +tortured him with--to say nothing of what you did with your own! + +"But that such a thing should be offered to me because I'm too good to +love a man honestly.... You see, I'm none of the things you think I am, +Graham. Nor that you want me to be. Not white, not innocent. Not a 'good' +woman even, let alone an angel. That's what makes it so--preposterous." + +He had been staring at her, speechless, horrified. But at this it was as +if he understood. "I ought not to have worried you to-day," he said, +suddenly gentle. "I know how terribly overwrought you are. I meant--I +only meant to make things easier. I'm going away now. I'll send Rush to +you. He'll come at once. Do you mind being alone till then?" + +She answered slowly and with an appearance of patient +reasonableness, "It's not that. It's not what Rush calls +shell-shock. There is many a shabby little experimental flirt who +has managed to keep intact an-innocence which I don't possess. That +is the simple-physiological truth." + +Then, after a silence, with a gasp, "I'm not mad. But I think I shall be +if you go on looking at me like that. Won't you please go?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE TERROR + + +Graham Stannard made his well-meant but disastrous proposal to Mary at +half past five or so on a Friday afternoon. It was a little more than +twenty-four hours later, just after dark on Saturday evening, that she +came in, unheralded, more incredibly like a vision than ever, upon +Anthony March in his secret lair above the grocery. + +He was sitting at his work-table scoring a passage in the third act of +_The Dumb Princess_ for the wood-wind choir when her knock, faint as it +was, breaking in upon the rhythm of his theme, caused his pen to leap +away from the paper and his heart to skip a beat. But had it actually +been a knock upon his door? Such an event was unlikely enough. + +He uttered a tentative and rather incredulous "Come in" as one just +awakened speaks, humoring the illusion of a dream. + +But the door opened and the Dumb Princess stood there, pallid, wistful, +just as she had looked before her true lover climbed the precarious ivy +to her tower and tore away the spell that veiled her. + +March sat debating with himself,--or so it seemed to him afterward; it +was a matter of mere seconds, of course,--why, since she was a vision, +did she not look as she had on one of the occasions when he had seen her. +The night of the Whitman songs; the blazing afternoon in the hay field. + +She was different to-night, and very clearly defined, in a plain +little frock of dark blue--yet not quite what one ordinarily meant by +dark blue--cut out in an unsoftened square around the neck, and a +small hat of straw, the color of the warmer sort of bronze. These +austerities of garb, dissociated utterly with all his memories, gave +her a poignancy that was almost unbearable. Why had the vision of her +come to him like that? + +She smiled then and spoke. "It is really I. I've come with a +message for you." + +Until she spoke he could do nothing but stare as one would at an +hallucinatory vision; but her voice, the first articulate syllable of it, +brought him to his feet and drew him across the room to where she stood. +He was almost suffocated by a sudden convulsion of the heart, half +exultation, half terror. The exultation was accountable enough. The high +Gods had given him another chance. Why he should be terrified he did not +at the time know, but he was--from that very first moment. + +He came to her slowly, not knowing what he was to do or say. All his +mental powers were for the moment quite in abeyance. But when he got +within hand's reach of her it was given to him to take both of hers and +stoop and kiss them. He'd have knelt to her had his knees ever been +habituated to prayer. Then he led her to his big hollow-backed easy chair +which stood in the dormer where the breeze came in, changed its position +a little and waited until, with a faintly audible sigh, she had let +herself sink into it. + +How tired she was! He had become aware of that the moment he touched her +hands. Whatever her experience during the last days or weeks had been, it +had brought her to the end of her powers. + +He felt another pang of that unaccountable terror as he turned away, and +he put up an unaddressed prayer for spiritual guidance. It was a new +humility for him. He moved his own chair a little nearer, but not close, +and seated himself. + +"I can conceive of no message,"--they were the first words he had +spoken, and his voice was not easily manageable,--"no message that would +be more than nothing compared with the fact that you have come." Rising +again, he went on, "Won't you let me take your hat? Then the back of that +chair won't be in the way." + +It was certainly a point in his favor that she took it off and gave it to +him without demur. That meant that there would be time; yet her very +docility frightened him. She seemed quite relaxed now that her head could +lie back against the leather cushion, and her gaze traveled about the +dingy littered room with a kind of tender inquisitiveness as if she were +memorizing its contents. + +He gazed at her until a gush of tears blinded his eyes and he turned, +blinking them away, to the untidy quires of score paper which he had +tried to choose instead. It could not be that it was too late to alter +that choice. The terror, for a moment, became articulate. She believed +that it was too late. That was why she had come. + +She spoke reflectively. "It would be called an accident, I suppose, that +I came. I wrote to you but there was more to the message than would go +easily in a note so I took it myself to your house. There was just a +chance, I thought, that I'd find you there. I didn't find you, but I +found Miss MacArthur. That was the only thing about it that could be +called accidental. Your mother and sister were worried about you. They +said it had been much longer than such periods usually were since they +had heard from you. So I left my note and was coming away. Miss +MacArthur said she would come with me and offered to drive me back to +town. When we got into her car she said she thought she knew where you +were and would take me to you. She did not say anything more nor ask any +questions until she had stopped outside here at the curb, when she +looked up and saw the lighted windows and said you were surely here. +Then she pointed out the place in the dark where the stairs were and +told me how to find your door. She waited, though, to make sure before +she drove away. I heard her go." + +He had no word to say in the little pause she made there. He felt the +pulse beating in his temples and clutched with tremulous hands the wooden +arms of his chair. Until she had mentioned Jennie MacArthur's name it had +not occurred to him to wonder how she had been enabled to come to him. It +could only have been through Jennie, of course. Jennie was the only +person who knew. But why had Jennie disclosed his secret (her own at the +same time, he was sure; she never would have expected Mary's clear eyes +even to try to evade the unescapable inference)--why had she revealed to +Mary, whom she had never seen before, a fact which she had guarded with +so impregnable a loyalty all these many years? + +The only possible answer was that Jennie had divined, under the girl's +well-bred poise, the desperation which was now terrifying him. It was no +nightmare then of his own overwrought imagination. Jennie had perceived +the emergency--the actual life-or-death emergency--and with courageous +inspiration had done, unhesitatingly, the one thing that could possibly +meet the case. She had given him his chance. Jennie! + +He arrived at that terminus just as Mary finished speaking. In the pause +that followed she did not at first look at him. Her gaze had come to rest +upon that abortive musical typewriter of his. Not quite in focus upon it, +but as if in some corner of her mind she was wondering what it might be. +But as the pause spun itself out, her glance, seeking his face, moved +quickly enough to catch the look of consternation that it wore. She read +it--misread it luckily--and her own lighted amazingly with a beam of pure +amusement. + +"I suppose it is rather overwhelming," she said; "a conjunction like +that. I mean, that it should have been she who brought me here. But +really, unless one accepts all the traditional motives and explanations +that one finds in books, it shouldn't be surprising that she should +undertake a friendly service for some one else she saw was fond of you, +too. Not when one considers the wonderful person she is." + +If his sheer adoration of her were enough to save her then she was safe, +whatever the peril. But he doubted if it would be enough. + +"Jennie and I were lovers once," he said. "But that came to an end for +both of us a good while ago. Two or three years. And the last time she +came to this room--one day in April it was--I told her about you and +about _The Dumb Princess_." He laid his hand upon the stack of +manuscript. "This. I had come home from that night at your father's house +when you and I heard that song together, with my head full of it. I went +nearly mad fighting it out of my head while I tried to make over that +other opera for Paula." + +"_The Dumb Princess_...?" + +He nodded. "You see you hardly spoke that night, only at the end to say +we mustn't talk. So I came away thinking of some one under a spell. A +princess, the fairy sort of princess who could not speak until her true +lover came to her. But instead of that I tried to go on working at that +Belgian horror and stuck at it until it was unendurable. And then, when I +came to the house to tell Paula so, it was you who came to me again, the +first time since that night." + +There had come a faintly visible color into her cheeks and once more she +smiled, reflectively. "That's what you meant then," she mused. "I +couldn't make it out. You said just before you went away, 'That's why it +was so incredible when you came down the stairs instead.'" + +She had remembered that! + +"I ran away," he confessed, "the moment I had said it, for fear of +betraying myself. And I went to work on _The Dumb Princess_ that day." + +"You've done all that, a whole opera, since the fourteenth of May?" + +"I worked on it," he said, "until I had to stop for the little vacation +that--that ended at Hickory Hill. And I came straight back to it from +there. I've been working at it all the time since. Now, except for the +scoring in the second part of the third act, it's finished. I thought it +was the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. Just to get +it written down on paper, the thing which that moment with you up in that +little anteroom started. I've pretty well done it. As far as the music +itself is concerned, I think I have done it." + +He paused there and pressed his lips together. Then he went on speaking, +stiffly, one word at a time. "And I was saying to myself when you knocked +that I would tear it up, every sheet of it, and set it alight in the +stove yonder if it would take me back to that hour we had together at +Hickory Hill." + +The tenderness of her voice when she replied (it had some of the +characteristic qualities of his beloved woodwinds) did not preclude a +bead of humor, almost mischief, from gilding the salient points of +its modeling. + +"I know," she said. "I can guess what that feeling must be; the perfect +emptiness and despair of having a great work done. I suspect there aren't +many great masterpieces that one couldn't have bought cheap by offering +the mess of pottage at the right moment. Oh, no, I didn't mean a sneer +when I said cheap. I really understand. That very next morning out in the +orchard, thinking over it, I managed to be glad you'd gone--alone. Your +own way, rather than back with me to Ravinia. But--I'm glad I came +to-night and I'm glad I know about--_The Dumb Princess_." + +Watching her as her unfocused reminiscent gaze made it easy for him to +do, he saw her go suddenly pale, saw the perspiration bead out on her +forehead as if some thought her mind had found itself confronting +actually sickened her. He waited an instant, breathless in an agony of +doubt whether to notice or to go on pretending to ignore. After a moment +the wave passed. + +"I know that was a figure of speech," she resumed,--her voice was +deadened a little in timbre but its inflections were as light as before. +"But I wish--I'd really be ever so much--happier--if you'd give me a +promise; a perfectly serious, solemn,"--she hesitated for a word and +smiled,--"death-bed promise, that you never will burn up _The Dumb +Princess_. At least until she's all published and produced. And I wish +that as soon as you've got a copy made, you'd put this manuscript in a +really safe place." + +He turned away from her, baffled, bewildered. She had evaded the issue he +had tried to confront her with. She had taken the passionate declaration +of his wish to retrieve the great error of his life as a passing emotion +familiar to all creative artists at certain stages in their work. It was +a natural, almost inevitable, way of looking at it! He sat for a moment +gazing abstractedly at his littered table, clutching the edges of it with +both hands, resisting a momentary vertigo of his own. + +She left her chair and came and stood beside him. She picked up one of +the quires of manuscript, opened it and gazed a while at the many-staved +score. He was aware of a catch in her breathing, like an inaudible sob, +but presently she spoke, quite steadily. + +"I wish I could sit here to-night and read this. I wish it made even +unheard melodies to me. I'm not dumb but I am deaf to this. _There's_ a +spell beyond your powers to lift, my dear." + +She laid her hand lightly upon his shoulder and at her touch his +taut-drawn muscles relaxed into a tremulous weakness. After a +little silence: + +"Now give me my promise," she said. + +He did not immediately answer and the hand upon his shoulder took hold. +Under its compulsion, "I'll promise anything you ask," he said. + +She spoke slowly as if measuring her words. "Never to destroy this work +of yours that you call _The Dumb Princess_ whatever may conceivably +happen, however discouraged you may be about it." + +"Very well," he said, "I won't." + +"Say it as a promise," she commanded. "Quite explicitly." + +So he repeated a form of words which satisfied her. She held him tight in +both hands for an instant. Then swiftly went back to her chair. + +"Don't think me too foolish," she apologized. "I haven't been sleeping +much of late and I couldn't have slept to-night with a misgiving like +that to wonder about." + +His own misgiving obscurely deepened. He did not know whether it was the +reason she had offered for exacting that promise from him or the mere +tone of her voice which was lighter and more brittle than he felt it +should have been. She must have read the troubled look in his face for +she said at once and on a warmer note: + +"Oh, my dear, don't! Don't let my vagaries trouble you. Let me tell you +the message I came with. It's about the other opera. They want to put it +on at once up at Ravinia. With Fournier as the officer and that little +Spanish soprano as 'Dolores.' Just as you wrote it without any of the +terrible things you tried to put in for Paula. It will have to be sung +in French of course, because neither of them sings English. They want you +there just as soon as you can come, to sign the contract and help with +the rehearsals." + +Once more with an utterly unexpected shift she left him floundering, +speechless. + +He had forgotten _The Outcry_ except for his nightmare efforts to revamp +it for Paula; had charged it off his books altogether. What Mary had told +him at Hickory Hill about her labors in its behalf had signified simply, +how rapturously delicious it was that she should have been so concerned +for him. The possibility of a successful outcome to her efforts hadn't +occurred to him. + +She said, smiling with an amused tenderness over his confusion, "I +haven't been too officious, have I?" + +He knew he was being mocked at and he managed to smile but he had +to blink and press his hand to his eyes again before he could see +her clearly. + +"It's not astonishing that you can work miracles," he said. "The wonder +would be if you could not." + +"There was nothing in the least miraculous about this," she declared. "It +wasn't done by folding my wings and weaving mystic circles with a wand. +Besides making that translation,--oh, terribly bad, I'm afraid,--into +French, I've cajoled and intrigued industriously for weeks like one of +those patient wicked little spiders of Henri Fabre's. I found a silly +flirtation between Fournier and a married woman I knew and I encouraged +it, helped it along and made it useful. I've used everybody I could lay +my hands on." + +What an instrument of ineffable delight that voice of hers was,--its +chalumeau tenderness just relieved with the sparkle of irony. But he was +smitten now with the memory of his own refusal to go to Ravinia so that +Paula would remember him again. He blurted out something of his +contrition over this but she stopped him. + +"It was only because I wanted you there. I would not for any conceivable +advantage in the world have let you--oh, even touch these devices that +I've been concerned with. But I've reveled in them myself. In doing them +for you, even though I could not see that they were getting anywhere. + +"Everything seemed quite at a standstill when I left Ravinia Thursday, +but on Thursday night the Williamsons dined with Mr. Eckstein and went to +the park with him; and they all went home with father and Paula +afterward, Fournier and LaChaise, too; and everything happened at once. I +got a note from Paula this morning written yesterday, asking where my +translation was, but not telling me anything. And as she wasn't at home +when I telephoned to answer her question I didn't know until to-night. + +"But about six o'clock James Wallace telephoned from the park and told +me all about it. He wanted you found and sent to Ravinia at once. Having +wasted half the season and more, they're now quite frantic over the +thought of losing a minute. And Jimmy says immensely enthusiastic. So, +all you have to do now is to go up there and lord it over them. You'll +hear it sung; you'll hear the orchestra play it. You will make a +beginning toward coming into your own, my dear. Because even if you +don't care for it as you did, it will be a step toward--the princess, +won't it?" + +She dropped back against the cushion as from weariness, and sudden tears +brimmed into her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. He came to her at that +in spite of the gesture that would have held him away. + +"You must believe--it's nothing--but happiness," she gasped. + +He sat down upon the arm of the chair and a little timidly took her in +his hands, caressed her eyes and her wet face until at last she met his +lips in a long kiss and sank back quieted. + +He stayed on the chair arm however and their hands remained clasped +through a recollecting silence. She said presently: + +"There are two or three practical things for you to remember. You mustn't +be irritated with Violet Williamson. She has let herself become a little +more sentimental about Fournier than I think in the beginning she meant +to be and you may find her under foot more than you like. You mustn't +mind that. And you'll find a very friendly helper in James Wallace. There +is something a little caustic about his wit, and he suspects musicians on +principle; but he will like you and he's thoroughly committed to _The +Outcry_. He is a very good French scholar and over difficulties with the +translation, where passages have to be changed, he'll be a present help." + +He took her face in both his hands and turned it up to him. "Mary," he +demanded when their eyes met, "why are you saying good-by to me?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE WHOLE STORY + + +The shot told. The harried, desperate look of panic with which she gazed +at him and tried, tugging at his hands, to turn away, revealed to him +that he had leaped upon the truth. Part of it anyhow. He closed his +eyes, for an instant, for another unaddressed prayer that he might not +falter nor let himself be turned aside until he had sounded the full +depth of it. + +When he looked at her again she had recovered her poise. "It was silly," +she said, "to think that I could hide that from you. I am going +away--to-morrow. For quite a long while." + +"Are you going away--physically? In the ordinary literal sense, I mean; +or is it that you are just--going away from me?" + +Once more it was as if a trap had been sprung upon her. But this time he +ignored the gasp and the sudden cold slackness of the hands he held and +went on speaking with hardly a pause. + +"I asked that question, put it that way, thinking perhaps I understood +and that I could make it easier for you to tell me." He broke off, there, +for an instant to get his voice under control. Then he asked, steadily, +"Are you going to marry Graham Stannard?" + +She gasped again, but when he looked up at her there was nothing in her +face but an incredulous astonishment. + +So there was one alternative shorn away; one that he had not conceived as +more than a very faint possibility. It was not into matrimony that her +long journey was to take her. He pulled himself up with a jerk to +answer--and it must be done smoothly and comfortably--the question she +had just asked him. How in the world had he ever come to think of a thing +like that? + +"Why, it was in the air at Hickory Hill those days before you came. +And then Sylvia was explicit about it, as something every one was +hoping for." + +"Was that why you went away?" she asked with an intent look into his +face. "Because he had a--prior claim, and it wouldn't be fair to--poach +upon his preserves?" + +He gave an ironic monosyllable laugh. "I tried, for the next few days to +bamboozle myself into adopting that explanation but I couldn't. The truth +was, of course, that I ran away simply because I was frightened. Sheer +panic terror of the thing that had taken hold of me. The thought of +meeting you that next morning was--unendurable." + +She too uttered a little laugh but it sounded like one of pure happiness. +She buried her face in his hands and touched each palm with her lips. "I +couldn't have borne it if you'd said the other thing," she told him. "But +I might have trusted you not to. Because you're not a sentimentalist. +You're almost the only person I know who is not." + +She added a moment later, with a sudden tightening of her grip upon his +hands, "Have you, too, discovered that sentimentality is the crudest +thing in the world? It is. It is perfectly ruthless. It makes more +tragedies than malice. Ludicrous tragedies--which are less endurable than +the other sort. Unless one were enough of an Olympian so that he could +laugh." She relaxed again and made a nestling movement toward him. "I +thought for a while of you that way." + +He managed to speak as if the idea amused him. "As an Olympian? No, if +I had a mountain it wouldn't be that one. But I like the valleys +better, anyhow." + +"I know," she said contentedly. Then her voice darkened. "I'm just at +the beginning of you--now..." The sentence ended unnaturally, though he +had done nothing to interrupt it. + +Deliberately he startled her. "What time does your train go, to-morrow?" +he asked. "Or haven't you selected one? You haven't even told me where it +is you are going." + +Through his hands which held her he felt the shock, the momentary agony +of the effort to recover the threatened balance, the resolute relaxation +of the muscles and the steadying breath she drew. + +"Oh, there are plenty of trains," she said. "You mustn't bother.--Why, +Wallace Hood has a sister living in Omaha. (Wallace Hood, not James +Wallace. It would be terrible if you confused them.) She's been trying +for months to find a nursery governess. And I've been trying--perhaps you +didn't know; the family have been very unpleasant about it--to find a +job.--Oh, for the most realistic of reasons, among others. Well, it +occurred to me the other day that Wallace's sister and I might be looking +for each other." + +There she paused, but only for a moment. Then she added, very explicitly, +"So I'm going to Omaha to-morrow." + +Even her lying she had to do honestly. She preferred, he saw, that he +should remember she had lied to having him recall that she had tricked +him by an evasion. + +One need not invoke clairvoyance to account for his incandescent +certainty that she had lied. The mere unconscious synthesis of the things +she had said and left unsaid along the earlier stages of their talk, +would have amounted to a demonstration. Her moment of panic over his +discovery that she was saying good-by, her irrespressible shudder at the +question whether she was going away in the ordinary literal sense of the +phrase; finally, her pitiful attempt to avoid, in answer to his last +question, a categorical untruth and then her acceptance of it as, after +all, preferable to the other. But it was by no such pedestrian process +as this that he reached the truth. + +He knew, now, why he had been terrified from the moment she came into the +room. He knew why she had wrung that promise from him--a death-bed +promise she had dared with a smile to call it--that he would not, +whatever happened, destroy _The Dumb Princess_. It would be a likely +enough thing for him to do, she had perceived, when he learned the truth. +She could not--sleep, she had told him, until that surmise was laid. + +There were, as she had said, plenty of trains to that unknown destination +of hers, but he thought that that word sleep offered the true clue. She +was a physician's daughter; there must be, somewhere in that house, a +chest or cupboard that would supply what she needed. They'd find her in +her own bed, in that room he had once cast a glance into on his way +up-stairs to Paula. + +The conviction grew upon him that she had her plans completely laid; yes, +and her preparations accomplished. That quiet leisureliness of hers would +not have been humanly possible if either her resolution or the means for +executing it had remained in doubt. It was likely that she had whatever +it was--a narcotic, probably; morphine; she wouldn't, conceivably, resort +to any of the corrosives--upon her person at this moment. In that little +silken bag which hung from her wrist. + +He clenched the finger-nails into the palms of his hands. This thing was +a nightmare. He had fallen asleep over his table; had only to wake +himself.--It would not do to play with an idea like that. Nor with the +possibility that he had misread her mind. He knew. He was not mistaken. +Let him never glance aside from that. + +For one moment he thought wildly of trying to call in help from outside, +of frustrating her design by sheer force. But that could not be done. As +between them, he would be reckoned the madman. Her project might be +deferred by that means, perhaps. It could not be prevented. + +It was that terrible self-possession of hers that gave the last turn to +the screw. She could not be dealt with as one frantic, beside herself, to +be wooed and quieted back into a state of sanity. She was at this moment +as sane as he. She was not to be held back, either, by a mere assurance +of his love for her. She had never, it appeared, lacked that assurance. +But her life, warmed even as it was by their love, presented itself to +her somehow as something that it was not possible to go on with. + +This was very strange. All of its externals that were visible to him +made up, one would have said, a pattern singularly gracious and +untroubled. Buried in it somewhere there must be some toxic focus that +poisoned everything. He must meet her on her own ground. He must show +her another remedy than the desperate one she was now resolved upon. And +before he could find the remedy he must discover the virus. The only +clue he had was the thing she said about sentimentalists, and the +tragedies they caused. More tragedies than malice was responsible for. +He thought she was probably right about that. It was some such tragedy +anyhow, ludicrous, unendurable, that had driven her to this acquiescence +in defeat. + +He said, in as even a tone as he could manage, "I asked about trains +because I wondered whether there was anything to hurry you to-night. +Packing to do or such a matter; or whether we mightn't have a really +leisurely visit. I haven't much idea what time it is except that I don't +think I've eaten anything since around the middle of the day. Have you? +If you'd stay and have supper with me ... But I suppose you're expected +somewhere else." + +She smiled ironically at this, then laughed at herself. "It happens +rather funnily that I haven't been so little expected or looked after, +since I came home from New York, as I am to-night. I'm not--in a hurry at +all. I'll stay as long as you like." + +"Is that a promise?" he asked. "As long as I liked would be a long +while." + +"I'll stay," she said, "as long as I can see I'm making you happy. When I +find myself beginning to be a--torment to you, I shall--vanish." + +He was almost overmastered by the temptation to forget everything except +his love for her; to let himself be persuaded that his ghastly surmise +was a product of his own fatigue and sleepless nights. Even supposing +there were a basis for it, could he not keep her safe by just holding her +fast in his arms? + +He dashed the thought out of his mind. She would surrender to his +embrace, how eagerly he already knew. For a matter of moments, for a few +swift hours she might forget. She had perhaps come to him meaning to +forget for a while in just that way. But no embrace could be eternal. +He'd have to let her go at last and nothing would be changed save that +she would have a memory of him to take with her into her long sleep. + +No, love must wait. That obscure unendurable nightmare tragedy of hers +must be brought out into the light first and shorn of its horrors. + +So he managed for the moment a lighter note. He would not let her help in +the preparation of the meager little meal which was all that his +immediate resources ran to. He hadn't quite realized how exiguous it was +going to be when he spoke of it as supper. It was nothing but a slice of +Swiss cheese, a fresh carton of biscuits and a flagon of so-called +Chianti illicitly procured from the Italian grocery downstairs. + +He cleared his work table and anchored her in the easy chair at the +same time by putting into her lap the bulky manuscript of _The Dumb +Princess_, and it was this they talked about while he laid the cloth--a +clean towel--and set out his scanty array of dishes. He feared when they +drew up to the table that she was not going to be able to eat at all, +and he was convinced that she was even more in need of food than he. But +the wine, thin and acidulous as it was, helped, and he saw to it that +for a while she had no chance to talk. He told her the story of _The +Dumb Princess_ in detail and dwelt a little upon the half formulated +symbolism of it. + +When at last he paused, she said, "I think I know why the princess was +dumb. Because when she tried to speak no one wanted to hear what she had +to say. They insisted on keeping her an image merely, so that they could +go on attributing to her just the thoughts they wished her to think and +just the desires they wanted her to feel. That's the spell that has made +many a woman dumb upon all the essentials." + +He gripped his hands together between his knees, leaned a little forward, +drew a steadying breath and said, "There's something I wish you'd do for +me just while we're sitting quietly like this. It has been so momentary, +this life of ours together,--the times I mean when we've been bodily +together. The whole of it could be reckoned quite easily in minutes. +There has been more packed into them, of course, than into many a lover's +months and years, but one effect it has had on me has been to make you, +when you aren't here physically with me, like this, where by merely +reaching out I can touch you, a little--visionary to me. I confuse you +with the Dumb Princess over there whom you made me create. I get +misgivings that you're just a sort of wraith. Well, if you're going away +and we aren't to be within--touching distance of each other again for a +long while--perhaps months, I want more of you, that my memory can hold +on by. The real every-day person that you are instead, as you say, of the +image I've had to make of you. So I wish you'd tell me as nearly as you +can remember everything that you've done--everything that has happened to +you--to-day." + +That last word was like the touch of a spur. She shuddered as she cried, +"Not to-day!" + +He did not press for a reason and the next moment she went on in her +natural manner again. "That's a strange thing for you to wish. At least +the strangeness of it strikes me after some of the things that have been +happening lately. Yet I don't believe it happens often that a lover asks +as specifically as that to be--disillusioned. And that is what you would +be. Because the complete story of a day,--any day,--with no +suppressions, nothing tucked decently away out of sight, would be a +pretty searching test." + +"That's why I asked for it," he said, "I'd like to be disillusioned; just +as completely as possible." + +"That's because you're so sure you wouldn't be." The raggedness of her +voice betrayed a strong emotion. With a leap of the pulse he told himself +that it was as if she were crying out against some unforeseen hope. "You +think it would merely be that lovely little image of yours--the Dumb +Princess, coming to life." + +"I'd rather have the reality," he told her, "whatever it is. I think I +can make you see that that must be true. The person I love is you who are +sitting there across the table from me. I don't believe that any one in +the world was ever more completely and utterly adored than you are being +adored at this moment. I love the things I know you by. The things I've +come to recognize as yours. I know some of your qualities that way; your +sensitiveness, your uprightness, your fastidious honesty that makes you +hate evasions and substitutes,--everything you mean when you say +sentimentality. And I know your resolution that carries you along even +when you are afraid,--when your sensitiveness makes you afraid. I admire +all those qualities, but it isn't their intrinsic worth that makes me +love them. I love them because they're the things I know you by. I can't +be mistaken about them because I've felt them. Just as I've felt your +hands and your mouth and your hair. Well, then, whatever your days have +been, one day after another, they have in the end produced you sitting +there as you sit now. Whatever your--ingredients are they're your +ingredients. The total works out to you. Whereas my illusions work out to +nothing better than my little image of the Dumb Princess." + +"Would it surprise you," she asked, "to know that I could be cruel? I +mean exactly what the word means. Like a little boy who tears the legs +off a beetle. Can you imagine me hurting some one frightfully, whom I +needn't have hurt at all? Some one who was trying in his own way to be +kind to me?" + +He smiled. "I can imagine your being cruel to a sentimentalist," he said. +"Not deliberately, of course. Only after you had been hounded, like a +little white cat, into a corner. By some one who wanted you for an image, +merely, that he himself could attribute all the appropriate thoughts and +desires to. I can imagine you turning, at last, and rending him;--limb +from limb, if you like." + +She gazed at him, wide-eyed, for a long moment; then she drooped forward +over the table and cradled her head in her arms. With his hands he tried +to comfort her but he felt that they were clumsy and ineffectual. + +"I've hurt you horribly," he said, when he could command his voice. +"Probing in like that." + +This must be the unendurable tragedy she had referred to a while ago. +She was speaking, voicelessly and he bent down to listen. + +"... if you knew the comfort! I suppose I ought to be frightened--at your +guessing like that, but it seems natural, to-night, that you should.--You +know who it was, don't you?" + +"Yes," he told her confidently. "It happened just to-day, didn't it?" + +"It was yesterday he asked me to marry him," she said. "That wasn't +hounding. He had a right to, I mean. I thought I would marry him, once. I +told him I would if I could. I meant, I would if I could make him +understand what I really was. He thought I meant something altogether +different, something that his image of me might have meant quite nicely. +Yesterday when he asked me again, I flew into a fury and told him what I +am really like. I needn't have done it. I could have told him that the +reason I wouldn't marry him was because I was in love with you. That +would have been true--in a way. I mean, it wasn't the reason in the +beginning; nor even after I was in love with you--so long as you didn't +know. But I never thought of telling him that. I just wanted to--smash +that image of his. And I did. I knew it was cruel when I did it, but not +how terrible until this morning when Rush got a letter from him." + +She had to stop there to master a sob. He went around the table and took +her in his arms. "Come over to the big chair," he said, "where I +can--hold you. I can't let you go on like this. You can tell me the rest +of it there." + +She released herself from his hands by taking them in her own and +pressing them for a moment tight. Then she let them go. + +"I couldn't," she said. "I couldn't be comforted like that while I was +telling you about him." + +He understood instantly. "That's like you," he commented. "You're always +like yourself, thank God." He walked away to the chair he had invited her +to and stood behind it, gripping its padded leather back. "He wrote your +brother a letter then." He had spoken, he thought, quietly and evenly +enough, but the indignation he felt must have betrayed itself in his +voice for she answered instantly: + +"You mustn't be angry about that. He had to write to Rush, you see. Rush +had been in his confidence about it all the while. Rush knew his hopes +and his explanations. Rush knew of his coming yesterday, was waiting up +at Wallace Hood's apartment for his news. Now, do you see how horrible it +was? He couldn't tell Rush what I had said to him. There was nothing he +could tell him. He couldn't even face him. He did the only thing I'd left +for him to do." + +March asked, "What has he done?" + +"We don't know, exactly. Just gone away, I suppose. The letter was +written about midnight from the University Club. He said he wasn't coming +back to Hickory Hill. That he couldn't possibly come back. He'd arrange +things, somehow, later. He told Rush not to try to find him nor make any +sort of fuss, and to be very kind to me; not to question nor worry me." + +She broke off there and looked intently up at him. In her eyes he thought +he saw incredulity fighting against a dawning hope. "I wonder," she went +breathlessly on, "if you can understand this, too. Can you see that, for +him, the unbearable thing about it--was that it was ludicrous? The +contrast between what he had believed me to be and--what I am?" + +He interrupted sharply, with a frown of irritation, "Don't put it +like that!" + +"Well, then," she amended, "the contrast between his explanation of the +way I had been treating him, and the true one?" + +"That is a thing I think I can understand," he said. "It was a sort +of--awakening of Don Quixote. To a fine sensitive boy nothing could give +a sharper wrench than that.--I'm moving in the dark," he added. Yet he +knew he was drawing near the light. The secret he had set out to discover +was not very far away. + +"You see well enough," she said. "Better than Rush, though I tried to +explain it to him. He'd caught a surmise of the truth, too, I think, in +New York, when he came back from France and brought me home. But he +wouldn't look. Father wouldn't, either, once when I tried to tell him +about it. It was too horrible to be thought,--let alone believed.--I +don't quite see how I can have gone on believing it myself." + +The look he saw in her eyes made him wonder how she could. He managed to +hold his own gaze steady. It gave him a sense of somehow supporting her. + +"But you," she said,--"you, of all people in the world, don't seem to +feel that way about it. You were there--waiting for me--before I even +tried to tell you. Oh, you do understand, don't you?" + +"I think," he told her--and the smile that came with the words was +spontaneous enough, though it did feel rather tremulous--"I think I +could almost repeat the sentence you demolished young Stannard with in +your own words. But can't you see why it doesn't demolish me? It's +because I love you." + +"So did he. So do father and Rush." + +"Not you. Not quite you. Don't you see? It's just the thing I was trying +to tell you a while ago. What they insist on loving is--oh, partly you, +of course, but partly a sort of--projection of themselves that they call +you, dress you out in, try to compel you to fit. One can fight hard to +preserve an outlying bit of one's self like that. But there would be a +limit I should think. How your brother, with a letter like that in his +hands, could refuse to look at what you were trying to make him see ..." + +"He had a theory, that began when we were in New York together as a sort +of joke, that I was a case of shell-shock. So whenever there has been +anything really uncomfortable to face, he has always had that to fall +back upon." + +A momentary outburst of anger escaped him. "You've been tortured!" he +cried furiously. He reined in at once, however. "You've never, then," he +went on quietly, "been able to tell the story to any one. I'm sure you +didn't tell it to Graham Stannard. You didn't even try to." + +She shook her head. The pitifulness of her, sitting there so spent, so +white, blurred his vision again with sudden tears. But after he had +disposed of them, he managed a smile and sat down comfortably in his +easy chair. + +"You couldn't find a better person than me to tell it to," he said. + +"You know already," she protested. "At least, you know what it comes to." + +"I know the brute fact," he admitted, "but that and the whole truth are +seldom quite the same thing." + +He saw the way her hands locked and twisted together and remembered with +a heart-arresting pang, her half-choked cry, "Don't! Don't hurt them like +that!" when his own had agonized in such a grip. But no caress of his +could help her now. He held himself still in his chair and waited. + +"The whole truth of this story isn't any--prettier than the brute fact. +There weren't any extenuating circumstances." + +Then she sat erect and faced him. He was amazed to see a flush of color +come creeping into her cheeks. Her eyes brightened, the brows drew down a +little, her voice steadied itself and the words came swiftly. + +"I think I must make sure you understand that it isn't the sort of story +that you usually find enveloping that particular brute fact. I wasn't +deceived nor betrayed by anybody. There isn't anybody you can take as a +villain. Just a nice, rather inarticulate boy, whom I met at a dance the +evening before he went overseas." + +She broke off there to ask him shortly, "When was it that you went over?" + +"Not until September," he said, "when it looked like a very long chance +if we ever got to the front at all. Of course, you know, we didn't. But +this was a lot earlier, wasn't it?" + +"The seventeenth of April," she said. "We'll never forget those weeks, +any of us, who were in New York doing what we called war work, but it's +hard not to feel that we weren't different persons somehow. I don't mean +that to sound like making excuses. We were more our real selves perhaps +than we will ever be again. Anyhow, we worked harder all day long, and +never felt tired, and in the evening most of the people I knew went out a +lot, to dinners and dances. + +"We could always make ourselves believe, of course, that we were doing +that to cheer up the men who were going to France--and were very likely +never coming back. Like the English women one read about. The only thing +that used to trouble me in those days was a perfectly scorching +self-contempt that used to come when I realized that I was enjoying it +all; enjoying the emotional thrill of it. I knew I was getting off cheap. + +"I suppose I needn't have told you all that. You'd have understood it +anyhow. But that was how I felt when I went to that dance. As if it would +be a relief to do something--costly. + +"It was a uniform dance as far as the men were concerned. We made +ourselves, of course, as--attractive as we knew how. Somebody introduced +this boy to me with just the look that said, 'Do be kind to him,' and +that's what I set out, very resolutely and virtuously, to be. He couldn't +talk much beyond monosyllables and he couldn't dance,--even with me. I +mean, I've danced so much ..." + +"I've seen you dance, my dear," he reminded her, and saw how, with a +deep-drawn breath, the memory of that night at Hickory Hill came +back to her. + +"Don't," she gasped. "Let me go on." But it was the better part of a +minute before she could. + +"We sat out two or three dances together and then, when I might decently +enough have passed him on to some one else with that same sort of +explanatory look--I didn't. Partly because of the feeling I have told you +about and partly because I was attracted to him. He was big and young and +good-looking, and his voice--oh, one can't explain those things. It +wasn't pure altruism. That's what you must see. And then he got up +suddenly and said, 'Good-by.' It was early, you know, and I asked him why +he was going. He said he wanted to get out of there. Rather savagely. + +"I got up too and said I felt the same way about it. So he asked if he +might 'see me home.' The dance was in the East Sixties. There had been a +shower but it was clear then and warm. There weren't any taxis about +and, anyhow, he didn't seem to think of looking for one, and we went +over and took a Lexington Avenue car. When we turned at Twenty-third +Street I said we'd get out and walk. He'd said hardly anything, but we +had sat rather close in the car and he had been holding a fold of my +cloak between his fingers. + +"We went on down Lexington to Gramercy Park. There was shrubbery in +flower inside the iron fence and some of the trees had been leafing out +that day and the air was very still and sweet. We both stopped for a +minute without saying anything and I slipped my hand farther through his +arm and took his. + +"He gave a sort of sob and said, 'You wouldn't do that if you knew about +me.' I said, 'You'd better tell me and see.' + +"We walked on again, around the park and across Twentieth Street and down +Fifth Avenue. When we got to my door he hadn't told me. + +"My flat was just the second story of an old made-over house. There was +no one about, I mean, to stare or wonder, and I asked him to come in. +When we were inside I looked at my watch and asked him what time he had +to report. He said not until seven o'clock in the morning. He was going +over detached. There was nothing but a hotel to go back to. + +"If I'd asked him that question out on the sidewalk, and got that answer, +I don't know whether I'd have asked him in or not. + +"He just stood looking at me for a minute after telling me he hadn't +anywhere to report that night. Then he turned away and sat down on the +edge of my couch and bent his face down on his hands and began to talk. +He told me what was the matter with him. Of course, the same thing must +have tormented thousands of them,--the terror of being afraid. He felt +pretty sure he was a coward. + +"Mostly, I think, that fear was pretty sensibly dealt with in this war. +It got talked out openly. But he must have been a terribly lonely +person. He came from Iowa, but somehow he got sent to one of the southern +cantonments, and had his officer's training, such as it was, down there. +Then he was sent along to fill in somewhere else. I don't remember all +the details. He'd come to New York alone. The men he had gone to the +dance with he had only met that afternoon. + +"I tried to help him. I told him how some of the officers in the French +and English armies, who had the highest decorations for courage, had +suffered most horribly, in advance, from fear. I could tell him two or +three that I knew about personally; men who had told their own stories to +me. Well, that helped a little, roused him out of his daze, gave him a +little gleam of hope perhaps. But it wasn't much; words can't be, +sometimes. + +"He wanted more than that. He wanted me. He didn't want to go back alone +to that hotel. So I kept him. Early in the morning, about six o'clock, I +cooked his breakfast and ate it with him and kissed him good-by." + +She made a sudden savage gesture of impatience. "I didn't mean to make it +sound like that. That sounds noble and self-sacrificial and sickening. I +suppose because that's the half of the truth that is easiest to tell. I +_did_ want to make an end of perpetually getting off cheap. I did have a +sort of feeling of establishing my good faith with myself. I wanted to +comfort him and make him happy. But it's also true that I'd been +attracted to him from the very first minute, and that it thrilled me when +I first touched his hand, there by the park railing, and afterward when +he took me in his arms." + +Since his last interruption he had sat motionless, even breathing small +in the extremity of his effort not to hinder. But now he rose and without +speaking, came to her and bending down, kissed her forehead, her eyes, +her mouth. Then he seated himself on the table close beside her and took +possession, thoughtfully, of one of her hands. + +"Did you ever hear anything more of him?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "I don't think he remarked my name at all when we +were introduced," she said, "nor asked what it was afterward. I think it +must all have seemed afterward a little unreal to him. The girls he'd +known at home don't smoke cigarettes nor drink champagne--nor wear their +dresses as low as we do. He couldn't once have thought of people like +father and Rush and Aunt Lucile as belonging to me. I remembered his name +and used to look to see if it was there when I read the casualty lists, +but I never did see it again.--No, that's the whole story; just what I +have told you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +DAYBREAK + + +There followed the conclusion of the story, an interval of ease. It gave +March, to begin with, a new access of courage, almost of confidence, to +note that she did not fade white again and that the sick look of horror, +banished from her eyes by the mere intensity of her determination to +convey the whole truth to him, did not return to them. She substituted +her other hand for the one he held in order to shift her position a +little and lean against his knees. + +Her mind had not detached itself from the story as she made evident by +the reflective way in which she went on thinking aloud about it; dwelling +on some of the curious consequences of the adventure. It was +surprising--she wondered if it indicated anything really abnormal in +her--the way she had felt about it afterward. + +She'd felt nothing in the least like shame. Certainly not at first. On +the contrary, she'd taken a deep soul-satisfying pride in it, a kind of +warm sense of readiness for anything. + +She told him with a little clutch of embarrassment and resolution, about +another incident that happened somewhat later, attributing an importance +to it which he conceded while he reflected with a smile that most people, +men and women virtuous or otherwise, would have regarded as ridiculously +disproportionate. The incident concerned a man whom she didn't much like, +she said, but found somehow, fascinating. He had been paying her +attentions of a rather experimental sort for weeks, maneuvering, +arranging. He knew she lived by herself and had been angling for an +invitation to come to see her, alone. Finally, he telephoned her office +one day and asked point-blank if he mightn't come to tea that afternoon. +She said he might without telling him that she was expecting Christabel +Baldwin at the same time. An hour later, a restless hour it had been, she +had telephoned Christabel and put her off so that when her other guest +came he found just what he had expected. In the manner of one sure of his +welcome and intent on wasting no time, he had begun making love to her +(she apologized for the employment of that phrase but said she knew no +other that was usable). She admitted that she had never had any real +doubt that this was what he had meant to do and conceded him the right to +think that she had invited it. But she found it, nevertheless, +unendurable. She felt unspeakably degraded by it and presently flew into +a rage and turned the man out of the house, feeling, she added, as much +ashamed of that part of the performance as of anything else. + +This encounter, she told March, made a profound change in her feeling +about the other episode--closed a door upon it. Nothing like that could +happen to her again. She simply stopped thinking about it after that, +buried it and it had stayed buried comfortably for the better part of a +year, until Rush came home from France. At least she wasn't aware that it +had troubled her. The twinges of discomfort she'd felt whenever she'd +faced the prospect of coming home, she had attributed to another cause +altogether. + +"Paula," he observed. "That's easy enough to see." + +"Oh, you are a comfort," she said; "only not Paula by herself. Paula and +father and I, in a sort of awkward triangle, all doing our best and all +nagging one another. That has got terribly worse in the last few days." + +She seemed to find no difficulty at all in informing him fully about this +home situation; needed only a question or surmise dropped here and there +to develop the whole story. + +It wasn't a chronological narrative. Her mind drifted like a soaring +kingfisher over the whole area between her childhood and the events of +this very morning, swooping down here or there to pick up some incident +wherever a gleam of memory attracted her. + +Her spirit was finding compensation for the agonies of the past hours in +a complete detachment. Nothing she told him, no matter how close home it +came, seemed to involve any painful emotion. Her body, pressed so close +against his that he could have felt the faintest muscle quiver, conveyed +no message to him but the relaxation of complete security. + +About himself there was a curious duality. One of him was lulled +irresistibly into sharing her mood of serene detachment. The other, +recognizing the transitoriness of hers, knowing that when this interlude +came to an end, as come it must, the storm would break upon them once +more, was casting about desperately for the means of saving her. + +He had come to see the situation with her own eyes, fairly felt the +clutch of it upon his own heart. She or some impish power acting through +her agency had certainly made a mess of things. Her father's happiness +destroyed; Rush's partnership broken; and the whole Hickory Hill project +ruined unless some one could be found to buy into it in Graham's place; +Graham humiliated, utterly cast adrift, irreparably hurt. And the +prospect for the future.... + +She had told him of her tramp about the streets yesterday with her +newspaper clipping and he was able to feel the full terror of it; and, +beyond the terror, the gray emptiness. + +There was only one way out of the tangle and this was to marry the man +she loved and knew loved her. Well, he knew with merciless certainty what +her answer would be when he asked her--begged her--to do that. He had +provided her with the answer himself, with his sophomoric talk about +traveling light and refusing to wear harness. And he'd worse than +talked. His flight from her at Hickory Hill was enough to show that these +weren't mere empty phrases. And yet her life depended to-night upon his +ability to persuade her, in the face of those phrases and that fact, to +marry him. So he sat very still, wondering how soon she would divine +these undercurrents of his thought, listening while she talked to him. + +The hours were slipping away, too. A glance at the watch braceleted upon +the wrist he held startled him and he covered it with his hand. Had they +already, he wondered, begun a search for her? Her words supplied +presently the answer to that question. She was talking, with a dry sort +of humor, about the commotions of that day. + +He could not be sure he was getting it quite straight, for she was +commenting upon events rather than narrating them. Apparently she had +telephoned to her brother at Hood's apartment immediately after young +Stannard left the house the evening or afternoon before, telling him not +to bother about her, as she was going straight to bed. Let him go to a +show and be careful not to wake her when he came in. She'd done this and +gone to sleep at once, not waking until she'd heard him getting ready +for bed in the adjoining room. But after that she hadn't been able to +get off again. + +March reflected, with a shudder, what a ghastly procession of hours those +must have been. Had it been then, he wondered, that, looking for some +harmless thing to help her sleep, she had come upon the deadlier stuff? + +Her encounter with her brother at breakfast, which she had prepared, was +their first, it seemed, since her visit to Hickory Hill and Rush had been +shocked at her wan, lifeless appearance. He'd guessed, of course, that +his friend's suit hadn't prospered and now took the line, which no doubt +seemed to him the most tactful and comforting one available, that she was +too ill to attempt any final decision on such a subject just now and +that things would look different when better health had driven morbid +thoughts away. + +Her vehemence in trying to convince him that she had acted finally in the +matter, that Graham now acquiesced fully in her decision and no longer +wanted to marry her, and that Rush _must_ let him alone--not even try to +talk with him about it--had only made him the more confident in his +diagnosis. + +It must have been pat in the middle of this scene that Graham's +midnight-written letter arrived. Rush's attitude toward his partner's +flight--after the first moments of mere incredulity--had been one of +contemptuous irritation, the natural attitude for any young man who sees +a comrade taking no more of a matter than a disappointment in love with +an evident lack of fortitude. This was heightened, too, by a rapidly +developed sense of personal grievance. What the devil did Graham think +was going to happen to him with Hickory Hill left on his hands like that? +There was more than enough work for the two of them. And then the +financial aspect of it! Mr. Stannard, who had just been brought to the +point of loosening up and letting them have a little more money, would of +course leave Rush to his fate. If he didn't call his loans and sell him +out! Ruin them altogether! Graham must simply be found and dragged back +before his father learned of his flight. + +He couldn't have been paying his sister much attention while he ran on +like that! Unwisely, perhaps, but inevitably, Mary attempted to defend +the fugitive--in the only way she thought of as possible; namely, by +showing her brother what the true situation was. + +She didn't try to tell March what she said. The thing which, with a +forlorn smile, she dwelt upon, was the terrified vehemence with which +Rush had stopped her at his first inkling of what she was trying to make +him see. She was simply out of her head. A bad case, he pronounced, of +neurasthenia. Her having set out yesterday to find a job should have made +that plain enough. What she needed was a nurse and a doctor--and he meant +to provide both within the next few hours. He then compromised by saying +that the nurse he had in mind was for the moment Aunt Lucile and the +doctor their father. + +With an alternation of truculence and cajolery, he had got her to lie +down and to promise not to talk--that was the important thing--and this +accomplished he devoted half an hour to the composition of a note to Miss +Wollaston (whom it was difficult to tell anything to over the telephone, +particularly with long distance rural connections) which he despatched, +in charge of Pete, in the big car. Pete would get back with her by three +at the latest. + +Rush then had a long talk by telephone with his father at Ravinia. Mary +didn't know, of course, what they had said, beyond that John had promised +to come down immediately after lunch, but she got the idea that the +professional medical attitude had been one of less alarm than the amateur +one. Mary confessed to March, with a flicker of ironic amusement, that +she had supported this lighter view so successfully that, a little before +noon, Rush had confided to her his wish--if she were perfectly sure she +didn't need him--to take the one o'clock train to Lake Geneva. He and +Graham were still expected there for the week-end and on a good many +accounts it would be well if he didn't fail them. He dreaded going, of +course, but he felt he could meet the situation better on the ground +whatever turned up. He could wait for the three o'clock train, but this +was the one Mr. Stannard always took and he'd like to get in a talk with +Sylvia first. She was a great pal of her brother's and might well have +some real information about He'd have Pete's wife come in and look after +Mary--get lunch and so on. And father would be down about two. + +March thought the forlorn smile with which she told him this the most +heart-breaking thing he had ever seen. Damn Rush! Damn all the +sentimentalists in the world. Dressing up their desires in altruistic +clothes. Loving themselves in a lot of crooked mirrors! + +The rest of the story told itself in very few words. John Wollaston +telephoned, about three, from Ravinia, to say that Paula wasn't +well--meant to sing to-night as she was billed to do (she took great +pride in never disappointing her audiences)--but very much wanted him at +hand through the ordeal. If Mary was feeling as much better as her voice +sounded would she mind his not coming until to-morrow morning. + +She'd assured him, of course, that she wouldn't mind a bit. Aunt Lucile +hadn't arrived yet but she would be coming any minute now. Rush had been +making a great fuss about nothing, anyway. She did not volunteer the +information that Rush had already gone to Lake Geneva. + +At five o'clock a telegram, addressed to Rush, had come from Miss +Wollaston. Pete had broken one of the springs of the big car and had had +to go to Durham for another. She hoped Rush and his father would be able +to take care of Mary until to-morrow morning when she would arrive with +one of the servants and take charge. + +That cleared the board. To-morrow they would descend upon her with their +fussy attentions, their medical solemnities, their farcical search for +something--for anything except the truth they wouldn't let her tell--to +account for her nervous breakdown. But for a dozen hours she was, +miraculously, to be let alone, with blessed open spaces round her. No +need for any frantic haste. Plenty of time. The whole of that hot still +summer night. + +And then, at six o'clock, a man named James Wallace had telephoned! And +Jennie MacArthur had decided to drop in that evening for a visit with +Sarah! Fate had played its part; given March his chance. + +"So that's why you decided to go away," he said. + +He had been nerving himself during a long slow silence for that. He could +almost as easily have struck her a blow, and indeed the effect of it was +precisely that. But though she tried to shrink away he held her tighter +and went on. "I don't believe there's anything in the whole picture now +that I don't see and understand. But--but the way out ... Oh, Mary +darling, it isn't the one you are trying to take. There's happiness for +both of us if you'll take the other way--with me." + +She was struggling now to get free from his hands. "No!" she gasped +wildly. "I won't do that. I'll do anything--_anything_ else rather than +that. Let me go now." + +But he held her fast. Presently she relaxed and lay back panting in her +chair. "Won't you please let me go?" she pleaded. "You haven't understood +at all if you don't see that you must. Oh, but you do understand! You've +comforted me ... I didn't think there could be any comfort like that. Let +me go now--in peace. Don't ask the other. I've spoiled things for +everybody else, but I won't for you. I couldn't endure that." + +All the pleas, the arguments, the convincing phrases which he had been +mustering while she talked to him so contentedly, to convince her of the +truth, the blinding truth that he wanted her now for his wife, that life +no longer seemed a possible thing for him upon any other terms--all that +feeble scaffolding of words was, to his despair, swept now clean away in +the very torrent of his passion. He could do nothing for a while but go +on holding her. At last, words burst from him. + +"I won't let you go. Not alone. Wherever you go, I'll go with you." + +She looked up, staring into his face and he saw an incredulous surmise +deepen into certainty. She had seen, heard in that cry of his, the +truth--that he understood what she meant to do. Then her face contorted +itself like a child's, ineffectually struggling to keep back tears, and +she broke down, weeping. + +That broke the spell that had fallen upon him. He took her up, carried +her over to the big armchair and sat down with her in his arms. + +His own terror, which had never more than momentarily receded since she +had first spoken to him from the doorway, was, he realized, gone; +replaced by an inexplicable thrilling confidence that he had won his +victory. He didn't speak a word. + +The tempest was soon spent. It was a matter only of minutes before the +sobbing ceased. But for a long while after she was quiet, all muscles +relaxed, she lay just as he held her, a soft dead weight like a sleeping +child. He wondered, indeed, if she had not fallen asleep and finally +moved his head so that he could see her eyes. They were open, though, and +at that movement of his she stirred, sighed and sat erect. + +"I think I would have dropped off in another minute," she said. Then she +put her hands upon his shoulders. "I won't do that. I promise, solemnly, +I won't do what--what we both thought I meant to do. I don't believe I +could now, anyway. Now that the nightmare is gone." + +She smiled then and bent down and kissed him. "But I won't do the other +thing either, my dear. I'll find some other way. Really go to Omaha +perhaps. But I won't marry you. You see why, don't you?" + +"Oh, yes," he said. "I can tell you exactly why. You don't want to take +away my freedom. You want me to be a sort of--what was that opera you +spoke about at Hickory Hill?--_Chemineau_. Doing nothing but what I +please. Wandering off wherever I like." He smiled. "Mary, dear, do you +realize that you're proposing to deal with me exactly as Graham Stannard +would have dealt with you? Trying to make an image of me?" + +She started from his knees, retreated a pace or two and turned and +confronted him. + +"That's not true," she protested. "That can't possibly be true!" + +He did not answer. He had plenty of arguments with which to establish the +parallel, his mind was aflame with phrases in which to plead his cause +with her. Somehow they wouldn't come to his tongue. It didn't occur to +him that fatigue had anything to do with this. He was filled with a +sudden fury that he could not talk to her. + +She had turned away, restlessly, and moved to one of the dormer windows. +Following her with his eyes he saw the dawn coming. + +He rose stiffly from his chair. "I guess I had better take you home +now," he said. + +She nodded and got her hat. When he found her at the door after he had +put out the lamp she clung to him for a moment in the dark and he thought +she meant to speak, but she did not. + +He helped her down the irregular shaky stair and then, along the gray +cool empty street he walked with her toward the brightened sky. + +She said, at last, "Graham wouldn't let me tell him what the real me was +like. Tell me the truth about the real you." + +"There isn't much to tell. I guess I'm pretty much like any one else when +it comes down to--to ... I don't want to go on, alone. I want to be +woven in with you. I want..." + +He stood still in a vain effort to make the words come. "I can't talk!" +he cried, and his voice broke in a sob. + +"You needn't," she said; and pressing his hand against her breast she led +him on again. She was trembling and her hand was cold. + +Nothing more was said between them, all the way. But when they reached +her door and managed to open it she stood for a moment peering through +the dusk into his face. + +"If it's true..." she said. "If you really want a home and a wife--like +me... Oh, yes, I know it's true!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +JOHN ARRIVES + + +Two or three hours after March and Mary came to the Dearborn Avenue house +that Sunday morning, a little before eight o'clock to be precise, John +Wollaston, deterred by humane considerations from ringing the door-bell, +tried his latch-key first and found it sufficient. Rather surprisingly +since his sister was particular about bolts and chains. But this mild +sensation was engulfed the next moment in clear astonishment when he +encountered in the drawing-room doorway, Anthony March. + +The piano tuner was coatless and in his socks. Evidently it was no less +recent an event than the sound of the latchkey which had roused him +from sleep. + +"Oh," he said. "It's you, sir." And added as he came a little wider +awake, "I'm very glad you've come." + +John detected a reservation of some sort in this afterthought; faintly +ironic perhaps. There was, at any rate, a conspicuous absence of any +implication that his presence was urgently needed just then, or eagerly +waited for. + +He replied with an irony a little more marked, "It's an unexpected +pleasure to find you here. They're wanting you rather badly up at Ravinia +these days, I understand." + +March nodded, cast a glance in the direction of the stairs and led the +way decisively into the drawing-room. His pantomime made it clear that he +did not wish the rest of the slumbering household aroused. Considerate of +him, of course, and all that, but the decisiveness of the action--as if +he somehow felt himself in charge, despite the arrival of his +host--roused in John a faint hostility. + +He followed nevertheless. He saw at once where his unaccountable visitor +had made his bed. A big cane davenport had been dragged into the bay +window, its velvet cushions neatly stacked on the piano bench, and the +composer's coat, rolled with his deftness of experience, had served him +for a pillow. Not a bad bed for such a night as this that John himself +had sweltered through so unsuccessfully. Probably the coolest place in +the house, right by those open south windows. But all, the same ... + +"Couldn't Rush do better for you than that?" he said. "There must be a +dozen beds in the house." + +"Rush isn't here," March answered. "I believe he went to Lake Geneva +yesterday, for over Sunday." + +John Wollaston felt the blood come up into his face as the conviction +sprang into his mind that Lucile wasn't here, either. She'd never have +left the front door unbolted. She'd never have permitted a guest, however +explicit his preferences, to sleep upon the cane davenport in the +drawing-room with his coat for a pillow. + +It was as if March had followed his train of thought step by step. + +"Miss Wollaston isn't here either," he said. "She was detained by a +broken spring in the car. I believe she expects to arrive this morning." + +A faint amusement showed in his face and presently brightened into a +smile. "I'm really very relieved," he added, "that it was you who got +here first." + +And then the smile vanished and his voice took a new timbre, not of +challenge, certainly not of defiance, but all the more for that of +authority. "The only other person in the house is Mary." + +A sudden weakness of the legs caused John to seat himself, with what +appearance of deliberation he could manage, in the nearest chair. March, +however, remained on his feet. + +"I brought her home last night," he went on, "very late--early this +morning rather--with the intention of leaving her here alone. But I +decided to stay. Also it was her preference that I should. I suspect +she's asleep. She promised, at least, to call me if she didn't." + +That, apparently, finished for the present what he had to say. He +turned--it really was rather gentle the way he disengaged himself from +the fixity of John's look,--replaced the cushions on the cane davenport; +and then, seating himself, began putting on his shoes. + +Precisely that gentleness, though it checked on John's tongue the angry +question, "What the devil were you doing with her until early this +morning?" only added to his anger by depriving it of a target. For a +minute he sat inarticulate, boiling. + +It was an outrageous piece of slacking on Rush's part that he should have +deserted his sister before the arrival of one or the other of his +promised reenforcements relieved him of his duty. It was inexcusable of +Lucile to let a trivial matter like a broken spring keep her at Hickory +Hill. There were plenty of trains, weren't there? And the third rail +every hour? It was shockingly disengenuous of Mary, when she talked with +him over the telephone yesterday afternoon, to have suppressed the +essential fact that Rush had already deserted her and that she was at +that moment alone. + +And then his anger turned upon himself, as a voice within him asked +whether, on his conscience, he could affirm that this knowledge would +have made a difference in his own actions. Could he be sure he wouldn't +have clutched at the assurance that his sister was already on the way +rather than have exacerbated his quarrel with Paula by doing the one +thing that would annoy her most. + +Laboriously he got himself together, steadied himself. "You mustn't +think," he said, "that I'm not grateful. We're all grateful, of course, +to you for having done what our combined negligence appears to have made +necessary." Then his voice hardened and the ring of anger crept into it +as he added, "You may be sure that nothing of the sort will occur again." + +"No," March said dryly. "It won't occur again." He straightened up +and faced John Wollaston squarely. "I've persuaded Mary to marry +me," he said. + +"To marry--_you_!" John echoed blankly. For a moment before his mind +began to work, he merely stared. The first thought that struggled through +was a reluctant recognition of the fact that there was a sort of dignity +in the man which not even the stale look, inevitable about one who has +just slept in his clothes, could overcome. No more than his pallor and +the lines of fatigue deeply marked in his face could impeach his air of +authority. There was something to him not quite accountable under any of +the categories John was in the habit of applying. So much John had +conceded from the first; from that morning in this very room when he had +found him tuning the Circassian grand and had gone away, shutting the +door over yonder, so that Paula shouldn't hear. + +But that Mary should seriously contemplate marrying him! Mary! Good God! + +Once more March disengaged himself from John's fixed gaze. Not at all +as if he couldn't support it; gently again, by way of giving the older +man time to recover from his astonishment. He went into the bay and +stood looking out the window into the bright hot empty street. From +where he sat John could see his face in profile. He certainly was +damned cool about it. + +There recurred to John's mind, a moment during that day's drive he had +taken with Mary, down South, when he had leaped to the wild surmise that +there might be something between those two. She'd been talking about the +piano tuner with what struck him as a surprisingly confident +understanding. + +She had instantly, he remembered, divined his thought and as swiftly +set it at rest. March wasn't, she had said, a person who saved himself +up for special people. He was there for anybody, like a public +drinking fountain. + +But had she been ingenuous in making that reply to him? Had he really +been in her confidence about the man? Obviously not. The only encounter +between them that he had ever heard about was the one she had upon that +day described to him. And Lucile and Rush were evidently as completely in +the dark about the affair as he himself had been. Their meetings, their +numerous meetings, must have been clandestine. That Mary, his own white +little daughter, should be capable of an affair like that! + +Another memory flashed into his mind. The evening of that same day when +she had tried to tell him why she couldn't marry Graham. She wasn't, she +had said, innocent enough for Graham; she wasn't even quite--good. + +The horror of the conclusion he seemed to be drifting upon literally, for +a moment, nauseated John Wollaston. The sweat felt cold upon his +forehead. And then, white hot, bracing him like brandy, a wave of anger. + +Some preliminary move toward speaking evidently caught March's ear, for +he turned alertly and looked. It was one of the oddest experiences John +Wollaston had ever had. The moment he met March's gaze, the whole +infernal pattern, like an old-fashioned set-piece in fireworks, +extinguished itself as suddenly as it had flared. There was something +indescribable in this man's face that simply made grotesque the notion +that he could be a blackguard. John felt himself clutching at his anger +to keep him up but the momentary belief which had fed it was gone. + +March's face darkened, too. "If you have any idea," he said, "that I've +taken any advantage--or attempted to take any..." + +"No," John said quickly. "I don't believe anything like that. I confess +there was a moment just now when it looked like that; when I couldn't +make it look like anything else. It is still quite unaccountable to me. +That explanation is discarded--but I'd like the real one." + +"I don't believe," March said, reflecting over it for a moment, "that +there is any explanation I could give that would make it much more +accountable. We love each other. That is a fact that, accountable or not, +we both had to recognize a number of weeks ago. I didn't ask her to marry +me until last night. I wouldn't have asked her then if it hadn't become +clear to me that her happiness depended upon it as much as mine did. When +she was able to see that the converse was also true, we--agreed upon it." + +"What I asked for," John said, "was an explanation. What you have offered +is altogether inadequate--if it can be called an explanation at all." He +wrenched his eyes away from March's face. "I've liked you," he went on, +"I've liked you despite the fact that I've had some excuse for +entertaining a contradictory feeling. And I concede your extraordinary +talents. But it remains true that you're not--the sort of man I'd expect +my daughter to marry. Nor, unless I could see some better reason than I +see now, permit her to marry." + +This was further than, in cool blood, he'd have gone. But the finding of +a stranger here in his own place (any man would have been a stranger when +it came as close as this to Mary) professing to understand her needs, to +see with the clear eye of certainty where her happiness lay, angered and +outraged him. The more for an irresistible conviction that the profession +was true. But that word permit went too far. He wasn't enough of an +old-fashioned parent to believe, at all whole-heartedly, that Mary was +his to dispose of. + +Again, he looked up at the man's face, braced for the retort his +challenge had laid him open to, and once more the expression he saw +there--a thing as momentary as a shimmer of summer lightning,--told him +more than anything within the resources of rhetoric could have effected. +It was something a little less than a smile that flashed across March's +face, a look half pitiful, half ironic. It told John Wollaston that his +permission was not needed. Events had got beyond him. He was superseded. + +He dropped back limp in his chair. March seated himself, too, and leaned +forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. + +"I know how it must look to you, sir," he said gravely. "Even the social +aspect of the thing in the narrowest sense of the word is serious. And +there are other difficulties harder to get over than that. I don't think +I minimize any of them. And I don't believe that Mary does. But the main +thing is a fact that can't be escaped. If we face that first ..." + +He broke off there for a moment and John saw him grip his hands together. +It was with a visible effort that he went on. + +"One of the things Mary said last night was that sentimentality was the +crudest thing in the world. It caused more tragedies, she said, than +malice. She had learned the cruelty of it by experience. It's not an +experience she can safely go through again." + +It was in an automatic effort to defend himself against the conviction he +felt closing down upon him that John lashed out here with a reply. + +"The fact you're asking me to face is, I suppose, that you two have +discovered you're in love with each other to a degree that makes all +other considerations negligible." + +"That's not quite it," March replied patiently. "A part of it is, that it +would have been just as impossible for Mary to marry Graham Stannard if +she had never seen me. And if she could forget me completely it would +still be impossible for her to marry any one else like him." + +John didn't follow that very closely. His mind was still upon the last +sentence of March's former speech. "It's not an experience she can safely +go through again." What did he mean by that? How much did he mean by +that? Would John, if he could, plumb the full depth of that meaning? +There was no use fighting any longer. + +"The simplest way of stating the fact, I suppose," he said, "is that you +two mean to marry and that you're satisfied that your reasons for making +the decision are valid. Well, if Mary corroborates you, as I have no +doubt she will, I'll face that fact as realistically as possible. I'll +agree not to, as you put it, sentimentalize." + +Then he got up and held out his hand. "I mean that for a better welcome +that it sounds," he concluded. And if there was no real feeling of +kindliness for his prospective son-in-law behind the words, there was +what came to the same thing, a realization that this feeling was bound to +come in time. No candid-minded person could keep alive, for very long, a +grievance against Anthony March. + +The physician in him spoke automatically while their hands were gripped. +"Good lord, man! You're about at the end of your rope. Exhausted--that's +what I mean. How long is it since you've fed?" + +March was vague about this; wouldn't be drawn into the line John had been +diverted into. He answered another question or two of the same tenor with +half his mind and finally said--with the first touch of impatience he had +betrayed, "I'm all right! That can wait. There's one more thing I want +to say before you talk to Mary." + +He seemed grateful for John's permission to sit down again, dropped into +his chair in a way that suggested he might have fallen into it in another +minute, and took the time he visibly needed for getting his wits into +working order again. + +"I think I can see how the prospect must look to you," he began. "The +difficulties and objections that you see are, I guess, the same ones that +appeared to me. The fact that I'm not in her world, at all. That I've +never even tried to succeed nor get on, nor even to earn a decent living. +And that, however hard I work to change all that, it will only be by +perfectly extraordinary luck if I can contrive to make a life for her +that will be--externally anywhere near as good a life as the one she's +always taken for granted. + +"It won't be as much worse, though, as you are likely to think. With the +help she'll give me I shall be able to earn a decent living. Unless that +opera of mine fails--laughably, and I don't believe it will, up at +Ravinia, it will help quite a lot. Make it possible for me to get some +pupils in composition. And I know I can write some songs that will be +publishable and singable--for persons who aren't musicians like Paula. I +did write two or three for the boys in Bordeaux that went pretty well. +That sort of thing didn't seem worth while to me then and I never went +on with it. + +"Oh, you know how I've felt about it. How I've talked about traveling +light and not letting my life get cluttered up. But that isn't really the +thing that's changed. I've never been willing to pay, in liberty and +leisure, for things I didn't want. The only difference is that there's +something now that I do want. And I shan't shirk paying for it. I want +you to understand that." + +He stressed the word you in a way that puzzled John a little, but what +he went on to say after a moment's hesitation made his meaning clear. + +"That's preliminary. You'll find that Mary's misgivings--she's not +without them and they won't be easy to overcome--aren't the same as ours. +Those aren't the things that she's afraid of. She's afraid of taking my +liberty away from me. She won't be able to believe, easily, that my old +vagabond ways have lost their importance for me; that they're a phase I +can afford to outgrow. She's likely to think I've sacrificed something +essential in going regularly to work, giving lessons, writing popular +songs. Of course, it will rest mostly with me to satisfy her that that +isn't true, but any help you can give her along that line, I'll be +grateful for. Last night she seemed convinced--far enough to give me her +promise but..." + +Words faded away there into an uneasy silence. John, looking intently +into the man's face, saw him wrestling, he thought, with same idea, some +fear, some sort of nightmare horror which with all the power of his will +he was struggling not to give access to. He pressed his clenched hands +against his eyes. + +"What is it?" John asked sharply. "What's the matter?" + +"It's nothing," March said between his teeth. "She promised, as I said. +She told me I needn't be afraid." Then he came to his feet with a gesture +of surrender. "Will you let me see her?" he asked John. "Now. Just for a +minute before I go." + +John, by that time, was on his feet, too, staring. "What do you mean, +man? Afraid of what? What is it you're afraid of?" + +March didn't answer the question in words, but for a moment he met her +father's gaze eye to eye and what John saw was enough. + +"Good God!" he whispered. "Why--why didn't you ..." Then turning swiftly +toward the door. "Come along." + +"I'm really not afraid," March panted as he followed him up the stairs, +"because of her promise. It was just a twinge." + +Her door at the foot of the stairs which led to the music room stood wide +open, but both men came to an involuntary breathless pause outside it. +Then John went in, looked for a brief moment at the figure that slept so +gently in the narrow little bed, gave a reassuring nod to March who had +hung back in the doorway, a nod that invited him in; then turned away and +covered his face with his hands just for one steadying instant until the +shock of that abominable fear should pass away. + +When he looked again March stood at the bedside gazing down into the +girl's face. It was as if his presence there were palpable to her. She +opened her eyes sleepily, smiled a fleeting contented smile and held up +her arms to her lover. He smiled, too, and bent down and kissed her. Then +as the arms that had clasped his neck slipped down he straightened, +nodded to John and went back to the door. John followed and for a moment, +outside the room, they talked in whispers. + +"I'm going home now," March said. "To my father's house--not the other +place. There's a telephone there if she wants me. But I'll call anyhow +before I go to Ravina this afternoon." + +It was he, this time, who held out his hand. + +"You can trust her with me in the meantime, I think," John said as he +took it, but the irony of that was softened by a smile. March smiled, +too, and with no more words went away. + +Her eyes turned upon John when he came back into the room, wide open but +still full of sleep. When he stood once more beside her bed a pat of her +hand invited him to sit down upon the edge of it. + +"He really was here, wasn't he?" she asked. "I wasn't dreaming?" + +"No, he was here," John said. + +Her eyelids drooped again. "I'm having the loveliest dreams," she told +him. "I suppose I ought to be waking up. What time is it?" + +"It's still very early. Only about half past eight. Go back to sleep." + +"Have you had breakfast? Pete's wife, out in the garage, will come in and +get it for you." + +"When I feel like breakfast, I'll see to it that I get some," he +said, rising. + +Once more she roused herself a little. "Stay here, then, for a while," +she said. "Pull that chair up close." + +When he had planted the easy chair in the place she indicated and seated +himself in it she gave him one of her hands to hold. But in another +minute she was fast asleep. + +And that, you know, was the hottest, most intolerable sting of all. He +was sore, of course, all over. He had been badly battered during the last +four days. Some of those moments with March down-stairs had been like +blows from a bludgeon. But his daughter's sleepy attempt to concern +herself about his breakfast and the perfunctory caress of that slack +unconscious hand had the effect of the climax of it all. + +She'd just been through the crisis of her life. She'd been down chin-deep +in the black waters of tragedy (he didn't yet know, he told himself, what +the elements of the crisis were nor the poisonous springs of the tragedy) +and all her father meant to her was a domestic responsibility, some one +that breakfast must be provided for! + +He managed to control his release of her hand and his rising from his +chair so that these actions should not be so brusk as to waken her again +and, leaving the room, went down to his own. + +That was the way with children. They remained a part of you but you were +never a part of them. Mary having awakened for her lover, smiled at him, +been reassured by his kiss, had been content to drop off to sleep again. +Her father didn't matter. Not even his derelictions mattered. + +He had been derelict. He didn't pretend to evade that. He could have +forgiven her reproaches; welcomed them. But thanks to March, she had +nothing to reproach him for The presence of a man she had known a matter +of weeks obliterated past years like the writing on a child's slate. He +tried to erect an active resentment against the composer. Didn't all his +troubles go back to the day the man had come, to tune the drawing-room +piano? First Paula and then Mary. + +None of this was very real and he knew it. There was an underlying +stratum of his consciousness that this didn't get down to at all, +which, when it managed to get a word in, labeled it mere petulance, a +childish attempt to find solace for his hurts in building up a +grievance, a whole fortress of grievances to take shelter in against +the bombardment of facts. + +Was this the quality of his bitter four days' quarrel with Paula? Was the +last accusation she had hurled at him last night before she shut herself +in her room, a fact? "Of course, I'm jealous of Mary," she had +acknowledged furiously when he charged her with it. "You don't care +anything about me except for your pleasure. Down there in Tryon, when you +didn't want that, you got rid of me and sent for Mary instead. If that +weren't true, you wouldn't have been so anxious all these years that I +shouldn't have a child." + +No, that wasn't a fact, though it could be twisted into looking like one. +If he had refrained from urging motherhood upon her, if he'd given her +the benefit of his special knowledge, didn't her interest in her career +as a singer establish the presumption that it was her wish rather than +his that they were following. Had she ever said she'd like to have a +baby? Or even hinted? + +He pulled himself up. There was no good going over that again. + +He bathed and shaved and dressed himself in fresh clothes, operations +which had been perforce omitted at the cottage this morning in favor of +his departure without arousing Paula. (He'd slept, or rather lain awake, +upon the hammock in the veranda.) When he came down-stairs he found +Pete's wife already in the kitchen, gave her directions about his +breakfast and then from force of habit, thought of his morning paper. The +delivery of it had been discontinued, of course, for the months the house +was closed, so he walked down to Division Street to get one. + +He had got his mind into a fairly quiescent state by then which made the +trick it played when he first caught sight of the great stacks of +_Tribunes_ and _Heralds_ on the corner news-stand all the more +terrifying. It had the force of an hallucination; as if in the head-lines +he actually saw the word suicide in thick black letters. And his +daughter's name underneath. + +He had managed, somehow, to evade that word; to refrain from putting into +any words at all the peril Mary had so narrowly escaped, although the +fact had hung, undisguised, between him and March during the moment they +stared at each other before they went up-stairs together. It avenged that +evasion by leaping upon him now. He bought his paper and hurried home +with it under his arm, feeling as if it might still contain the news of +that tragedy. + +Reacting from this irrational panic he tried to discount the whole thing. +March hadn't lied, of course, but, being a lover, he had exaggerated. As +John sat over his breakfast he got to feeling quite comfortable about +this. His mind went back to the breakfast he had had with Mary at Ravinia +--breakfast after much such an abominable night as this last had +been--the breakfast they had left for that talk under the trees beside +the lake. And then his own words came back and stabbed him. + +He had been arguing with her his right to extinguish himself if he chose. +He had said he had no religion real enough to make a valid denial of that +right. It was a question no one else could presume to decide. How much +more had he said to that sensitive nerve-drawn child of his? He +remembered how white she had gone for a moment, a little later. And he +had pretended not to see! Just as he had been pretending, a few minutes +back, to doubt the reality of the peril March had saved her from. What a +liar he was! + +Sentimentality, March had quoted Mary as saying, was the cruelest thing +in the world. John stood convicted now of that cruelty toward his +daughter. Was he guilty of it, also, toward his wife? Did their quarrel +boil down to that? + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +SETTLING PAULA + + +Anthony March might deny as much as he pleased that he was "enough of an +Olympian to laugh" at life's ironies, but it remained true that his God +had a sense of humor and that March himself appreciated it. When, well +within that same twenty-four hours, a third member of the Wollaston +family insisted upon telling him her troubles and asking him what she'd +best do about them, he conceded with the flicker of an inward grin (not +at all at the troubles which were serious enough nor at their sufferer +who was in despair), that the great Disposer, having set out to demolish +that philosophy, enjoyed making a thorough job of it. + +It was about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon that he came to Paula's +cottage at Ravinia to get the score to _The Outcry_. The maid who opened +the door informed him that her mistress wasn't at home, but when he told +her what he wanted, and she had gone rather dubiously up-stairs to see +about it, it was Paula herself who, after a wait of ten minutes or so, +came down with the manuscript in her hand. + +He was, perhaps, just the one person in the world she'd have come down to +see. All the explanation she volunteered to herself was that he didn't +matter. It didn't matter, this was to say, if he did perceive that she +had been crying for days and days and looked an utter wreck. + +And then his errand brought her a touch of comfort. The acceptance of +_The Outcry_ for production restored the proprietary feeling she once +had had about it. She was the discoverer of _The Outcry_ and if you'd +asked her who was responsible for the revival of interest in it and for +the fact that it was now to be produced, I think she'd have told you +quite honestly that she was. Hadn't she asked them all to come to her +house to hear it? And sung the part of "Dolores" herself at that very +informal audition? + +And I'll hazard one further guess. It is that her quarrel with John made +March's opera a rather pleasanter thing to dwell on a little. She had +taken it up in defiance of his wish in the first place; her abandonment +of it had acquired from its context the color of a self-sacrificial +impulse. She would carry out her contract, she had told John down in +Tryon, but she wouldn't sing "Dolores" for anybody. Well, now that her +love-life with John was irremediably wrecked, there was a sort of +melancholy satisfaction in handling, once more, the thing that stood as +the innocent symbol of the disaster. + +That's neither here nor there, of course. Paula was totally unaware of +any such constellation about her simple act of deciding to carry down the +score herself instead of handing it over to the maid. + +The sight of him standing over the piano in her sitting-room cheered her +and the look of melancholy she brought down-stairs with her was replaced +by a spontaneous unexpected smile. Just as Mary, out at Hickory Hill, had +predicted, she remembered how well she liked him. She laid the manuscript +on the piano in order to give him both hands. + +"I can't tell you how pleased I am about it," she said. "I wish you all +the luck in the world." + +He brightened responsively at that but looked, she thought, a little +surprised, too. + +"I am glad you're pleased about it," he told her. "I wasn't quite sure +you'd know. Of course, they telephoned." + +She stepped back, puzzled. "But of course I know!" she said. "Haven't I +been working on it for weeks! Why, it was right here in this room that +they decided on it. Days ago. I've been trying frantically to find you +ever since." + +"Oh," he said, "you mean _The Outcry_. I thought you were congratulating +me on my engagement to marry Mary." + +She stared at him in simple blank incredulity. "To marry Mary! Mary +Wollaston? You don't mean that seriously?" + +"It's the only serious fact in the world," he assured her. + +"But John--Does John know about it?" she demanded. + +"Yes," he said. + +She drew a long breath, then pounced upon him with another question. "Did +you tell him about it, or was it Mary who did?" + +"It was I," March said. "I was the first one to see him after it +happened." + +"He hadn't suspected anything, had he?" she persisted. + +She was vaguely aware that he was a little puzzled and perhaps in the +same degree amused by her intensity, but she had no interest in half +tones of that sort. + +When he answered in the sense she expected, "No, I can testify to +that. He was taken completely by surprise when I broke it to him;" she +heaved another long breath, turned away, and sat down heavily in the +nearest chair. + +"Poor old John!" she said. But she didn't let that exclamation go +uninterpreted. "I didn't mean anything--personal by that," she went on. +"Only--only I didn't think John could make up his mind to let her +marry--anybody." Then in a rush--an aside, to be sure, but one he was +welcome to hear if he chose.--"He wanted her so much all to himself." + +Whether he heard it or not, he failed, she thought, to attach any special +significance to that last comment of hers. He said that John had been +very nice about it, though he was, as any father would be under the +circumstances, taken aback. He had consented to regard the arrangement as +an accomplished fact and would, March hoped, in time be fully reconciled +to it. Then he went back rather quickly to the matter of his opera. + +"Of course, it means more than ever to me now," he said, putting his hand +on the manuscript, "to get this produced. If it goes moderately well it +will help in a good many ways." + +She found some difficulty in again turning her mind to this theme and +answered absently and rather at random, until she perceived that he was +getting ready to take his leave. He was saying something about an +appointment with LaChaise. + +"Is it at once?" she asked. "Do you have to go right away?" + +"I'm to have dinner with him and his secretary, who can talk English, at +six," March said, "but I thought I'd carry this off somewhere and read it +before I talked with them. It's been a long way out of my mind this last +three months." + +"Don't go," Paula said. "It seems so--so nice to have you here. Sit down +and read your score. Then you'll have a piano handy in case you want to +hear anything." She added as she saw him hesitate, "I won't bother +you--but I'm feeling awfully lonely to-day." + +At that, of course, he relinquished, though a little dubiously she +thought, his intention to go. She set about energetically making matters +convenient for him, cleared a small table of its litter and set it in the +window where he would have the best light; chose a chair for him to sit +in; urged him to take off his coat; and began looking about for something +for him to smoke--but not quite successfully. She was sure there were +cigarettes of Mary's somewhere about. + +He didn't care to smoke just now, he said. If he felt later like +resorting to a pipe he would. + +Was there anything else? Didn't he want a pencil and paper to make notes +on? No, he was supplied with everything, he said. + +But for all the ardor of these preparations of hers, she was a little +disconcerted and aggrieved at the way he took her at her word and plunged +into the study of his score. + +She found herself a novel and managed, for five minutes or so, to pretend +to read. Then she flung it aside and drifted over to the piano bench and +after gazing moodily a while at the keyboard, began in a fragmentary way +to play bits of nothing that came into her head. But she stopped herself +short in manifest contrition when, happening to look around at him, she +saw a knot of baffled concentration in his forehead. + +"Of course, you can't read if I do that," she said. "I'm sorry." Then +under cover of the same interruption, "How did John look when you saw him +this morning? Like a wreck? What time was it, anyway? It must have been +frightfully early that he left here because I waked as soon as it was +really light and he was gone by then." + +"I don't know that he looked particularly a wreck," March said. "Not any +worse, I mean, than he looked out at Hickory Hill the day you opened the +season here." + +"He didn't say anything about me, did he?" she asked. + +"No," March said, "I don't think he did." + +"I suppose you'd remember it if he'd happened to tell you that he loathed +and hated me and never wanted to see me again." Then she rose and went +over to the opposite side of his little table and leaning down spread her +hands out over his score. + +"Oh, I know I said I wouldn't bother, but do stop thinking about this and +talk to me for a minute. We're having--we're having a perfectly hideous +time. He and I. We've been fighting like cat and dog for four days. I +don't exactly know what it's all about, except that it seems we hate each +other and can't go on. You've got to tell me what to do. It all started +with you anyway. With the time you brought around those Whitman +songs.--That was the day Mary came home from New York, too," she added. + +"All right," he said, shutting down the cover upon his manuscript, +"then Mary and I will try to patch you up. That is, if we haven't +already done it." + +Her face darkened. "Don't try to talk the way they do," she commanded. +"I'm not intelligent enough to take hints. Do you mean that the whole +trouble is that I'm jealous of Mary? And that now she's going to marry +you I'll have nothing to be jealous of? Well, you're wrong both ways. +There's more to it than that. And that isn't going to stop just because +she's marrying you. She'll always be there for him. And he'll be there +for her. You'll find that out before you've gone far." + +He didn't seem disposed to dispute this, nor to be much perturbed about +it, either. He annoyed her by saying, "Well, if it's a permanent fact, +like snow in February, what's the good of taking it so hard?" + +"You can go south in February," she retorted. Then she went on, "I want +to know if you don't think I've a right to be jealous of her. I'd saved +his life. He admitted that. But when we went south, afterward, he simply +didn't want me around. Sent me home pretending I'd be wanted for +rehearsals. And then he sent for her. They spent a week +together--talking! As far as that goes, they could have done it just as +well if I'd been there. They can talk right over my head and I never know +what it's all about. Wait till they begin doing that with you! I don't +suppose they will though. You're a talker, too. He told her things he'd +never told me-about his money troubles. What he said to me was that he +didn't want to stand in the way of my career. He left her to tell me the +truth about it, later,--after I'd told him I didn't want any +career--though I'd just been offered the best chance I ever had. And +then, when he came and found that I'd done--for him--what he'd been +trying to make me do for myself, he was furious. We fought all night +about it. And when I came down the next morning, ready to do anything he +wanted me to, he'd wandered off with Mary. To talk me over with her +again.--Tell her some more things, I suppose, that I didn't know about." + +March had nothing to interpose here, it seemed, in Mary's defense, for +her pause gave him ample opportunity to do so. He merely nodded +reflectively and loaded and lighted his pipe. + +"Well," she demanded presently, "can you see now that there's something +more to it than jealousy? Whatever I try to do, he fights. When I wanted +to begin singing again last spring, he fought that. And when I wanted to +give it all up, after he'd so nearly died, he wouldn't let me. And when +I'd refused the best chance I'd ever had, for him, and then changed +around and accepted it because of him, he seemed to hate me for doing +that. And he simply boiled when I told him I'd gone and got the money, +myself, from Wallace Hood." + +"Yes," March said, so decisively that he startled her, "I know all about +it up to there. That was Thursday afternoon, wasn't it? Go on from then." + +The interruption disconcerted her. "There isn't much more--to tell," she +went on, but a good deal less impetuously. "Except that we fought and +fought and fought. About eight o'clock that night I said I was going to +the park to see the performance;--just to get a rest from talking. Mr. +Eckstein was there and the Williamsons and James Wallace, so I asked them +all to come home with us. And Fournier and LaChaise, too. And we got on +your opera and LaChaise played part of it and then I read a lot of it +with Fournier. So they didn't go home till after three. John thought I +was keeping them there in order not to be left alone with him.--Well, +what was the good of talking, anyhow? We did get started again on Friday, +though; all day long. And Friday night we--made up, in a way. At least, I +thought we did. + +"Well, and then yesterday morning Rush telephoned out from town and said +he thought John ought to come in to see Mary. She wasn't very well. I +told him to go if he liked. I was feeling perfectly awful, yesterday, +myself--and I was billed for _Thais_ last night. There isn't another +soprano up here who wouldn't have cancelled it, feeling the way I did. +But I told John that if he thought Mary needed him more than I did, he'd +better go.--I wish he had gone. After he'd telephoned to say he wasn't +coming--he'd talked to Mary herself, that time--he kept getting colder +and gloomier and more--unendurable from hour to hour. And after the +performance, we had the most horrible fight of all. He told me I had kept +him away from Mary on purpose,--because I was jealous of her. He said he +could never forgive himself for the way he'd treated her--in order to +curry favor with me. And he said that the first thing in the morning he +was going to her. That's all.--Oh, well, I said a few things to him, too. +Do you wonder?" + +By way of a flourish, she flashed to her feet again at this conclusion +(she'd been up and down half a dozen times in the course of her appeal to +him as jury), and walked away to a window. But after the silence had spun +itself out to the better part of a minute, she whipped round upon him. + +"Have you been listening to a word I've said?" she demanded. + +"Yes," he said, but with the contradictory air of fetching himself back +from a long way off. "Truly! I've listened to every word. And I don't +wonder a bit." + +"Don't wonder at what?" + +"That you said a few things to him, too. You've got a valid grievance, it +seems to me. You couldn't be blamed for quarreling with him over it as +bitterly as possible." + +She barely heeded the words. They never did mean much to Paula. But his +look and his tone reached her, and stung. + +"Look here!" she said with sudden intensity. "Before we go any farther, I +want to know this. Did Mary really need John, yesterday?" + +She saw him turn pale and she had to wait two or three long breaths for +her answer. But it came evenly enough at last. + +"I happened to turn up instead. And she's perfectly all right, to-day." + +Her eyes filled with tears. She turned forlornly away from him and +dropped down upon a settee. "You hate me, too, now, I suppose. As +well as he." + +He sat down beside her and laid a hand upon her shoulder. "My dear," he +said--and his own voice had a break of tenderness in it,--"I couldn't +hate any one to-day if I wanted to. And I never could want to hate you. +If there's anything I can do to help with John Wollaston.... But you see, +if you want to keep your grievance you don't need any help. Nobody can +take it away from you. It's only if you want to get rid of it--because +it's making you beastly unhappy, no matter how valid it is--that you need +any help from me or any one else. If that's what you want, I'll take a +shot at writing you a prescription." + +"Go crawling back to him on my knees, I suppose," she said in a tone not +quite so genuinely resentful as she felt it ought to be. "And ask him to +forgive me. What's the good of that when he doesn't love me?--Oh, of +course I know he does--in a way." + +His hand dropped absently from her shoulder. After a thoughtful moment he +sprang up and took a turn of the room. "Do you know," he said, halting +before her, "'in a way' is the only way there is. The only way any two +people ever do love each other. That's what makes half the trouble, I +believe. Trying to define it as if it were a standard thing. Like +sterling silver; so many and so many hundredths per cent. pure. Love's +whatever the personal emotion is that draws two people together. It may +be anything. It may make them kind to each other, or it may make them nag +each other into the mad-house, or it may make them shoot each other dead. +It's probably never exactly the same thing between any two pairs of +people..." + +"Don't talk nonsense," she said petulantly. + +"I'm not a bit sure it's nonsense," he persisted. "I only just thought of +it, but I believe I've got on to something. Well, if I'm right, then the +problem is to adjust that emotion to your life, or your life to that +emotion, in such a way that the thing will work. There aren't any rules. +There can't be any. It's a matter of--well, that's the word--adjustment." + +She could not see that this was helping her much. It was not at all the +line she'd projected for him. Yet she was finding it hard not to feel +less tragic. She had even caught herself, just now, upon the brink of +being amused. "Wait till you've tried to adjust something, as you say, +with John, and have had him tell you what you think until you believe +you do. When he's really being perfectly unreasonable all the while." + +"Of course," March observed with the air of one making a material +concession, "he is a good bit of a prima donna himself." + +"What do you mean by that?" she demanded. And then, petulantly, she +accused him of laughing at her, of refusing to take her seriously, of +trying to be clever like the Wollastons. + +"Look here, Paula," he said, and he put so much edge into his tone that +she did, "have you ever spent five minutes out of the last five years +trying to think what John was, besides your husband? I don't believe it. +When I spoke of him to you, months ago, as a famous person you didn't +know what I was talking about. He is. He's got a better chance--say to +get into the next edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, than you +have. He's got a career. He had it long before he knew you existed.--How +old was he when he came to Vienna? About fifty, wasn't he?" + +"Forty-nine," she said with the air of one making a serious +contradiction; but her, "Oh, well,--" and a little laugh that followed it +conceded that it was not. + +"He'd had a career then for a long time," March went on. "He was +established. He had things about as he wanted them. And then, out of +nowhere, an irresistible thing like you came along and torpedoed him. He +must have realized that he had gone clean out of his head about you. A +man of that age doesn't fall in love unconsciously, nor easily either. He +must have had frightful misgivings about persuading you to marry him. On +your account as well as his own. Because he is that, you know. +Conscientious, I mean. Almost to a morbid degree." + +"Oh, yes," she conceded, "they're both like that. They spend half their +time working things out trying to be fair." + +He gave her a quick look, then came and sat down beside her again. +"Well, then," he said, "we're on the right track. Just follow it along. +You're the one big refractory thing in his life. The thing that +constantly wants reconciling with something else,--at the same time that +you're the delight of it, and the center and core of it. And while he's +trying to deal with those problems justly, you know, he's taking on all +of yours, too. He's trying to see things with your eyes, feeling them +with your nerves, and since he's got a kind of uncanny penetration, I'd +be willing to bet that he can tell you, half the time, what you're +thinking about better than you could yourself. No wonder, between his +conscience and his desire--your mutual desire--he's unreasonable. And +since he's too old to be reformed out of his conscience that leaves the +adjustment up to you." + +"I don't know what more I can do," she said. "I've offered to give up +everything." + +"Yes," he said with a grunt, "that's it. I don't wonder he flew at you. +_That's_ the thing you'll have to give up!" + +He rose and stood over her and thumped home, his point with one fist in +the palm of the other hand. "Why, you've got to give up the nobility," he +said. "The self-sacrificial attitude. You've got to chuck the heroine's +rĂ´le altogether, Paula. That's what you've been playing, naturally +enough. It makes good drama for you, but look where it leaves him! First +you give up your career for him, and then you give him up for the career +you've undertaken for his sake. You've contrived to put him in the wrong +both ways. Oh, not meaning to, I know; just by instinct. Well, give that +up. Give up the renunciatory gesture. Go to him and tell him the truth. +That you want, in a perfectly human selfish way, all you can get, both of +him and of a career. They aren't mutually exclusive really. It ought to +be possible to have quite a lot of each." + +"You think you know such a lot," she protested rebelliously, "but +there's only one thing I want, just the same, and that's John, himself." + +"No doubt that's true this afternoon," he admitted. "You sang _Thais_ +last night and several thousand people, according to this morning's +paper, cheered you at the end of the second act. But I believe I can tell +you your day-dream. It's to be the greatest dramatic soprano in the +world--home for a vacation. With John and perhaps one or two small +children of the affectionate age around you." + +Her face flamed at that. "John _has_ been talking about me this morning!" +she cried. + +He shook his head. "It was only a chance shot," he told her. "I'm sorry +if it came close enough home to hurt. But there couldn't be a better +day-dream than that and there's no reason I can see why it shouldn't come +reasonably true, if you'll honestly try for as much of it as you can get. +That's the prescription, anyhow. Give up nobility and all the heroic +poses that go with it and practise a little enlightened selfishness +instead. Perhaps by force of example you may persuade John Wollaston to +abandon about half of his conscience. Then you _would_ be settled." + +With that he went back to his score and by no protest or expostulation +could she provoke another word out of him. She fidgeted about the room +for a quarter of an hour or so. Then with the announcement that she was +going to dress, left it and went up-stairs. + +When she came down a while later in street things and a hat she presented +him with a new perplexity. + +"I've been trying everywhere I can think of to get a car," she said, "and +there simply isn't one to be had. I even tried to borrow one." + +He asked her what she wanted of a car. Where she wanted to go. + +"Oh, can't you see!" she cried, "I don't want to send for John again to +come to me. I want to go to him. It's too maddening!" + +"Well," he said, with a grin, "if you really want--desperately--to go to +him, of course there's the trolley." + +She stared at him for a moment and then perceiving, or thinking she +perceived, something allegorical about the suggestion, she gave a laugh, +swooped down and kissed him and went. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE KALEIDOSCOPE + + +It was the next Sunday morning that Miss Wollaston, who had decided to +stay in town even though the emergency she had been summoned to meet was +found mysteriously to have evanesced when she arrived, asked Wallace +Hood, walking home with her from church, to come in to lunch. + +"I haven't the least idea," she said, "whether we shall be quite by +ourselves or whether the entire family, including the latest addition to +it, will come straggling in before we've finished." + +She would not have considered it quite delicate to have owned to him how +very clearly she hoped to have him, for an hour or two, all to herself. +He would be found, she was confident, not to have gone through the +looking-glass into the world of topsy-turvey that all the rest of them +seemed to be inhabiting, these days. It would be comforting to talk with +somebody who was still capable of regarding things right side to. + +She was much too penetrating a person not to have been perfectly aware +from the first that, astonishing as were the facts John had communicated +to her, upon her arrival from Hickory Hill a week ago, other facts of +major importance were being suppressed. + +She had found her brother apparently occupied in the normal Sunday +morning manner with his newspaper, and he had answered her rather +breathless inquiries about Mary by saying that she was all right. She was +finishing off her night's sleep but would, he supposed, be down by and +by. There was nothing the matter. Rush had been unnecessarily alarmed, +lacking the fact which explained the case. And then he sprang his mine, +informing her that Mary was engaged to marry Anthony March. + +When, after a speechless interval, she had asked him, feebly, whether he +didn't mean Graham Stannard, he had been very short with her indeed. The +engagement to March was an accomplished fact, and the sooner we took it +for granted the better. He showed a great reluctance to go further into +detail about the matter and he flinched impatiently from the innocent +question;--when had he himself been informed of this astounding state of +things. Well, naturally, since in the train of his answer the fact had +been elicited that he hadn't come to town until this morning and that +Mary had spent another night alone. And it was not Mary but March who +had, already this morning, told him about it. + +Beyond that John couldn't be driven to go. He concluded by putting a +categorical injunction upon her. She wasn't to expostulate with Mary nor +to attempt to examine either into her reasons for this step nor into her +state of mind in making it. He was satisfied that the girl knew what she +was doing and that it represented her real wishes. His sister's +satisfaction on these points would have to be vicarious. + +The surmise had formed itself irresistibly in Lucile's mind that John +himself was involved in this decision of Mary's. Had she done this +thing--involved herself in the beginnings of it, anyhow,--as a desperate +measure to bring her father and his wife together again? By removing a +temptation that Paula was still in danger of yielding to? She didn't put +it to herself quite as crudely as that to be sure. + +Certainly she had no intention of asking Wallace Hood what he thought +about it. But perhaps he might have some other explanation of her +niece's sacrifice. It must have been a sacrifice to something. An answer +to some fancied call of duty. Unless it were a freak of sheer perversity. +But this was dangerous ground for Lucile. + +The queerest thing about it all was the way it seemed--magically--to be +producing such beneficent results. John and Paula were reconciled by +it,--or at least as soon as it happened. Paula had come down from Ravinia +that very day, had had some sort of scene with her husband, and the two +had been almost annoyingly at one upon every conceivable subject since. +Something had happened also during the week to Rush, which lightened the +gloom that had been hanging on him so long,--some utterly surprising +interview with Graham Stannard's father. Pure coincidence one must +suppose this to be, of course. Mary's engagement couldn't have anything +to do with it. And then Mary herself! The girl was a new person. +Absolutely radiant. Orthodox conduct of course for a just engaged +girl--but in the circumstances one would think... + +Lucile saw that Wallace hesitated a little about accepting her +invitation to lunch and recalled the fact that he hadn't dropped in on +them once during the week though he had known that they were more or +less back in town. + +"Why, yes, I'll come with pleasure," he said. "I don't know precisely +what sort of terms I'm on with John. He felt for a few days, I know, that +I'd been rather officious, but I may as well have it out with him now as +later. And I shall be glad of an opportunity to give Mary my best wishes. +I wrote her a note, of course, the day I read the announcement of the +engagement in the newspapers." He added, "I certainly was in the dark as +to that affair." + +"Aren't you--still more or less, in the dark about it?" Miss Wollaston +inquired. "I don't mind owning that I am. Mary's sense of social values +always seemed to me to be at least adequately developed. On the surface +one would have to call her rather worldly, I think." + +"On the surface perhaps," Wallace interposed, "but not really; not at +heart. Still, I'll grant it isn't easy to understand. There's a certain +attraction about the man of course. And then there's his music." + +"And Mary," Miss Wollaston observed, "happens to be the one utterly +unmusical person in the family. She's completely absorbed in the +preparation for his opera however." Then after a little pause, "She may +prove rather more explanatory with you than she has been with me. She +seems to take a certain pleasure in mystifying me. In saying things in a +matter-of-fact way that are quite astounding. That's the new generation, +of course. They talk a different language from mine. It will be a +comfort," she concluded, rather pathetically, as they mounted the high +steps to her brother's door, "to talk the matter over quietly with some +one to whom my ideas and standards are still intelligible." + +But this comfort was, for the present, to be denied her. Mary had spent +the morning in her room writing notes and was coming down the stairs when +the church-goers came in. + +She negotiated what were left of the steps in a single swoop, gave her +visitor both hands along with the "Wallace! How nice!" that welcomed him, +and then, drawing back with a gesture which invited his scrutiny, said, +"Well? What do you think?--Oh, but thanks for your note, first. I've just +answered it." + +Radiant was the word. There couldn't be any doubt of that. And younger. +There was a twinkle of mischief that he had to go back-five years, +anyhow, to remember the like of. + +He had none of Lucile's feeling that decency required one's joy over an +event of this sort to be of the chastened variety and he brightened in +instantaneous response to the girl's mood, but the mere impact of her +left him for a moment wordless. + +"You needn't try to make me a speech," she said. "I know you're pleased. +Not as pleased as you would be if you knew all about it, but ..." + +"As pleased as possible, anyhow," he said. On that, amicably arm in arm, +they followed Miss Wollaston into the drawing-room. + +"I don't believe we've seen each other," she said, "since the night we +had dinner together at the Saddle and Cycle, weeks and weeks ago." + +"No," he said. "I remember very well that we haven't." + +Miss Wollaston had drifted away from them (occupied, as she so often +was when there were no persons present in the formal status of guests, +in making minute readjustments of pillows and things as a sort of +standing protest against the demon of disorder), and having noted this +fact he went on: + +"I didn't come for the picnic tea you invited me to the other day. If I'd +known how the land lay, I shouldn't have sent a substitute. I'm afraid, +perhaps, that was rather--tactless of me." + +He saw the queerest look come into her face,--enough in itself to startle +him rather though it wasn't without a gleam of humor. + +"I was just wondering," she explained, "whether if you had come that +particular day, I mightn't be engaged to you now instead of to Tony." + +Unluckily Lucile heard that and froze rigid for a moment with horror. +Then recovering her motor faculties, she moved in a stately manner +toward the door. + +"I think if you will excuse me," she said, "I'll go up and prepare for +luncheon." + +Mary gazed conscience-stricken from her to Wallace who was blushing like +a boy caught stealing apples. "I'm sorry," she gasped, but not quickly +enough for the apology to overtake her aunt. "It's terrible of me to say +things like that and I do, every now and then. Can you bear with me until +I've had time to quiet down? It's all so new, to be happy like this, I'm +a little--wild with it." + +In his nice neutral unexaggerated way he told her that her happiness +could never be anything but a joy to him; and after that, when they were +seated side by side upon the cane davenport he asked about her plans; +when they were going to be married, where they meant to live, and so on. + +"Why, we'll be married, I suppose," she said, "at the end of the +customary six weeks' engagement. There isn't a thing to wait for, +really." + +"I'm glad of that," he remarked. + +Anybody but Mary would have taken that at its face value; he was glad +that they would have to wait no longer. But he flinched as she glanced +round toward him and at that she laughed and patted his hand +reassuringly. + +"We're doing everything correctly," she told him; "beginning with +father's announcement of the engagement in the papers, Tuesday. We +remain on exhibition during the conventional six weeks and then we're +married at noon over in the Fourth Church. Impeccable! That's going to +be our middle name." + +Mary used so very little slang that she was able to produce quite +extraordinary effects with it when she did. + +"I'm glad," Wallace said, a little ruffled by the start she had given +him, "that you have not been persuaded to do anything--differently." + +"Who do you suppose it was," she asked, "who insisted, in an adamantine +manner, that it be done like that? It wasn't me and it wasn't Aunt +Lucile. It was Anthony March." She added, after a reflective silence, "He +was right about it, of course, because when that's over it's done with. +And then--what he hasn't thought of, and I wouldn't have, most likely +until it was too late--he'll have a friendlier audience next Tuesday +night than if he'd given me my way and made a trip to the City Hall with +me last Monday. I wanted to burn my bridges, you see;--and he laughed at +me. I haven't told that to any one but you.--All the same, if he thinks, +from that, that he can go on accumulating--millstones ..." + +"Tell me where you are planning to live," Wallace said, getting back as +he was always glad to do, to firm ground again. "Not too far away, I +hope, for us to go on seeing a lot of you." + +"Oh, it's very sad about that," she told him. "I was hoping to live with +him in his secret lair over the Italian grocery. No, but it was really +delightful. One big room, bigger than this, with dormers and dusty beams +and an outside stair. He's had it for years. It's not half a mile from +here--and Paula could never find out where it was! But, unexpectedly, +he's being turned out. I could have wept when he told me." + +"Unexpectedly!" quoted Wallace, the professional real estate man in +him touched by this evidence of lay negligence. "March hadn't any +lease, I suppose." + +"He didn't need any," said Mary. "He owned it." + +"If he owns it how can they turn him out--unexpectedly?" + +"What he owned was the second story. Well, he still does, of course. But +when they tear the first floor and the basement out from under him, as +they're going to do next week, his second story won't do him much good." + +"But, good gracious, they can't do that!" Wallace cried. "They must +leave him his floor and his ceiling just where they are now. And his +light. They can build above and below--I suppose that's what they're +tearing the old building down for--but that layer of space, if he +really bought it and has got anything to show that he really bought it, +belongs to him." + +"Do you mean seriously," she demanded, "that it's possible to buy the +second story of a building? It's like Pudd'n-'head Wilson's joke about +buying half a dog and killing his half." + +"Of course I mean it," he insisted. "An easement like that cost our +estate thousands of dollars only a year or two ago. Serious! I should +think it was! Ask Rodney Aldrich. See what he says.--Of course, it's +nothing unless he can show some instrument that proves his title. But if +he can it might be worth ... Well, it's just a question how badly they +happen to need that particular bit of land. Those people we fell foul of +managed to hold us up for a tidy sum." + +She was looking at him thoughtfully, a faint, rather wry smile just +touching her lips. "A minute ago," she said, "I was about to fling myself +upon your neck and thank you for so wonderful a wedding present to us as +that would be. And now I'm wondering ... Wallace, I don't suppose it +would strike you that there would be anything--shady about doing a thing +like that." + +"Shady!" He was, for a moment, deeply affronted by the mere suggestion. +Then, remembering her total ignorance of all such matters, he smiled at +her. "My dear Mary, do you think--leaving my rectitude aside--that I'd +have referred you to Rodney Aldrich if I'd felt that there was anything +questionable about it?" + +"I know," she conceded. "And Martin Whitney would feel the same way. And +father, I suppose, and Rush. Everybody we know. Yet I was wondering +whether I'd say anything to Tony about it. I've decided I will, but I'm +going to ask you not to, nor to anybody else, until I've talked to him. +I'd like it left--altogether to him, you see." + +He agreed, rather blankly to this. Presently she went on: + +"I'm glad he's a real genius, not just a fragment of one as so many of +them are. There's something--robust about him. And since that's so, I +don't believe we'll do him any real harm; we--advantage-snatchers, you +know. That's so very largely how we live, we nice people (it's why we're +able to be nice, of course)--that we get perfectly blind to it. But he's +so strong, and he can see in so deep, that I guess he's safe. That's the +belief I have to go on, anyhow." + +She sprang up and gave him another pat upon the shoulder. "He'll be +getting here in a few minutes, I suspect. Father telephoned that he and +Paula were going to bring him down as soon as his rehearsal was over. I'm +going up now to try to make my peace with Aunt Lucile." + +After lunch she told the family that she had matters to talk over with +Tony and meant to take him for a walk. His father and mother expected +them to drop in at their house about five and the intervening two hours +would give them just about time to "cover the ground." She was openly +laughing at her own pretense at being matter-of-fact. + +It was pretty hot for walking, her father thought. Why not let Pete drive +them around a while in the car? Or take the small car and drive herself? +But she was feeling pedestrian, she said, and, anyhow, the topic she had +in mind couldn't be discussed in a motor-car. They'd go to Lincoln Park +and stroll around in the shade. + +"And if we get tired," she added with a flicker, in response to her +aunt's movement of protest, "we can squeeze in among the other couples on +some grassy bank.--Oh, Aunt Lucile, don't mind! We _won't_ do +anything--disgraceful." + +"You see what a cat I am," she told March as they set out. "I make her +squirm without meaning to, and then, when she squirms, I scratch. Now +talk to me until I can get in good humor with myself again." + +"I've two or three things to tell you," he said. "I saw Sylvia Stannard +this morning. She came to rehearsal with the little Williamson girl, and +carried me off bodily for a talk. She's had a long letter from Graham. + +"He's quite well," he went on swiftly, ignoring the gasp she gave, "and +doesn't want to be, as he says, fussed over." + +"Where is he?" she asked. "I'll write him a letter, of course. Only +you'll have to tell me what to say." + +"He's visiting a friend--a college classmate--on Long Island. And he's +already had a job offered him by his friend's father, in an engineering +office. He's a pretty good engineer, I believe. He thinks he'll accept +it. Anyhow, he is definitely not coming back to Hickory Hill. Sylvia +attaches some significance to the fact that his friend also has a pretty +sister, but that's just the cynicism of youth, I suspect." + +This last suggestion silenced her--with another gasp, as perhaps he had +meant it to do. He added, presently: + +"As for writing, I've already done that myself." + +"You!" she exclaimed. "Where's the letter?" + +"It's already despatched. I wrote it as soon as the rehearsal was over. +But I'll tell you what I said in it. I told him I supposed he had heard +of our engagement, but that I knew you wished him to be told of it +personally. You were very fond of him, I said, and the only thing that +clouded your happiness was a fear that he might not be able to share it. +I assured him that I was completely in your confidence and knew that you +had been through a period of very severe nervous stress, verging upon a +nervous breakdown, but that I believed you were on the way to a speedy +recovery. And I ended by saying that I believed a line from him to you, +setting some of your misgivings at rest, would hasten it. And I was his +most cordially." + +She didn't try to pretend she wasn't aghast at this. "But what +an--extraordinary letter. Won't he be--furious? At you for +writing?--Speaking for me in a case like that. Telling him you knew all +about it!" + +"Well, that was more or less the idea," he confessed, with a rueful grin. +"He'll think I stole you away from him; he'll think I gave you the +nervous prostration I hinted at. Heaven knows what he won't think! But, +of course, the more of a villain I am the less you're to be held +responsible. And there's nothing insupportable or--ludicrous about a +grievance against another man. At all events it enables him to get round +the statement you demolished him with. No, you'll see. He'll write you a +letter, correctly affectionate but rather chilly, and after that you'll +be off his mind. And if the pretty sister Sylvia alleges doesn't exist, +there'll be another one along pretty soon, who will." + +She was obviously a little dazed by all this. It was the first time they +had talked of Graham since that night in his room and he knew the bruise +from that experience must still be painful to touch. So he hastened to +produce his other item of news--also provided by Sylvia. + +"This is a perfectly dead secret of hers," he began. "Told me in sacred +confidence. She finished, however, by saying that she knew, of course, +I'd go straight and tell you. So to justify her penetration, I will. +Sylvia has accounted for her father's amazing change of attitude toward +Hickory Hill. It seems she's persuaded her father to give Graham's share +of it to her. She told him--what's obviously true--that she's a better +farmer now than Graham would ever be. She hates town and society and all +that, she says, and never will be happy anywhere but on a farm--anywhere, +indeed, but on that farm. He was very rough and boisterous about the +suggestion, she says, for a day or two, but finally he quieted down like +a lamb and gave in. He never has refused her anything, of course." + +"But a partnership between her and Rush!" Mary cried. "It's perfectly +impossibly mad. Unless, of course ... You don't mean...?" + +"Yes, that's the idea, exactly," March said. "Only Rush, as yet, knows +nothing about it. Hence the need for secrecy. Sylvia acknowledged to her +father that she couldn't possibly own a farm in partnership with a young +man of twenty-three unless she married him, but she said she'd intended +to marry Rush ever since she was twelve years old. She's confident that +he's only waiting for her eighteenth birthday to ask her to marry him, +but she says that if he doesn't, she means to ask him. And if he refuses, +she pointed out to her father, he can't do less than consent to sell the +other half of the farm to her. She treats that alternative, though, as +derisory.--And I haven't a doubt she's right. Evidently her father has +none, either. + +"Well, it accounts for the change in Mr. Stannard's attitude toward the +farm, of course," he concluded. "A son's supposed to thrive on adversity. +It wouldn't be good morals not to make things difficult for him by way of +developing his character. But where a mere daughter is involved he can +chuckle and write checks. Under his tradition, he's entitled to regard +her as a luxury. Anyhow, your father has nothing more to worry about as +far as Rush and Hickory Hill are concerned." + +"Life's a kaleidoscope," Mary said. "I'm tired. Let's sit down."--They +were half-way up the park by that time.--"Oh, here on the grass. What +does it matter?" When they were thus disposed she went back to her +figure. "There's just a little turn, by some big wrist that we don't know +anything about, and a little click, and the whole pattern changes." + +"There are some patterns that don't change," he said soberly, but he +didn't try to argue the point with her. He knew too exactly how she felt. +"Tell me," he said, "what it was that you wanted to talk to me about." + +She acknowledged that she'd been hoping he'd forgotten that, of the +momentousness of his two items of news had left her, as her talk about +kaleidoscopes indicated, rather disoriented. So he threw in, to give her +time to get round to it, the information that both Sylvia and the little +Williamson girl had decided they wanted to study music with him. "I +agreed," he added, "to take them on, when I got around to it." + +"Tony," she said, "I won't let you do that. Not music lessons to little +girls. I won't." + +"Afternoons?" he asked gently. "When I'm through the real day's work? It +would be pretty good fun, trying to show a few people--young unspoiled +people--what music really is. Dynamite some of their sentimental ideas +about it; shake them loose from some of the schoolmasters' niggling rules +about it; make them write it themselves; show 'em the big shapes of it; +make a piano keyboard something they knew their way about in. That +wouldn't be a contemptible job for anybody.--Oh, well, we can talk that +out later. But you needn't be afraid for me, my dear." + +"That's what I said to Wallace Hood," she told him; "just before lunch. +When I was trying to decide to tell you what he'd been saying.--About +your room that they're turning you out of." + +With that, she repeated the whole of the talk with Wallace and the +serio-fantastic idea that it had led up to. + +He grinned over it a while in silence, then asked, "Are you willing to +leave it entirely to me?" + +"Of course," she said. + +"Well, then," he decided, "if I've still got that paper--and I think I +have ... I copied it, I remember, out of an old law-book, and to satisfy +Luigi's passion for the picturesque and the liturgical we took it to a +notary and got it sealed with a big red wafer--Well, if I've got it and +it's any good, I'll let Aldrich,--is that his name?--make what he can of +it. I'll square it with Luigi afterward of course." + +"It's a compromise for you," she said gravely. "You wouldn't have done +that two weeks ago." + +He laughed. "Folks use the word uncompromising as if it were always a +praiseworthy thing to be. But it hardly ever is, if you stop to think. +Certainly if life's an art, like composing music or painting pictures, +then compromise is in the very fabric of it. Getting different themes or +colors that would like to be contradictory, to work together; developing +a give and take. What's the important thing? To have a life that's full +and good and serviceable, or to mince along through it with two or three +sacred attitudes?--Wait a minute." + +She waited contentedly enough, watching him with a misty smile as he lay +upon the grass beside her wrestling with his idea. + +"All right," he said presently. "Here's the test that I'll agree to. I'll +agree to do things or to leave them undone, to the end that when +I'm--sixty, say, I'll have packed more of real value into my life--my +life as your husband and the father of your children--than that vagabond +you're so concerned about would have had in his if--if ..." + +"If I hadn't gone to him a week ago last night?" She said it steadily +enough, where he could not say it at all. + +"Yes," he said. "That's what I mean." + +He reached out for her hand and she gave it to him. Presently his face +brightened once more into a grin. "I'll even promise to write more music. +Lord, if I've really got anything, you couldn't stop me. Come along. +Father and mother will be looking for us before very long now." + +The critics agreed that the _première_ of March's opera was a "distinct +success," and then proceeded to disagree about everything else. The dean +of the corps found it somewhat too heavily scored in the orchestra and +the vocal parts rather ungrateful, technically. The reactionary put up +his regular plaintive plea for melody but supposed this was too much to +ask, these days. The chauvinist detected German influence in the music +(he had missed the parodic satire in March's quotations), and asked +Heaven to answer why an American composer should have availed himself of +a decadent French libretto. + +The audience showed a friendly bias toward it at the beginning and were +plainly moved by the dramatic power of it as it progressed, but they +seemed shocked and bewildered by the bludgeon blows of the conclusion and +the curtain fell upon a rather panicky silence. Then they rallied and +gave both the performers and the composer what would pass in current +journalese for an ovation. + +The Wollastons' friends, who were out in pretty good force, crowded +forward to be introduced to Mary's fiancĂ© and to offer him their +double congratulations. They found him rather unresponsive and decided +that he was temperamental (a judgment which did him no serious +disservice with most of them), though the kindlier ones thought he +might be shy. Mary herself found something not quite accountable in +his manner, but she forbore to press for an explanation and let him +off, good-humoredly enough, from the little celebration of his triumph +which she had had in mind. + +The fact was that he had come through the experience, which no one who +has not shared it with him can possibly understand, of discovering the +enormous difference between the effect of a thing on paper, or even in +its last rehearsal, and the effect of it when it is performed before an +audience which has paid to see it. It was no wonder he was dazed, for the +opera he found himself listening to seemed like a changeling. + +He worked all night over it and told LaChaise the next morning that he +had made serious alterations in it and would need more rehearsals. The +opera had been billed in advance for a repetition on the following +Saturday night, the understanding among the powers being that if it +failed to get a sufficient measure of favor the bill should be changed. +It was touch and go, but the final decision was that it should have +another chance. + +So LaChaise agreed to March's request, ran over the composer's revised +manuscript with a subtle French smile, sent for the timpani player, who +was an expert copyist, and put him to work getting the altered parts +ready, instanter. March told Mary he was making a few changes and asked +her to stay away from rehearsals so that on Saturday night, from out in +front, she might get the full effect. + +Really, as it turned out, he did not need any individual testimony, for +one could have learned the effect of the new ending from half a mile +away. When he came back into the wings from his fourth recall he saw +her face shining with joy through her tears. But his heart sank when he +saw, standing beside her, Paula. He thanked his gods that Mary had a +sense of humor. + +Paula was smiling in high satisfaction, and she spoke first. "Well, +stupid," she demanded, "what have you got to say for yourself, now?" + +"Not a word," he answered, smiling too, "except that we have to live +to learn." + +Then he explained to Mary. "That ending--having the girl come back to +life again, to sing some more after she'd been shot--was one of the +things Paula was trying to make me do, all the while. And some of the +other changes were, too." + +"But not that trumpet," said Paula, and he could only blush. + +In a moment of dead silence, just before the crash that accompanied the +descent of the curtain, he had scored for the C trumpet, muted and +pianissimo, a phrase in the rhythm of the first three bars of the +_Marsellaise_, but going up on the open tones and sustaining the high G, +so that it carried also, a suggestion of _The Star Spangled Banner_. A +flagrant trick, but it had served to remind the audience, bruised by the +horror of abomination it had just witnessed, of the vengeance which, afar +off, was gathering. + +"I'd like to know what you'd have said to me," Paula went on, "if I'd +asked you to do that!" + +Mary laughed, and pushed her lover toward the stage. "Oh, go back," she +said. "They want you again, my dear." + +They gave _The Outcry_ two more performances during the next week, one of +them being the closing performance of the season, and by that time, so +far as a single success could be said to establish any one, March was +established. He and Mary discussed this rather soberly as they drove home +in the small car after the convivial wind-up supper at the Moraine, where +this fact had been effusively dwelt upon. Their wedding was now less than +a month off. + +"I know," she admitted, "it looks as if I were all wrong. To go on being +afraid of--harness and millstones and all that. But just the same ... +Oh, you can live my sort of life. That's been made plain enough. But I +wish I could think of some way of making you sure that I could live +yours, as well. Your old one; the _Chemineau_ one. The way it was when +you came to Hickory Hill." + +A few minutes later she gave a sudden laugh. "Tony," she said, "will you +swear you will do something for me--without knowing what it is? Oh, it's +nothing very serious. It's about our honeymoon. A girl has a right to +decide about that, hasn't she?" + +"You've got something up your sleeve, all right," he said dubiously; but +she remained severely silent until he gave in and promised. + +"Well, then," she said, "this is what our honeymoon is going to be. We'll +take one of the farm Fords-Rush can spare one, I'm sure, in October-and +we'll get some camping things and start out--oh, along any one of your +old routes--without one single cent of money. And we'll tune pianos as we +go. We'll live off the country. Really and honestly take to the road. For +a month. If we can't find any pianos we'll go hungry--or beg! The one +thing we won't do, whatever happens, is to telegraph. After we've done +that we'll come back and be--regular people. And I won't mind, then. +Because, don't you see, you'll know. And if it's ever necessary to do it +again, we'll do it again." + +"There's no one in the world," he remarked in a voice that wanted to +break, "--no one in the world who'd have thought of that but you. But, my +dear, I don't need any reassurance like that." + +"Tony, dearest, don't be solemn," she admonished him. "Won't it be +_fun_!" + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Mary Wollaston, by Henry Kitchell Webster + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11161 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e05b39 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11161 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11161) diff --git a/old/11161-8.txt b/old/11161-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..80ce254 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11161-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12601 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Wollaston, by Henry Kitchell Webster + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mary Wollaston + +Author: Henry Kitchell Webster + +Release Date: February 19, 2004 [EBook #11161] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY WOLLASTON *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + MARY WOLLASTON + + BY HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER + + 1920 + + + + +CONTENTS + + I THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND + + II SEA DRIFT + + III THE PEACE BASIS + + IV THE PICTURE PUZZLE + + V JOHN MAKES A POINT OF IT + + VI STRINGENDO + + VII NO THOROUGHFARE + + VIII THE DUMB PRINCESS + + IX IN HARNESS + + X AN INTERVENTION + + XI NOT COLLECTABLE + + XII HICKORY HILL + + XIII LOW HANGS THE MOON + + XIV A CLAIRVOYANT INTERVAL + + XV THE END OF IT + + XVI FULL MEASURE + + XVII THE WAYFARER + + XVIII A CASE OF NECESSITY + + XIX THE DRAMATIST + + XX TWO WOMEN AND JOHN + + XXI THE SUBSTITUTE + + XXII THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE + + XXIII THE TERROR + + XXIV THE WHOLE STORY + + XXV DAYBREAK + + XXVI JOHN ARRIVES + + XXVII SETTLING PAULA + + XXVIII THE KALEIDOSCOPE + + + + +MARY WOLLASTON + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND + + +Miss Lucile Wollaston was set to exude sympathy, like an aphid waiting +for an overworked ant to come down to breakfast. But there was no +sympathizing with the man who came in from a doctor's all-night vigil +like a boy from a ball-game, gave her a hard brisk kiss on the +cheek-bone, and then, before taking his place at the table, unfolded the +morning paper for a glance at the head-lines. + +If there was something rigorous about the way she lighted the alcohol +lamp under the silver urn and rang for Nathaniel, the old colored butler, +it was from a determination not to let this younger brother of hers put +her into a flurry again as he so often did. A very much younger brother +indeed, he seemed when this mood was on him. + +Miss Wollaston was born on the election day that made James Buchanan +president of the United States and Doctor John within a few days of +Appomattox. But one would have said, looking at them here at the +breakfast table on a morning in March in the year 1919, that there was a +good deal more than those ten years between them. He folded his paper and +sat down when the butler suggestively pulled out his chair for him and +his manner became, for the moment, absent, as his eye fell upon a letter +beside his plate addressed in his daughter, Mary's, handwriting. + +"I want a big platter of ham and eggs, Nat, sliced thick. And a few of +Lucartha's wheat cakes." He made some sort of good-humored, half +articulate acknowledgment of the old servitor's pleasure in getting such +an order, but one might have seen that his mind was a little out of +focus, for it was not exactly dealing with the letter either. He sliced +it open with a table knife with the precise movement one would have +expected from a surgeon and disengaged it in the same neat way from its +envelope. But he read it as if he weren't very sharply aware of what, +particularly, it had to say and he laid it beside his plate again without +any comment. + +"Did you have any sleep last night, at all?" Miss Wollaston asked. + +It brought him back like a flash. "Not a wink," he said jovially. + +This was a challenge and the look that went with it, one of clear boyish +mischief, was one that none of John Wollaston's other intimates--and +among these I include his beautiful young wife and his two grown-up +children by an earlier marriage--ever saw. It was a special thing for +this sister who had been a stately young lady of twenty when he was a bad +little boy of ten. She had watched him, admiring yet rather aghast, ever +since then. + +To the world at large his social charm lay in--or was at least +inseparable from--his really exquisite manners, his considerateness, the +touch of old-fashioned punctilio there was about him. His first wife +would have agreed with her successor about his possession of this quality +though they would have appraised it rather differently. Only this elderly +unmarried sister of his felt the fascination of the horrible about him. + +This was to some extent inherent in his profession. He had a reputation +that was growing to amount to fame as a specialist in the very wide +field of gynecology, obstetrics and abdominal surgery. The words +themselves made Miss Wollaston shudder. + +When he replied to her question, whether or not he had had any sleep at +all, with an open grin and that triumphant "Not a wink," she had a +prophetic sense of what was going to happen. She was going to ask him +more questions and he was going to tell her something perfectly ghastly. + +She felt herself slipping, but she pulled up. "What's in Mary's letter?" +she asked. + +She knew that this was not quite fair, and the look that it brought to +his face--a twinge of pain like neuralgia--awakened a sharp compunction +in her. She did not know why--at least not exactly why--his relation with +his daughter should be a sore spot in his emotional life, but she knew +quite well that this was true. There was on the surface, nothing, or +nowhere near enough, to account for it. + +He had always been, Miss Wollaston felt, an adorer to the verge of +folly of this lovely pale-blonde daughter of his. He had indulged her +outrageously but without any evident bad results. Upon her mother's +death, in 1912 that was, when Mary was seventeen years old, she had, +to the utmost limit that a daughter could compass, taken her mother's +place in the bereaved man's life. She had foregone the college course +she was prepared for and had taken over very skillfully the management +of her father's household; even, in a surprisingly successful way, +too, the motherly guidance of her two-years-younger brother, Rush. +Miss Wollaston's testimony on these two points was unbiased as it was +ungrudging. She had offered herself for that job and had not then +been wanted. + +Two years later there had been a quarrel between John and his daughter. +She fell in love, or thought she did--for indeed, how could a child of +nineteen know?--with a man to whom her father decisively and almost +violently objected. Just how well founded this objection was Miss +Wollaston had no means of deciding for herself. There was nothing +flagrantly wrong with the man's manners, position or prospects; but she +attributed to her brother a wisdom altogether beyond her own in matters +of that sort and sided with him against the girl without misgiving. And +the fact that the man himself married another girl within a month or two +of Mary's submission to her father's will, might be taken as a +demonstration that he was right. + +John had done certainly all he could to make it up with the girl. He +tried to get her to go with him on what was really a junket to +Vienna--there was no better place to play than the Vienna of those +days--though there was also some sort of surgical congress there that +spring that served him as an excuse, and Mary, Miss Wollaston felt, had +only herself to blame for what happened. + +She had elected to be tragic; preferred the Catskills with a dull old +aunt to Vienna with a gay young father. John went alone, sore from the +quarrel and rather adrift. In Vienna, he met Paula Carresford, an +American opera singer, young, extraordinarily beautiful, and of +unimpeachable respectability. They were in Vienna together the first week +in August, 1914. They got out together, sailed on the same ship for +America and in the autumn of that year, here in Chicago, in the most +decorous manner in the world, John married her. + +There was a room in Miss Wollaston's well ordered mind which she had +always guarded as an old-fashioned New England village housewife used to +guard the best parlor, no light, no air, no dust, Holland covers on all +the furniture. Rigorously she forbore to speculate upon the attraction +which had drawn John and Paula together--upon what had happened between +them--upon how the thing had looked and felt to either of them. She +covered the whole episode with one blanket observation: she supposed it +was natural in the circumstances. + +And there was much to be thankful for. Paula was well-bred; she was +amiable; she was "nice"; nice to an amazing degree, considering. She had +made a genuine social success. She had given John a new lease on life, +turned back the clock for him, oh--years. + +Mary, Miss Wollaston felt, had taken it surprisingly well. At the wedding +she had played her difficult part admirably and during the few months she +had stayed at home after the wedding, she had not only kept on good terms +with Paula but had seemed genuinely to like her. In the spring of the +next year, 1915, she had, indeed, left home and had not been back since +except for infrequent visits. But then there was reason enough--excuse +enough, anyhow--for that. The war was enveloping them all. Rush had left +his freshman year at Harvard uncompleted to go to France and drive an +ambulance (he enlisted a little later in the French Army). Mary had gone +to New York to work on the Belgian War Relief Fund, and she had been +working away at it ever since. + +There was then no valid reason--no reason at all unless she were willing +to go rummaging in that dark room of her mind for it--why John should +always wince like that when one reminded him of Mary. It was a fact, +though, that he did, and his sister was too honest-minded to pretend she +did not know it. + +He answered her question now evenly enough. "She's working harder than +ever, she says, closing up her office. She wants some more money, of +course. And _she's_ heard from Rush. He's coming home. He may be turning +up almost any day now. She hopes to get a wire from him so that she can +meet him in New York and have a little visit with him, she says, before +he comes on here." + +It was on Miss Wollaston's tongue to ask crisply, "Why doesn't she come +home herself now that her Fund is shutting up shop?" But that would have +been to state in so many words the naked question they tacitly left +unasked. There was another idea in her brother's mind that she thought +she could deal with. He had betrayed it by the emphasis he put on the +fact that it was to Mary and not to himself that Rush had written the +news that he was coming home. Certainly there was nothing in that. + +"Why," she asked brightly, "don't you go to New York yourself and +meet him?" + +He answered instantly, almost sharply, "I can't do that." Then not liking +the way it sounded in his own ear, he gave her a reason. "If you knew the +number of babies that are coming along within the next month...." + +"You need a rest," she said, "badly. I don't see how you live through +horrors like that. But there must be other people--somebody who can take +your work for you for a while. It can't make all that difference." + +"It wouldn't," he admitted, "nine times out of ten. That call I got last +evening that broke up the dinner party,--an intern at the County +Hospital would have done just as well as I. There was nothing to it at +all. Oh, it was a sort of satisfaction to the husband's feelings, I +suppose, to pay me a thousand dollars and be satisfied that nobody in +town could have paid more and got anything better. But you see, you never +can tell. The case I was called in on at four o'clock this morning was +another thing altogether." A gleam had come into his eyes again as over +the memory of some brilliantly successful audacity. The gray old look had +gone out of his face. + +"I don't altogether wonder that Pollard blew up," he added, "except that +a man in that profession has got no business to--ever." + +The coffee urn offered Miss Wollaston her only means of escape but she +didn't avail herself of it. She let herself go on looking for a +breathless minute into her brother's face. Then she asked weakly, +"What was it?" + +"Why, Pollard...." John Wollaston began but then he stopped short and +listened. "I thought I heard Paula coming," he explained. + +"Paula won't be down for hours," Miss Wollaston said, "but I do not +see why she shouldn't hear, since she is a married woman and your +own wife...." + +Her brother's "Precisely" cut across that sentence with a snick like a +pair of shears and left a little silence behind it. + +"I think she'll be along in a minute," he went on. "She always does come +to breakfast. Why did you think she wouldn't to-day?" + +This was one of Miss Wollaston's minor crosses. The fact was that on the +comparatively rare occasions when Doctor John himself was present for the +family breakfast at the custom-consecrated hour, Paula managed about two +times in five to put in a last-minute appearance. This was not what +annoyed Miss Wollaston. She was broad-minded enough to be aware that to +an opera singer, the marshaling of one's whole family in the dining-room +at eight o'clock in the morning might seem a barbarous and revolting +practise and even occasional submissions to it, acts of real devotion. +She was not really bitterly annoyed either by Paula's oft repeated +assertion that she always came to breakfast. Paula was one of those +temperamental persons who have to be forgiven for treating their +facts--atmospherically. But that John, a man of science, enlisted under +the banner of truth, should back this assertion of his wife's, in the +face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, really required +resignation to put up with; argued a blindness, an infatuation, which +seemed to his sister hardly decent. Because after all, facts were facts, +and you didn't alter them by pretending that they did not exist. + +So instead of answering her brother's question, she sat a little +straighter in her chair, and compressed her lips. + +He smiled faintly at that and added, "Anyhow she said she'd be along in a +minute or two." + +"Oh," said Miss Wollaston, "you have wakened her then. I would have +suggested that the poor child be left asleep this morning." + +Now he saw that she had something to tell him. "Nothing went wrong last +night after I left, I hope." + +"Oh, not wrong," Miss Wollaston conceded, "only the Whitneys went of +course, when you did and the Byrnes, and Wallace Hood, but Portia Stanton +and that new husband of hers stayed. It was his doing, I suppose. You +might have thought he was waiting all the evening for just that thing to +happen. They went up to Paula's studio--Paula invited me, of course, but +I excused myself--and they played and sang until nearly two o'clock this +morning. It was all perfectly natural, I suppose. And still I did think +that Paula might have sung earlier, down in the drawing-room when you +asked her to." + +"She was perfectly right to refuse." He caught his sister up rather short +on that, "I shouldn't have asked her. It was very soon after dinner. They +weren't a musical crowd anyway, except Novelli. It's utterly unfair to +expect a person like Paula to perform unless she happens to be in the +mood for it. At that she's extremely amiable about it; never refuses +unless she has some real reason. What her reason was last night, I don't +know, but you may be perfectly sure it was sufficient." + +He would have realized that he was protesting too much even if he had not +read that comment in his sister's face. But somehow he couldn't have +pulled himself up but for old Nat's appearance with the platter of ham +and eggs and the first installment of the wheat cakes. He was really +hungry and he settled down to them in silence. + +And, watching him between the little bites of dry toast and sips of +coffee, Miss Wollaston talked about Portia Stanton. Everybody, indeed, +was talking about Portia these days but Miss Wollaston had a special +privilege. She had known Portia's mother rather well,--Naomi Rutledge +Stanton, the suffrage leader, she was--and she had always liked and +admired Portia; liked her better than the younger and more sensational +daughter, Rose. + +Miss Wollaston hoped, hoped with all her heart that Portia had not made +a tragic mistake in this matter of her marriage. She couldn't herself +quite see how a sensible girl like Portia could have done anything so +reckless as to marry a romantic young Italian pianist, ten years at +least her junior. It couldn't be denied that the experiment seemed to +have worked well so far. Portia certainly seemed happy enough last +night; contented. There was a sort of glow about her there never was +before. But the question was how long would it last. How long would it +be before those big brown Italian eyes began looking soulfully at +somebody else; somebody more.... + +It was here that Miss Wollaston chopped herself off short, hearing--this +time it was no false alarm--Paula's step in the hall. She'd have been +amazed, scandalized, profoundly indignant, dear good-hearted lady that +she was, had some expert in the psychology of the unconscious pointed +out to her that the reason she had begun talking about Portia was that +it gave her an outlet for expressing her misgivings about her own +brother's marriage. Paula, of course, was a different thing altogether. + +What a beautiful creature she was, even at eight o'clock in the morning +at the end of an abruptly terminated night's sleep. She looked lovelier +than ever as she came in through the shadowy doorway. She wasn't a true +blonde like Mary. Her thick strong hair was a sort of golden +glorification of brown, her skin a warm tone of ivory. Her eyes, set wide +apart, were brown, and the lashes, darker than her hair, enhanced the +size of them. The look of power about Paula, inseparable from her beauty, +was not one of Miss Wollaston's feminine ideals. It spoke in every line +of her figure as well as in the lineaments of her face; in the short, +rather broad, yet cleanly defined nose; in the generous width of her +mouth; in the sculpturesque poise of her neck upon her shoulders. + +Paula's clothes, too, worried her elderly sister-in-law a little, +especially the house-dresses that she affected. They were beautiful, +heaven knew; more simply beautiful perhaps than it was right that +clothes should be. There was nothing indecent about them. Dear Paula was +almost surprisingly nice in those ways. But that thing she had on now, +for instance;--a tunic of ecru colored silk that she had pulled on over +her head, with a little over-dress of corn colored tulle, weighted +artfully here and there that it mightn't fly away. And a string of big +lumpish amber beads. She could have got into that costume in about two +minutes and there was probably next to nothing under it. From the +on-looker's point of view, it mightn't violate decorum at all; indeed, +clearly did not. But Miss Wollaston herself, if she hadn't been more or +less rigidly laced, stayed, gartered, pinched, pried and pulled about; +if she could have moved freely in any direction without an +admonitory--"take care"--from some bit of whalebone somewhere, wouldn't +have felt dressed at all. There ought to be something perpetually +penitential about clothes. The biblical story of the fall of man made +that clear, didn't it? + +John sprang up as his wife came into the room; went around the table and +held her chair for her. "My dear, I didn't know I was robbing you of half +a night's sleep," he said. "You should have turned me out." + +She reached up her strong white arms (the tulle sleeves did fall away +from them rather alarmingly, and Miss Wollaston concentrated her +attention on the spiggot of the coffee urn) for his head as he bent over +her and pulled it down for a kiss. + +"I didn't need any more sleep. I had such a joyous time last night. I +sang the whole of _Maliela_, and a lot of _Thais_. I don't know what all. +Novelli's a marvel; the best accompanist I've found yet. But, oh, my +darling, I did feel such a pig about it." + +He was back in his own chair by now and his sister breathed a little +more freely. + +"Pig?" he asked. + +"Oh, because you weren't there," said Paula. "Because I didn't sing +before, when you asked me to." + +"Dearest!" John remonstrated,--pleased though with the apology, you could +see with half an eye,--"it was inexcusable of me to have asked you. It +was a dull crowd from a musical point of view. The only thing I minded +was having, myself, put you into a position where you had to refuse. I am +glad you were able to make it up to yourself after." + +"That was not why I didn't," Paula said. She always spoke rather +deliberately and never interrupted any one. "I mean it wasn't because the +others weren't especially musical. But I couldn't have sung without +asking Novelli to play. And he couldn't have refused--being new and a +little on trial you know. And that drawing-room piano, so badly out of +tune, would have been terrible for him. There's no knowing what he +mightn't have done." + +John's face beamed triumph. "I might have known you had an unselfish +reason for it," he said. He didn't look at his sister but, of course, the +words slanted her way. + +It was perfectly characteristic of Miss Wollaston that she did not, +however, make any immediate attempt to set herself right. She attended +first very competently to all of Paula's wants in the way of breakfast +and saw her fairly launched on her chilled grapefruit. Then she said, "A +man is coming to tune the piano this morning." + +It was more than a statement of fact. Indeed I despair of conveying to +you all the implications and moral reflections which Miss Wollaston +contrived to pack into that simple sentence. + +The drawing-room piano was what an artillerist would speak of as one of +the sensitive points along the family front. It had been a present to the +Wollaston household from the eldest of John's brothers, the unmarried one +Miss Wollaston had kept house for so many years before he died; the last +present, it turned out, he ever made to anybody. Partly perhaps, because +it was a sacred object, the Wollaston children took to treating it rather +irreverently. The "Circassian grand" was one of its nicknames and the +"Siamese Elephant" another. It did glare in the otherwise old-fashioned +Dearborn Avenue drawing-room and its case did express a complete +recklessness of expense rather than any more austere esthetic impulse. + +Paula ignored it in rather a pointed way; being a musician she might have +been expected to see that it was kept in tune. She had a piano of her own +up in the big room at the top of the house that had once been the nursery +and over this instrument, she made, Miss Wollaston felt, a silly amount +of fuss. Supposedly expert tuners were constantly being called in to do +things to it and nothing they did ever seemed to afford Paula any +satisfaction. + +The aura that surrounded Miss Wollaston's remark included, then, the +conviction that the drawing-room piano, being a sacred memory, couldn't +be out of tune in the first place; that Paula, in the second, ought to +have attended to it; and third (this is rather complex but I guarantee +the accuracy of it) the fact that it was to be tuned this morning, really +made it a perfectly possible instrument for Mr. Novelli to have played +upon last night. + +John missed none of that. He hadn't been observing his sister during half +a century for nothing. He glanced over to see how much of it his wife +took in; but the fact, in this instance, was all that interested Paula. + +"It was awfully clever of you," she said, "to get hold of a tuner. Who is +he? Where did you find him?" + +"I found him in the park," said Miss Wollaston brightly, responding to +the little thrill you always felt when Paula focused her attention upon +you. "He was sitting on a bench when I drove by just after lunch. I don't +know why I noticed him but I did and when I came back hours later, he was +still sitting there on the same bench. He was in uniform; a private, I +think, certainly not an officer. It struck me as rather sad, his sitting +there like that, so I stopped the car and spoke to him. He got his +discharge just the other day, it seemed. I asked him if he had a job and +he said, no, he didn't believe he had. Then I asked him what his trade +was and he said he was a piano tuner. So I told him he might come this +morning and tune ours." + +It was Paula's bewildered stare that touched off John's peal of laughter. +Alone with his sister he might have smiled to himself over the lengths +she went in the satisfaction of her passion for good works. But Paula, he +knew, would just as soon have invited a strange bench-warming dentist to +come and work on her teeth by way of being kind to him. + +Miss Wollaston, a flush of annoyance on her faded cheeks, began making +dignified preparations to leave the table and John hastily apologized. "I +laughed," he said,--disingenuously because it wouldn't do to implicate +Paula--"over the idea that perhaps he didn't want a job at all and made +up on the spur of the moment the unlikeliest trade he could think of. And +how surprised he must have been when you took him up." + +"He did not seem surprised," Miss Wollaston said. "He thanked me very +nicely and said he would come this morning. At ten, if that would be +convenient. Of course if you wish to put it off...." + +"Not at all," said John. He rose when she did and--this was an extra bit, +an act of contrition for having wounded her--went with her to the door. +"It was a good idea," he said; "an excellent way of--of killing two birds +with one stone." + +Paula was smiling over this when he came back to her. "It doesn't matter, +does it?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "It isn't that it's out of tune, really; it's +just--hopeless." + +It was strange how like a knife thrust that word of hers--hopeless--went +through him. Perfectly illogical, of course; she was not speaking of his +life and hers but of that ridiculous drawing-room piano. Somehow the mere +glow she had brought into the room with her, the afterglow of an +experience he had no share in producing, had become painful to him; made +him feel old. He averted his eyes from her with an effort and stared down +at his empty plate. + +A moment later she came around the table and seated herself, facing him, +upon the arm of his chair; clasped his neck with her two hands. "You're +tired," she said. "How much sleep did you have last night?" And on his +admitting that he hadn't had any, she exclaimed against his working +himself to death like that. + +No memory, though he made a conscious effort to recover it, of his +audacious success during the small hours of that morning in bringing +triumphantly into the world the small new life that Pollard would have +destroyed, came back to fortify him; no trace of his own afterglow that +had so fascinated and alarmed his sister. "I shall sleep fast for an hour +or two this morning and make it up," he told Paula. + +"I do wish you might have been there last night," she said after a little +silence. "I don't believe I've ever sung so well;--could have, at least, +if there had been room enough to turn around in. It was all there; it's +getting bigger all the time. Not just the voice, if you know what I mean, +darling, but what I could do with it." + +"It was partly Novelli, I suspect," he said. "Having him for an +accompanist, I mean. He's very good indeed, isn't he?" + +"Oh, yes, he's good," she assented absently. "Awfully good. And he is a +nice furry little enthusiastic thing; like a faun, rather; exciting to +play with of course. But it wasn't that. It's you, really--being in love +with you the way I am. I suppose that's the very best thing that could +possibly have happened to me. I'm another person altogether from that +girl you found in Vienna. Just where she left off, I begin." + +She uttered a little laugh then of sheer exuberance and with a strong +embrace, pressed his head hard against her breast. He yielded passively, +made no response of his own beyond a deep-drawn breath or two. A moment +later when she had released him and risen to her feet, he rose too. + +"Would Novelli be procurable?" he asked. "Could he be engaged regularly, +as an accompanist for you and so on?" + +She looked at him rather oddly. "Why, I don't need him," she said, "as +long as I am just playing. Of course, if I were to go regularly to work, +somebody like him would be almost necessary." + +There was a tight little silence for a few seconds after that, he once +more evading her eyes. "It seems to me you work most of the time as it +is," he said. Then he announced his intention of going up-stairs to take +a nap. He wasn't going to the hospital until eleven. + +He did go up to his room and lay down upon his bed and, eventually, he +slept. But for an hour, his mind raced like an idle motor. That nonsense +of Lucile's about Portia Stanton's folly in marrying a young musician +whose big Italian eyes would presently begin looking soulfully at some +one else. Had they already looked like that at Paula? Jealousy itself +wasn't a base emotion. Betraying it was all that mattered. You couldn't +help feeling it for any one you loved. Paula, bending over that furry +faun-like head, reading off the same score with him, responding to the +same emotions from the music.... Fantastic, of course. There could be no +sane doubt as to who it was that Paula was in love with. That embrace of +hers, just now. Curious how it terrified him. He had felt like a mouse +under the soft paw of a cat. An odd symptom of fatigue. + +What a curious thing life was. How widely it departed from the +traditional patterns. Here in his own case, that Fate should save the one +real passion of his life for the Indian summer of it. And that it should +be a reciprocated passion. The wiseacres were smiling at him, he +supposed; smiling as the world always smiled at the spectacle of +infatuate age mating with tolerant, indifferently acquiescent youth. +Smiled and wondered how long it would be before youth awoke and turned to +its own. Well, he could afford to smile at the wiseacres. And at the +green inexperienced young, as well, who thought that love was exclusively +their affair--children the age of Mary taking their sentimental thrills +so seriously! + +Four years now he had been married to Paula and the thing had never +chilled,--never gone stale. How different from the love of his youth that +had led to his former marriage, was this burning constant flame. Paula +was utterly content with him. She had given up her career for him.--No. +She hadn't done that. He had not asked her to do that. Had not, on the +contrary, her marriage really furthered it? Was she not more of a person +to-day than the discouraged young woman he had found singing for +pittances the leading dramatic soprano rôles in the minor municipal +operas of Germany and Austria? Wasn't that what she had said this +morning--that falling in love with him was the best thing that could +possibly have happened to her? He had taken it wrong when she said it, as +if she were regarding him just as an instrument that served her purpose, +a purpose that lay beyond him; outside him. + +That was what had given him that momentary pang of terror. Fatigue, of +course. He ought to go to sleep. Paula was refraining from her morning +practise just so that he could. Or was that why? Was she dreaming, up in +the music room where she was never to be disturbed,--of last night--of +Novelli? Damnation.... + + + + +CHAPTER II + +SEA DRIFT + + +Paula went up to the music room after breakfast, stood at one of its +open windows for a few minutes breathing in the air of an unusually +mild March and then abruptly left it; dressed for the street and went +out for a walk. + +She was quite as much disturbed over the scene in the dining-room as her +husband had been. His flash of jealousy over the little Italian pianist, +instantly recognizable through its careful disguise, had only endeared +John Wollaston to her further, if that were possible. She had laughed and +hugged his worried old head tight against her breast. + +But his refusal to face facts about her musical career was another thing +altogether. Once more he had, patently and rather pitiably, evaded the +subject of her going seriously to work. Did he think that she could go +on indefinitely parading a parlor accomplishment for his society +friends,--singing nice little English songs for Wallace Hood? It was too +ridiculous! That hadn't been their understanding when she married him. + +What she had been sure of last night as never before, she had tried down +there in the dining-room to convey to him; that her powers were ripe, +were crying out for use. She had failed simply because he had refused to +see what she was driving at. It was just another form of jealousy really, +she supposed. + +She was not an introspective person, but this, clearly, was something +that wanted thinking over. It was to "think" that she went out for the +walk. Only, being Paula, the rhythm of her stride, the sparkle of the +spring air, the stream of sharp new-minted sensations incessantly +assailing eye and ear, soon swamped her problem; sunk it beneath the +level of consciousness altogether. Long before ten o'clock when she came +swinging along Dearborn Avenue toward her husband's house, she had +"walked off" her perplexities. + +A block from the house she found herself overtaking a man in uniform and +slackened her pace a little in order not to pass him. There was something +unmilitary about the look of him that mildly amused her. It was not that +he slouched nor shuffled nor that he was ill-made, though he was probably +one of those unfortunates whom issue uniforms never fit. He carried a +little black leather satchel, and it broke over Paula that here perhaps +was Lucile's piano tuner. She half formed the intention to stay away +another hour or two until he should have had time to finish. But he +interfered with that plan by stopping in front of the house and looking +at it as if making up his mind whether to go in. + +It was an odd look he had, but distinctly an engaging one. He was not +criticizing the architecture, if so it could be called, of the +house-front. Yet there was a sort of comfortable detachment about him +which precluded the belief that it was a mere paralyzing shyness that +held him there. + +Paula abandoned her intention of walking by. She stopped instead as she +came up to him and said, "Are you coming in here? If you are, I'll let +you in." She fished an explanatory latch-key out of her wrist-bag as she +went up the steps. + +"Why," he said, "I believe this is the house where I'm expected to +tune a piano." + +In the act of thrusting home her key, Paula stopped short, turned +irrepressibly and stared at him. She was one of that very small number of +American-born singers who take the English language seriously and she +knew good speech when she heard it. It was one of the qualities which had +first attracted her to Doctor John. This man's speaking voice would have +arrested her attention pleasantly anywhere. Coming from the private +soldier Lucile had told to come round to tune the piano, it really +startled her. She turned back to the door and opened it. + +"Yes," she said, "they're expecting you. Come in and I'll show you +the piano." + +She might, of course, merely have indicated the drawing-room door to him +with a nod and gone up-stairs, but she was determined now to wait and +hear him say something more. So she led the way into the drawing-room and +quite superfluously indicated the Circassian grand with a gesture. Then +she looked back at him quickly enough to surprise the expression that +flickered across his face at the sight of it. A mere cocking of one +eyebrow it was, but amusingly expressive. So, too, was the way he walked +over toward it, with an air of cautious determination, of readiness for +anything, that made Paula want to laugh. He dropped down sidewise on the +bench, turned up the lid and dug his fingers into the keyboard. + +At the noise he evoked from that pampered instrument she did laugh aloud. +It was not a piano tuner's arpeggio but a curiously teasing mixed +dissonance she couldn't begin to identify. She thought she heard him say, +"My God!" but couldn't be sure. He repeated his chord pianissimo and held +it down, reached up and echoed it in the upper half of the keyboard; then +struck, hard, two octaves in the bass. + +"What a piano!" he said. "What a damned piano!" He made a sort of effort +to pull himself up; apologized (she thought that was what he meant to +do) for the damn. But as he turned back to the piano and struck another +chord or two, she could see that his sense of outrage was mounting +steadily all the time. + +"You can't tune a piano like this."--He pushed up the cover and stared +gloomily at the strings. "A mincing sickly thing like this. It's all +wrong. The scale is all wrong. The man who designed it ought to be hung. +But he called it a piano and sold it for a piano and I'm expected to come +in and tune it. Slick and smear it over and leave it sounding sicklier +and tubbier and more generally disgusting than ever. You might as well +take a painted harlot off the streets"--he glared at the ornate +extravagance of the case--"and expect to make a gentlewoman of her with +one lesson in deportment. I won't tune it. It's better left as it is. In +its shame." + +"Well," said Paula, letting go a long breath, "you've said it." + +Then she dropped into a chair and began to laugh. Never again, she felt +sure, would the drawing-room piano be able to cause her a moment's +irritation. This astonishing piano tuner of Lucile's had converted it, +with his new christening, into a source of innocent merriment. "The +painted harlot" covered the ground. Clear inspiration was what that was. +The way he went on glowering at it, digging every now and then a new and +more abominable chord out of its entrails made her mirth the more +uncontrollable. + +"It isn't funny, you know, a thing like this," he remonstrated at last. +"It's serious." + +"It would be serious," she retorted with sudden severity, "if you had +said all that or anything in the least like that to Miss Wollaston. +Because she really loves it. She has adopted it." + +"Was she the lady who spoke to me in the park?" His evident consternation +over this aspect of the case made Paula smile as she nodded yes. + +"That was an act of real kindness," he said earnestly. "Not mere good +nature. It doesn't grow on every bush." + +To this she eagerly agreed. "She is kind; she's a dear." But when she +saw him looking unhappily at the piano again, she said (for she hadn't +the slightest intention of abandoning him now), "There's another one, +quite a different sort of one, in the music room up-stairs. Would you +like to come along and look at that?" + +He followed her tractably enough, but up in her studio before looking at +the piano, he asked her a question or two. Had he the name right? And was +the lady related to Doctor Wollaston? + +"She's his sister," said Paula, adding, "and I am his wife. Why, do you +know him?" + +"I talked with him once. He came out to the factory to see my father and +I happened to be there. Two or three years ago, that was. He did an +operation on my sister that saved her life. He is a great man." He added, +"My name's Anthony March, but he wouldn't remember me." + +He sat down at the instrument, went over the keyboard from bottom, to top +and back again with a series of curious modulations. Then opening his bag +and beginning to get out his tools, he said, "Before I went into the +army, there was a man named Bernstein in these parts, who used to +perpetrate outrages like this on pianos." + +"Yes," said Paula, "he tuned this one two weeks ago." + +Without so much as a by your leave, Anthony March went to work. + +It was Paula's childlike way to take any pleasurable event simply as a +gift from heaven without any further scrutiny of its source; with no +labored attempt to explain its arrival and certainly with no misgivings +as to whether or not she was entitled to it. Anthony March was such a +gift. By the time he had got to work on her own piano, she knew he was +pure gold and settled down joyously to make the most of him. + +It was not until she attempted to give an account to the Wollastons at +dinner that night, of the day they had spent together--for they had made +a day of it--that she realized there was anything odd, not to say +astonishing, about the episode. How in the first place did it happen that +it was Paula's piano he tuned instead of the one in the drawing-room? +This was, of course, inexplicable until she could get John by himself and +tell him about it. One couldn't report to Lucile his phrase about the +painted harlot. She had to content herself with stressing the fact that +he intended to tune the drawing-room piano after he had finished with +hers and then somehow he hadn't got around to it. + +But why had an unaccredited wanderer whom Lucile had found in the park +even been given a chance at the piano up-stairs? Well, he had looked to +Paula like an artist when she had let him in the door. You could tell, +with people like that, if you had an eye for such matters. And then his +recognition of Bernstein's nefarious handiwork had clenched her +conviction. Certainly she had been right about it; he had absolutely +bewitched that piano of hers. She didn't believe there was another such +tuner in the United States. If they would come up-stairs after dinner, +she'd show them. They had always thought she was unnecessarily fussy +about it, but now they should see they were mistaken. It was like +unveiling a statue. The poor thing had been there all the time, covered +up so that you couldn't hear it. She was so excited about it she could +hardly leave it alone. + +And he had been as delighted with the results as she herself. After he +had played it a while for her (oh, he didn't play well, atrociously badly +really, but that didn't matter; it only made it all the more exciting) he +made her play for him. Paula smiled reminiscently when she added that he +had sat all the while she was playing, on the bare floor under the piano +where he could feel the vibrations as well as hear them. He had paid her +an odd sort of compliment too, when he came crawling out, saying that he +had assumed from the scores on the piano that she was a singer but that +she played like a musician,--only not a pianist! + +He was a genius, absolutely a genius of the first water, when it came to +tuning pianos. Whether his talent as a composer ran to any such lengths +as that she, of course, didn't know. If what he had played for her had +been his own, any of it, it was awfully modern and interesting, at +least. You could tell that even though it kept him swearing at himself +all the time for not being able to play it. And from something he said +at lunch... + +"Lunch!" Miss Wollaston gasped (she had been away from home all day). "Do +you mean you had lunch with him?" + +"Why not?" Paula wanted to know. "Me to have gone down-stairs and eaten +all alone and had a tray sent up for him? That would have been so silly, +I never even thought of it. He's a real person. I like him a lot. And I +don't know when I've had such a nice day." + +Here was where Paula's difficulties began. Because when they asked her +who he was, where he lived, where he came from, what his experiences in +the army had been, and whether he had been to France or not, she had to +profess herself upon all these topics totally uninformed. His name she +happened to know; it was Anthony March. He told her that, somehow, +right at the beginning, though she couldn't remember how the fact had +cropped out. + +As to the other matters her husband and his sister were seeking +information about she simply hadn't had time to get around to things like +that. She thought he might have been a farmer once or some such sort of +person. He liked the country anyway. He had spent a lot of time, he told +her, tramping about in Illinois and Iowa, earning his way by tuning +farmers' pianos. + +He hated Puccini and spoke rather disrespectfully of Wagner as a +spell-binder. He liked Wolf-Ferrari pretty well; the modern he was really +crazy about was Montemezzi. But he had made her sing oceans of +Gluck,--both the _Iphigenia_ and _Euridice_. It was awfully funny too +because he would sing the other parts wherever they happened to lie, +tenor, bass, contralto, anything, in the most awful voice you ever heard, +though his speaking voice was lovely. Let John just wait until he heard +it. It was almost as nice as his own. Oh, he was coming back again some +time. He had promised to bring over some songs of his own composing for +her to try. + +It was at this point or thereabouts that John precipitated a crisis by +asking how much this paragon of a piano tuner had charged her for his +professional services. Paula stared at him, stricken. + +"Why," she said, "I don't believe I paid him anything. I know I didn't. I +never thought of it at all. Neither did he, for that matter though, I'm +sure of it." + +This provoked Lucile into an outburst, rare with her, of outspoken +indignation. The man, delinquent as he had been in the matter of the +drawing-room piano, became once more her protégé, her soldier whom she +had found in the park and attempted to do a kindness to. Paula had +kept him fussing over her piano all day and then let him go without, +for all she knew, money enough to buy his supper or procure a lodging +for the night. + +John, though he made less commotion about it, took his wife's negligence +even more seriously for he set about attempting to repair it. "You're +quite sure," he asked in his crisp, consulting-room manner--a manner +Paula was happily unfamiliar with--"You're quite sure he told you +nothing about himself beyond his bare name? You've got that right, +haven't you? Anthony March?" + +"Yes," said Paula uncertainly, "I'm absolutely sure of that." + +Had he any insignia on his uniform?--little bronze numerals on his +collar--anything like that that she could remember? That would tell them +what organization he belonged to and might give them a clue. + +Here Lucile got drawn into the inquisition. She had seen him and talked +to him. Had she noticed anything of the sort? But Lucile had not. She +had, naturally, deferred all inquiries until he came to tune the piano; +and had she been called as she felt she should have been.... + +But John, it appeared, was not interested in pursuing that line. He +turned back to Paula. "I wish you'd begin at the beginning, my dear, at +the time you let him into the house, and try to remember as nearly as you +can everything that you said to him and that he said to you. He may have +said something casually that you didn't remark at the time which would be +of the greatest help to us now." + +Paula wasn't very hopeful of obtaining any result in this way, but she +dutifully went to work trying to think. She was perfectly amiable about +it all. Presently her husband prompted her. "How did he happen to tell +you what his name was? Can you remember that?" + +After a minute, she did. "Why," she cried, lighting up, "he said he knew +you but you wouldn't remember him. He said you did an operation on his +sister once--that saved her life." + +"An unmarried sister?" he asked. + +"What difference ... Oh, I see, because if she was married her name +wouldn't be March. No, he didn't say anything about that. He did say +something, though, about a factory. You went out to the factory to see +his father and he was there." + +John Wollaston's face went blank for a minute and his eyelids drooped +shut. Then a quick jerk of the head and a sharp expulsion of breath +announced success. "That's all right," he said. "Thank the Lord, I've +got it now." + +It would have seemed absurd to Paula, had she been capable of regarding +anything he did in that light, that he should take a trivial matter like +this so seriously. He couldn't have looked more relieved over the +successful finish of a difficult operation. + +"That happens to be a case I'll never forget," he went on to explain. +"Professionally speaking, it was unique, but it had points of human +interest as well. The girl was a patient in one of the wards at the +Presbyterian. I didn't get a look at her until the last minute when it +was desperate. Her father was opposed to the operation--a religious +scruple, it turned out. Didn't want God's will interfered with. He was a +workman, a skilled workman in a piano factory. There was no time to lose +so I drove out there and got him; converted him on the way back to the +hospital. I remember the son, now I think of it; by his speech, too. I +remember thinking that the mother must have been a really cultivated +woman. Well, it's all right. I've got the address in the files at the +office. I'll send a letter there in the morning and enclose a check. How +much ought it to be?" + +Once more Paula did not know. Hadn't, she protested, an idea; and when +John asked her how much she paid Bernstein, she didn't know that either. +It all went on the bill. + +"Well, that's easy," said John. "I've got last month's bills in my desk. +All right, I'll look into it. You needn't bother about it any more." + +An approximation to a sniff from Miss Wollaston conveyed the comment +that Paula hadn't bothered appreciably about it from the beginning, but +neither of the others paid any attention to that. + +As it fell out, John might have spared his labors because at eight +o'clock or thereabouts the next morning just as he was sitting down to +breakfast, Anthony March came back to repair his omission of the day +before and tune the drawing-room piano. + +A minor domestic detail of that sort would normally have fallen within +Lucile's province, but John decisively took it away from her. + +"When I finish breakfast," he said, "I'll write him a check and take it +in to him." He added, "I'm curious to see what this new discovery of +Paula's looks like." + +That was exactly what he felt, an amused comfortable curiosity. Nothing +in the least like that flash of jealousy he had felt over Novelli. If it +had occurred to him to try to explain the difference to himself and had +he taken the trouble to skim off the superficial explanation,--that +Portia Stanton's husband belonged in Paula's world and that a tramp +genius who came around to tune pianos did not,--he might have got down to +the recognition of the fact that the character Paula had sketched for him +last night was a grotesque and not therefore to be taken seriously. You +could not, at least, do anything but smile over a man who sat on the +floor under Paula's piano while she played and came crawling out to +express surprise that a singer should be a musician as well. + +So the look of the man he found in the drawing-room stopped him rather +short. Anthony March had taken off the ill-fitting khaki blouse and the +sleeves of his olive-drab uniform shirt were rolled up above the elbows. +He was sitting sidewise on the piano bench, his left hand on the +keyboard, his right making imperceptible changes in the tension of one of +the strings. His implement, John's quick eye noticed, was not the +long-handled L shaped affair he had always seen tuners use but a T shaped +thing that put the tuner's hand exactly above the pin. + +"It must take an immense amount of strength," he observed, "to tune a +piano with a wrench like that." + +March turned and with a pleasant sort of smile wished him a good morning. +But he finished ironing the wave out of a faulty unison before he replied +to John's remark. He arose from the bench as he spoke. "It does; but it +is more a matter of knack really. A great tuner named Clark taught me, +and he learned it from Jonas Chickering himself. Old Jonas wouldn't allow +any of his grand pianos to be tuned with an L head wrench." + +"My wife," said John, "recalled you to me last night, in the effort to +remedy her omission to pay you for your services yesterday. I remember +your sister's case very distinctly. I hope she is ..." + +"She is quite well, thank you," March said. Oddly enough his manner +stiffened a little. + +John hastily produced his check. It had struck him as possible that March +might suspect him of hinting that one gratuitous service ought to offset +the other. + +"I hope the amount is satisfactory," he said. + +March glanced at the check and smiled. "It's rather more than +satisfactory; I should call it handsome. Thank you very much." He tucked +the check into the pocket of his shirt. + +"My wife's immensely pleased over what you did to her piano. I'm sure she +will be glad to do all she can in the way of recommending you among her +musical friends." + +March looked at him in consternation. "Oh, she mustn't do that!" he +cried. "I hope she won't--recommend me to any one." + +John's sudden unwelcome surmise must have been legible in his face +because March then said earnestly and quite as if the doctor had spoken +his thought aloud, "Oh, it isn't that. I mean, I haven't done anything +disgraceful. It's only that I know too many musicians as it +is--professional pianists and such. If they find out I'm back, they'll +simply make a slave of me. I don't need to earn much money and I like to +live my own way, but it's hard to deny people what they are determined to +get." He added thoughtfully, "I dare say you understand that, sir." + +John Wollaston nodded. He understood very well indeed. He checked on his +tongue the words, "Only I _have_ to earn a lot of money." "You are a +composer, too, my wife tells me." + +"Yes," March said, "but that isn't the point exactly. Put it that I enjoy +traveling light and that I don't like harness. Though this one,"--he +glanced down at his uniform,--"hasn't been so bad." He turned toward the +piano with the evident idea of going back to work. + +"Well," John said, "I must be off. You've a good philosophy of life if +you can make it work. Not many men can. Good-by. We'll meet again some +time, I hope." + +"I hope so too," said Anthony March. + +John went out and closed the drawing-room door behind him. Then he left +the house without going up-stairs and saying hello to Paula and sitting +down on the edge of her bed, as he had meant to do, and telling her all +about his talk with the piano tuner. + +It really was late and he must be getting started. Only why had he closed +the drawing-room door so carefully behind him? So that his wife shouldn't +be disturbed by the infernal racket those fellows always made tuning +pianos? Or so that she mightn't even know, until he had finished his work +and gone, that Anthony March had come back at all? And not knowing, +should not come down _en negligée_ and ask whether he had brought his +songs for her. Had he brought them? Certainly John had given him a good +enough chance to say so. And if he had brought them and Paula did not +come, would he leave them for her with Nat? Or would he carry them away +in his little black satchel? + +All the way out to the hospital John kept turning Anthony March over in +his mind and the last thing to leave it was what had been the first +impression of all. The fine strength of that hand and wrist which tuned +grand pianos with a T wrench. + +He hated himself for having shut the door. + +And as it happened this act did not prevent Paula from finding March. The +tyrant who looked after her hair had given her an appointment that +morning at ten. So, a little before that hour and just as March was +finishing off his job, she came down, dressed for the street. She came +into the drawing-room and with good-humored derision, smiled at him. + +"I knew you'd come and do it," she told him. + +"It isn't going to be so bad," he answered. "Moszkowski, +Chaminade,--quite a little of Chopin for that matter,--will go pretty +well on it." + +"Did you bring my songs?" she asked. + +From the chair that he had thrown his blouse upon, he produced a flat +package neatly wrapped in brown paper. And as she went over to the window +with it, tearing the wrappers away as she walked, he went back to his +work at the piano. + +"Don't do that," she said, as he struck a chord or two. "I can't read if +you do." But almost instantly she added with a laugh, "Oh, all right, go +ahead. I can't read this anyway. Why, it's frightful!" She came swiftly +toward the piano and stood the big flat quires of score paper on the +rack. "Show me how this goes," she commanded, but he pushed back a little +with a gesture almost of fright. + +"No," he protested sharply. "I can't. I can't begin to play that stuff." + +She remained standing beside his shoulder, looking at the score. + +"They're strange words," she said, and began reading them to herself, +half aloud, haltingly. + +"'Low hangs the moon. It rose late, +It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.'" + +"Walt Whitman," he told her. "They're all out of a poem called +_Sea-Drift_." + +She went on reading, now audibly, now with a mere silent movement of the +lips, half puzzled, half entranced, and catching--despite her protest +that she could not read the music,--some intimations of its intense +strange beauty. + +"' ..._do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?... Loud I +call to you, my love ... Surely you must know who is here ... O rising +stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise ... with some of you ... +O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere_ ...'" + +With a shake of the head, like one trying to stop the weaving of a spell, +she turned the pages back to the beginning. + +"This means Novelli," she said. "I'll get him. I'll get him this morning. +He's the best accompanist in Chicago. We'll go to work on them and when +we've got them presentable, I'll let you know and sing them to you. +Where do you live?" + +He got up for a paper and pencil and wrote out an address and a telephone +number. She was still staring at that first page of the score when he +brought it back to her. + +"I've never heard any of those songs myself," he told her. + +At that she looked around at him, looked steadily into his face for a +moment and then her eyes filled with tears. She reached out both hands +and took him by the shoulders. "Well, you're going to hear them this +time, my dear," she said. As she moved away, she added in a more +matter-of-fact tone, "Just as soon as we can work them up, in a few days +perhaps. I'll let you know." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE PEACE BASIS + + +There were four in their party but it was only with Alfred Baldwin that +Mary Wollaston danced. The other man--Black his name was, and he came +from Iowa City or Dubuque or thereabouts--devoted all his attention to +Baldwin's wife. He was very rich, very much married--out in Iowa--and +whenever he made his annual business trip to New York, he liked to have a +real New York time. They had dined together at the Baldwins' apartment +with a vague idea of going afterward to see a play of Baldwin's then +drawing toward the close of a successful season's run. But dinner had +been late and they had lingered too long over it to make this excursion +worth while. It had amused both Mary and Christabel to discover Black's +secret hope of being taken back-stage and introduced to the beautiful +young star who was playing in the piece and taking her out to supper with +them. He didn't know that Baldwin hated her with a perfect hatred and +never got within speaking distance of her if he could help it. + +So, by way of making up to the western visitor for his disappointment +they taxied up-town about ten o'clock to the brightest, loudest and most +fantastically expensive of New York's dancing restaurants. Once there, he +took command of the party; confidently addressed the head waiter by his +first name and began "opening wine" with a lavish hand. He was flirting +in what he conceived to be quite a desperate and depraved manner with +Christabel, and what enhanced his pleasure in this entertainment was that +he did it all right under the nose of the husband, who obviously didn't +mind a bit. He would talk eloquently when he got home, with carefully +selected corroborative details, about the wickedness of New York. + +Mary liked the Baldwins. Christabel was on the executive committee of +their Fund and one of the best and steadiest and most sensible supporters +it had. She was a real person. Baldwin, himself, whom she hadn't known so +long nor so well and had regarded from afar as a rather formidable +celebrity, proved on better acquaintance, though witty and sophisticated, +to be as comfortable as an old glove. Altogether they were the nearest +thing to friends that her long sojourn in New York had given her. She had +sometimes thought rather wildly of putting them to the test and seeing +whether they were real friends or not. + +To-night, though, even they irritated her. She wished Christabel would +snub that appalling bounder, Black, as he deserved. How could she go on +playing up to him like that! As for Baldwin, she wished he would just +dance with her and not talk. She supposed that the amount of alcohol they +had consumed since seven o'clock had something to do with his verging +upon the vein, the Broadway sentimental vein, that he had got started on +and couldn't seem to let alone. + +It wasn't new to Mary. Indeed it was a phenomenon familiarly associated +in her mind with Forty-second Street restaurants and late hours and +strong drink, particularly gin. The crocodile tear for the good woman who +stayed at home; who didn't know; who never, please God! should know. The +tribute to flower-like innocence--the paper flower-like innocence of the +stage _ingenue_! + +Baldy wasn't as bad as that, couldn't ever conceivably be as bad as that, +no matter how much he had had to drink. Perhaps, if she had not been +hypersensitive to-night,--in an impossible mood for any sort of party +really--she might have failed to detect the familiar strain in his +sensible, rather fatherly talk. As it was, she thought she did detect it +and it made her want to scream--or swear! + +There is one point to be urged in Baldy's defense that Mary never learned +to allow for. Gin or no gin, the effect of contrast she presented to her +surroundings in a place like this, her look of a seraphic visitor gone +astray, would have given any one the impulse, at least, to rush to the +rescue. To begin with, it was not possible to credit her with the +twenty-five years she truly claimed; nineteen, in a soft colored evening +frock like the one she had on to-night, was about what one would have +guessed. Then, you never would have believed, short of discovering the +fact yourself, how strong she was; her slenderness and the fine +articulation of her joints made her look fragile. Her coloring helped the +illusion along, the clear unsophisticated blue of her eyes, the pallor of +her hair that the petals of a tea-rose could have got lost in,--it was, +literally, just about the tint of unbleached linen--and the pearly +translucence of her skin. If you got the opportunity to look close enough +to see that there wasn't a grain of powder upon it, not even between the +shoulder blades, it made you think of flower petals again. What clenched +the effect was her healthy capacity for complete relaxation when no +effort was required of her. She drooped a little and people thought she +looked tired. She never could see herself like that and never made due +allowance for the effect she produced, invariably upon strangers and not +infrequently upon an old friend. + +To-night, she lacked the name to label her mood by, rejecting rather +fiercely the one that kept offering itself. You couldn't be homesick when +home was the last place in the world you wanted to go back to--the place +you were desperately marshaling reasons for staying away from. + +It was the non-appearance of her brother, Rush, that had brought a lot of +dispersed feelings to a focus. She had heard nothing later from him than +the letter she referred to when she last wrote to her father. She had +expected a cable and it hadn't come. She had this morning gone over to +Hoboken to meet the transport he had said he expected to sail on, but +having got down to the pier a little late, after the debarkation had +begun, she could not be sure that she hadn't missed him. So she had gone +back to her tiny flat in Waverly Place and had spent the rest of the day +there, vainly hoping that he would turn up or at least that she should +get some word of him. And sitting around like that for hours and hours +she had, which was a silly thing to do, let her thoughts run wild over +things--a thing--that there was simply no sense in thinking about at all. + +It was an odd fact, which she had noted long before today, that anything +connected with home, a letter from her father or her aunt, news of the +doings of any of her Chicago friends (the birth of Olive Corbett's second +baby, for example), any vivid projection of a bit of the pattern of the +life into which she had once been woven, roused that nightmare memory. Or +gave, rather, to a memory which normally did not trouble her much, the +quality of a nightmare; a moment of paralyzed incredulity that it could +have happened to her; a pang of clear horror that it really and truly had +happened to her very self; to this Mary Wollaston who still lived in the +very place where it had happened. + +This afternoon, while she had sat awaiting from moment to moment the +appearance of her brother, or at least the sound of his voice over the +telephone, the pang had been prolonged into an agony. She had let herself +drift into a fantastic speculation of a sort that was perfectly new. What +if the boy who had shared that crazy adventure with her, himself an +officer bound overseas, had fallen in with Rush, made friends with him, +told him the story! + +This was pure melodrama, she knew. There was, in any external sense, +nothing to be feared. The thing had happened almost a year ago. It had +had no consequences--except this inexplicable one that her brother's +approach brought back the buried memory of it. Why should it cling like +that? Like an acid that wouldn't wash off! She was not, as far as her +mind went, ashamed of it. Never had been. But, waiving all the +extenuating circumstances--which had really surrounded the act--admitting +that it was a sin (this thing that she had done once and had, later, +learned the impossibility of ever doing again), was it any worse than +what her brother had probably done a score of times? + +What was this brother of hers going to be like? It wasn't possible, of +course, that she would find him the boy he had been five years ago, +before he went to France--though from some of his letters one might have +thought he hadn't changed a bit. Wasn't it likely that he'd turn out to +be some one she could cling to a little; confide her perplexities +to--some of them? Was there a chance that ripened, disillusioned, made +gentle and wise by the alchemy of the furnace he had come through, he +might prove to be the one person in the world to whom she could confide +everything? That would make an end to her nightmare, she felt sure. + +The question whether he was or was not going to turn out like that was +one presently to be answered. Until she knew the answer she didn't want +to think at all, least of all about those things which Baldy's talk +to-night kept rousing echoes of. + +"Oh, they all look good when they're far away," she said, picking that +bit of comic supplement slang deliberately to annoy him. "I don't believe +our grandfathers and grandmothers were always such models of decorum as +they tried, when they had grown old, to make us think. And the simple +primitive joys ... I believe an old-fashioned husking bee, if they had +plenty of hard cider to go with it, was just as bad as this--coarser if +not so vulgar. After all, most of these people will go virtuously home +to bed pretty soon and you'd find them back at work to-morrow morning not +any the worse, really, for this. It may be a rather poor sort of home +they go to, but how do you know that the vine-covered cottage you have +been talking about was any better?" + +"Not to mention," he added, in humorous concurrence, "that there was +probably typhoid in the well the old oaken bucket hung in. It seems odd +to be convicted of sentimentality by an innocent babe like you. But if +you had been looking at the party down at the end table behind you that +I've had under my eye for ten minutes, perhaps you'd feel more as I do. +No! don't turn around; they have been looking at us." + +"Moralizing over us, perhaps," she suggested. "Thinking how wicked we +probably were." + +"No," he said, "I happen to know the girls. They live down in our part of +town, just over in the Village, that is. They have been here six or eight +years. One of them was quite a promising young illustrator once. And +they're both well-bred--came obviously from good homes. And they've both +gone, well--clean over the edge." + +Somehow his innocent euphemism annoyed her. "You mean they are +prostitutes?" she asked. + +He frowned in protest at her employment of the word but assented +unequivocally. He was used--as who is not--to hearing young women discuss +outspokenly such topics but he couldn't forgive it from one who looked +like Mary Wollaston. + +"I have a hunch," he said, "that the two boys who are with them are +officers out of uniform. I noticed that they looked the other way +pretty carefully when that major who is sitting at the next table to +ours came in." + +"Let's dance again," she said. "I love this Hawaiian Moonlight thing." + +He saw her take the opportunity that rising from the table gave her for +a good square look at the party he had been talking about and some change +in her manner made him say with quick concern, "What is it?" + +But she ignored the question and stepped out upon the floor with him. +They had danced half-way round the room when she said quietly, "One of +the boys at that table is my brother Rush." + +Baldwin said, "He has seen you, I think." He felt her give a sort of gasp +before she replied but the words came steadily enough. + +"Oh, yes, we saw each other at the same time." + +He said nothing more, just went on dancing around the room with her in +silence, taking care, without appearing to do so, to cut the corner where +Rush was sitting, rather broadly. After two or three rounds of the floor, +she flagged a little and without asking any questions, he led her back to +their table. Luckily, Christabel and her Iowan had disappeared. + +As soon as she was seated she asked him for a pencil and something she +could write on--a card of his, the back of an old letter, anything. She +wrote, "Won't you please come and ask me to dance?" and she slid it over +to him. He read it and understood, picked up a busboy with his eye and +despatched him with the folded scrap for delivery to Captain Wollaston at +the end table. + +Mary meanwhile had cradled her chin in her palms and closed her eyes. +She had experienced so clear a premonition before she turned round to +look at the party at the end table that one of those officers out of +uniform would turn out to be Rush that the verification of it had the +quality of something that happens in a dream. She felt a sharp +incredulity that it could really be they, staring at each other across +that restaurant. More than that, the brother she saw was not--in that +first glance--the man she had been trying all day to make up her mind he +would be. Not the new Rush with two palms to his _Croix de Guerre_ and +his American D.S.C.; and the scars in his soul from the experiences +those decorations must represent; but the Rush she had said good-by to +in the autumn of 1914 when he set out to be a freshman at Harvard, the +kid brother she had counciled and occasionally admonished, in the +vicarious exercise of her father's authority. And in his panic-stricken +gaze at her, she had recognized his instinctive acceptance of that +position. Exactly so would he have looked five interminable years ago if +she had caught him in mischief. + +Then, like the undertow of a big wave, the reaction caught her. It was +intolerable that he should look at her like that. He who had earned his +manhood and its privileges in the long death grapple with the grimmest of +realities. Certainly she was not the one to cast the first stone at him. +She must contrive somehow, at once, to make that clear to him. The +urgency of the thing lay in her belief that the whole of their future +relationship depended upon the removing of his misapprehension +now--to-night. + +She could not go to that table where he sat without seeming more than +ever the school mistress in pursuit of a truant, but perhaps he would +come to her if she put her request right. They had danced together quite +a lot in the old days. She danced so well that not even her status of +elder sister had prevented his enjoying the exercise of their combined +accomplishment. + +A horrible misgiving had attacked her when she had scribbled the note and +closed her eyes, that the cocktails and the champagne she herself had +consumed since seven o'clock might have clouded her judgment--if, indeed, +they were not responsible for the whole nightmare. Would she be equal to +following out the line she had set for herself? + +But no trace of that misgiving was apparent to her when Rush, after a +wait of only two or three minutes, appeared at her table. She greeted him +with a smile and a Hello, nodded a fleeting farewell to Baldwin and +slipped comfortably into her brother's arms out on the floor. They danced +away without a word. There was the same quite beautiful accord between +them that there had been in the old days, and the sense of this steadied +her. They had gone all the way around the floor before she spoke. + +"It is like old times, isn't it?" she said. "And it does seem good. You +don't mind, do you,--for ten minutes?" + +"Ten minutes?" he echoed dully. + +She knew then, as she had indeed been aware from the first, that he was +drunk and that only by the most painful effort, could he command his +scattered wits at all. It made her want to cry that he should be trying +so hard. She must not cry. That would be the final outrage. She must be +very simple and clear. She must--_must_ contrive to make him understand. + +"Will you listen to me, dear, and do exactly what I ask you to? I want +you to go back to your people and forget that you have seen me at all." + +"I am going to take you home--out of this," he said laboriously. + +"I'm going home soon, but not with you. I want you to go back to--to the +girl you brought here. No, dear, listen. This is the only reason I sent +for you. To tell you that I wasn't going to try to scold you. I don't +mind a bit. I want to tell you that, so that when you come back to me +to-morrow or next day or whenever your party is quite over, you won't +feel that you have anything to try to explain or apologize for. Now take +me back to my place and then go on to yours." + +"I won't take you back to him," he said doggedly. "What do you think I +am? I'm drunk, but not enough for that. I am going to take you home." + +She tried to laugh but in spite of herself it was more like a sob. + +"Rush, dear, don't be silly. I am perfectly all right--or would be if I +hadn't drunk quite so much champagne. They'll take me home. His wife's +here with him and they're old friends of mine. They know a lot of our +friends in Chicago. Please, Rush...." + +"Do you think I'd go back to that--" he managed to pull up on the edge +of an ugly word--"back to those people, and leave you here? Is it your +wrap on that chair? We'll stop and get it and then we'll go." + +She could have wept with vexation over the way her scheme had gone awry +but there was clearly nothing else to do. She retrieved her cloak, simply +said good night to Christabel and the man named Black, leaving Baldy to +explain things as he chose. + +Five minutes later she gave a taxi driver the address of her flat and +dropped back against the cushions beside her brother. Neither of them +spoke a word during that fifteen-minute drive. Mary wept quietly most of +the way--it didn't matter there in the dark. The thought of this splendid +glorious brother of hers painfully endeavoring to drag himself back into +a state of sobriety from his first wild caper after long wearing of the +harness of discipline--an escapade she supposed that he must have been +looking forward to for days--dragging himself back to protect her--oh, it +was too hopeless! Should she ever be able to explain to him why she had +sent for him, and that her intentions had been the opposite of those of +the moralizing meddler he would take her for? If only she could make it +up to him somehow. She would have liked to reach over and pull him down +into her arms, mother him and tell him not to mind--there was something +so intolerably pathetic about his effort to sit soberly straight--but she +resisted this impulse savagely. The alcohol in her own veins was +responsible for this. She could not quite trust herself not to go +maudlin. So she froze herself tight and huddled away from him into her +own corner. + +She did not think beyond the address she had given to the chauffeur until +they pulled up at her door. Then she turned to Rush and asked, "Where +shall he take you? Are you staying at a hotel?" + +"I am going to take you home," he said precisely. + +She saw she did not dare to let him go. There was no telling what serious +trouble he might get into, in his illicit civilian dress, if she turned +him adrift now. So she said, simply, "Well, here we are. Come in." + +She opened the street door with her latch-key, and punched on the hall +lights. She dreaded the two flights of stairs, but with the help of the +banister rail he negotiated them successfully enough. And then he was +safely brought to anchor in her sitting-room. It was plain he had not the +vaguest idea where he was. + +"I'll make some coffee," she said. "That will--pull us both together. And +it won't take a minute because it's all ready to make for breakfast." + +She was not gone, indeed, much longer than that, but when she came back +from her kitchenette he had dropped like a log upon her divan, submerged +beyond all soundings. So she tugged him around into a more comfortable +position, managed to divest him of his dinner-jacket and his waistcoat, +unbuttoned his collar and shirt-band, took off his shoes, and covered him +up with an eiderdown quilt. Then she kissed him--it was five years since +she had done that--and went, herself, to bed. + +At ten o'clock the next morning she sat behind her little breakfast +table--it was daintily munitioned with a glass coffee machine, a +grapefruit and a plate of toast--waiting, over _The Times_, for Rush to +wake up. She looked more seraphic than ever, enveloped in a white turkish +toweling bathrobe and with her hair in a braid. Her brother lay on the +divan just as she had left him the night before. Presently the change in +his breathing told her that he was struggling up out of the depths of +sleep. She looked over at him and saw him blinking at the ceiling. When +his gaze started round her way, she turned her attention to the busy +little coffee machine which opportunely needed it. + +It was a minute or two before he spoke. "Is that really you, Mary?" + +She smiled affectionately at him and said, "Hello," adding with just an +edge of good-humored mischief, "How do you feel?" + +He turned abruptly away from her. "I feel loathsome," he said. + +"Poor dear, of course you do. I'll tell you what to do. I've got a nice +big bathroom in there. Go in and take a cold one." Then--"You've grown +inches, Rush, since you went away but I believe you could still get into +a suit of my pajamas--plain ones, not ruffly. Anyhow, I've another big +bathrobe like this that you could roll up in. You'll be just in time for +the coffee. You won't know yourself by then." + +"I wish I didn't," he said morosely. + +There wasn't much good arguing with that mood, she knew, so she +waited a little. + +"Is this where you live?" he asked. "You brought me here last night?" + +"You brought me," she amended. + +He frowned over that but didn't take it in. The next moment though he +sat up suddenly and after a struggle with the giddiness this movement +caused, asked, "Who else is here? Where's the other girl that lives +with you?" + +"She's not here now," Mary said. "We are all by ourselves." + +He rose unsteadily to his feet. "I've got to get out of here quick. If +anybody came in ..." + +"Rush, dearest!" she entreated. "Don't be silly. Lie down again--Well, +then take that easy chair. Nobody will come in." Then over his air of +resolute remorse she cried, on the edge of tears herself, "Oh, _please_ +don't be so unhappy. Do let's settle down and be comfy together. I don't +have to go to the office to-day. My job's just about played out. But +nobody ever comes here to see me in the daytime. And it wouldn't matter +if they did." + +But this change of attitude was clearly beyond him. "I'll have to ask you +to tell me what happened last night. You were there at that restaurant +with friends of yours I suppose. I must have disgraced you up to the hilt +with them. I should think you'd hate the sight of me." + +"You didn't disgrace me at all," she contradicted, and now the tears did +came into her eyes. "They knew I was expecting you and I told Mr. Baldwin +who you were. You came up in the nicest way and asked me to dance and +when we went away together there wasn't a thing--about you--that they +could see. I was on the point of tears myself because my plan had gone +wrong. But that would have seemed natural enough to them." + +He frowned at the name Baldwin, as if he were trying to recover a memory. +Now he felt vaguely in his trousers pocket and pulled out the crumpled +visiting card that had her note scribbled on the back of it. "You haven't +told me yet what happened," he said. + +"Oh, I was afraid you wouldn't remember." She looked away from him as she +said it and a little unwonted color crept into her cheeks. + +"Afraid?" he questioned. + +"I wanted you to understand," she said, "and now I'll have to tell you +again. It was because I was trying so hard not to meddle that I did. I +sent that little note to you just to get a chance to tell you not to mind +my seeing you there with those others--not to let it spoil your party. I +couldn't bear to have you come to me to-day, or to-morrow or whenever it +was, feeling--well, ashamed you know, and explanatory. That's what I +tried to tell you last night but couldn't make you understand. So I did, +really, just exactly what I was meaning not to. Of course, I loved you +for coming away and I love having you here like this, all to myself. But +I didn't mean to--to spoil things for you." + +He stared at her a moment in blank inapprehension; then a deep blush came +burning into his face. "You didn't understand," he said thickly. "You +didn't know what those girls were." + +"Oh, Rush!" she cried. "Of course I did. I knew exactly what they +were--better than you. I even knew who they were. They live not very far +from here." + +He paled and his look was frightened. "How did you know that?" he +demanded. "How could you know a thing like that?" + +"They've lived here in the Village for years," she said, summarizing +Baldy without quoting him as her authority. "One of them used to be an +illustrator--or something--before she went--over the edge. They're two of +our celebrities. One can't go about, unless he's stone blind, without +picking up things like that." + +"You did know what she was, then," he persisted, doggedly pushing +through something it was almost impossible for him to say, "and yet, +knowing, you asked me to leave you alone and go back to her. You wanted +me to do that?" + +"I didn't want you to!" she cried. "I hated it, of course. But +men--people--do things like that, and I could see how--natural it was +that you wanted to. And if you wanted to, I didn't think it fair that it +should be spoiled for you just because we happened to recognize each +other. I didn't want you to hate me for having spoiled it. That's all." + +She gave him the minute or two he evidently needed for turning this over +in his mind. Then she turned her back on the window she had withdrawn to +and began again. + +"I used to be just a big sister to you, of course. Ever so superior, I +guess, and a good bit of a prig. And all this time over there in France +with nothing but my letters and that silly picture of me in the khaki +frame, I suppose you have been thinking of me, well,--as a sort of nice +angel. I'm not either, really. I don't want to be either. + +"I want to be somebody you feel would understand anything; somebody you +could tell anything to. So that it would work the other way as well. +Because I've got to have somebody to tell things to,--troubles, and +worries. And I've been hoping, ever since your letter came, that it would +turn out to be you." + +"What sort of troubles?" He shot the question in rather tensely. + +There was a breathless moment before she answered, but she shook it off +with a laugh and her manner lightened. "There's nothing to be so solemn +about as all that. We don't want to wallow. We'll have some +breakfast--only you go first and tub." + +He was too young and healthy and clean-blooded to resist the effect upon +his spirits which the cold water and the fresh white bathrobe and the hot +strong coffee with real cream in it produced. And the gloomy, remorseful +feeling, which he felt it his moral duty to maintain intact, simply +leaked away. She noted the difference in him and half-way through their +breakfast she left her chair and came round to him. + +"Would you very much mind being kissed now?" she asked. + +His answer, with a laugh, was to pull her down upon his knee and hug +her up tight in his arms. They looked rather absurdly alike in those +two white bathrobes, though this was an appearance neither of them was +capable of observing. She disengaged herself presently from his embrace +and went to find him some cigarettes, refraining from taking one +herself from a feeling that he would probably like it better just then +if she did not. + +Back in her own place over her coffee and toast, she had no difficulty in +launching him upon the tale of his own recent experiences. What the +French were like now the war was over; and the Boche he had been living +among in the Coblenz area;--the routine of his army life, the friends he +made over there, and so on. Altogether she built him up immensely in his +own esteem. It was plain he liked having her for a younger sister instead +of for an older one, listening so contentedly to his tales, ministering +to his momentary wants, visibly wondering at and adoring him. + +But she broke the spell when she asked him what he meant to do now. + +He turned restlessly in his chair. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know +what the deuce there is I can do. Certainly father's idea of my going +back to college and then to medical school afterward, is just plain, rank +nonsense. I'd be a doddering old man before I got through--thirty years +old. I should think that even he would see that. It will have to be +business, I suppose, but if any kind friend comes around and suggests +that I begin at the bottom somewhere--Mr. Whitney, for instance, offering +me a job at ten dollars a week in his bank--I'll kill him. I can't do +that. I won't. At the end of about ten days, I'd run amuck. What I'd +really like," he concluded, "for about a year would be just this." His +gesture indicated the bathrobe, the easy chair and the dainty breakfast +table. "This, all the morning and a ball-game in the afternoon. Lord, it +will be good to see some real baseball again. We'll go to a lot of games +this summer. What are the Sox going to be like this year?" + +She discussed the topic expertly with him and with a perfectly genuine +interest, at some length. "Oh, it would be fun," she finished with a +little sigh, "only I shan't be there, you know. At least I don't think I +shall." Then before he could ask her why not, she added in sharper focus, +"I can't go home, Rush." + +"Can't!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean by that?" + +"Oh, nothing to make a fuss about," she said with a frown of irritation. +"I wish you weren't so jumpy this morning,--or perhaps, it's I that am. +All I meant was that home isn't a comfortable place for me and I won't go +back there if I can help it--only I am afraid I can't. That's the trouble +I wanted to talk to you about." + +"I thought you liked the new stepmother," he said. "Hasn't she turned out +well?--What am I supposed to call her, anyhow? I wanted to find out about +that before I was right up against it." + +"Call her?" Mary was a little taken back. "Why, anything you like, I +should think. I've always called her Paula.--You weren't thinking of +calling her mother, were you?" + +"Well," he protested, "how should I know? After all, she is father's +wife. And she must be fairly old." + +"But, Rush, you've _seen_ her!" + +"Only that once, at the wedding. She was made up to look young then, of +course. Painted and dyed and so on, I suppose. I felt so embarrassed and +silly over the whole thing--being just a kid--that I hardly looked at +her. And that was a long while ago." + +Mary laughed at that, though she knew it would annoy him. "She never +paints nor dyes nor anything, Ruddy. She doesn't have to. She's such a +perfectly raving beauty without it. And she's more beautiful now than she +was then. She really is young, you see. Hardly enough older than we are +to matter, now that we're grown up." + +She saw Rush digesting this idea of a beautiful young stepmother whom he +was to be privileged to call--straight off--by her first name, with a +certain satisfaction, so she waited--rather conscious that she was being +patient--for him to come back from the digression of his own accord. +Presently he did. + +"What does she do that you don't like?" + +"She does nothing that isn't perfectly nice, and good-tempered, +and--respectable," Mary assured him, and added on a warmer note, "Oh, and +she's really amiable and lovely. I was being a cat. But I am truly fond +of her--when I have her to myself. It's when she's with father ..." + +She broke off there, seeing that she could not make that clear to him +(how could she since she would not state it in plain terms to herself?) +and hurried on, "It's really father whom I don't get on with, any more. +He worries about me and feels sorry for me and wants me to come home. But +I'm nothing to him when I do come--but an embarrassment.--No, it _isn't_ +rot. He knows it himself and feels horrid about it and raises my +allowance when I go away, though it was foolishly big already; and then, +as soon as I'm back here he begins worrying again, and urging me to come +home. He didn't insist as long as I was doing war work, but now that +that's played out, I suppose he will. + +"Oh, I know well enough what I ought to do. I ought to answer some +advertisement for a typist--I can do that, but not stenography--and take +a regular job. The sort you said you'd shoot Mr. Whitney for offering +you. And then I ought to take a hall bedroom somewhere in the +cross-town twenties and live on what I earned. That's the only thing I +can see, and, Rush, I simply haven't the courage to do it. It seems as +if I couldn't do it." + +His lively horror at the bare suggestion of such a thing drew her into a +half-hearted defense of the project. Numbers of the girls she knew down +here who had been doing war work were going enthusiastically into things +like that--or at least were announcing an invincible determination to do +so. Only they were cleverer than she at that sort of thing and could hope +for better jobs. They were in luck. They liked it--looked forward to a +life of it as one full of engaging possibilities. But to Mary it was +nothing, she hardly pretended, but a forlorn last shift. If one couldn't +draw nor write nor act nor develop some clever musical stunt, what else +was there for a girl to do? + +"Well, of course," said Rush, in a very mature philosophical way and +lighting a cigarette pretty deliberately between the words,--"of course, +what most girls do, is--marry somebody." Then he stole a look around at +his sister to see how she had taken it. + +There was a queer look that almost frightened him in her blue eyes. Her +lips, which were trembling, seemed to be trying to smile. + +"That's father's idea," she said raggedly. "He's as anxious now that I +should marry somebody--anybody, as he was that I shouldn't five years +ago--before he found Paula. You see I am so terribly--left on his hands." + +There was, no doubt, something comical about the look of utter +consternation she saw on her brother's face, but she should not have +tried to laugh at him for a sob caught the laugh in the middle and swept +away the last of her self-control. She flung herself down upon the divan +and buried her face in one of the pillows. He had seen men cry like that +but, oddly enough, never a woman. What he did though was perhaps as much +to the point as anything he could have done. He sat down beside her and +gathered her up tight in his arms and held her there without a word until +the tempest had blown itself out. When the sobs had died away to nothing +more than a tremulous catch in each indrawn breath, he let her go back +among the pillows and turn so that she could look up at him. By that time +the sweat had beaded out upon his forehead, and his hands, which had +dropped down upon her shoulders, were trembling. + +"Well," she asked unsteadily. "What do you think of me now?" + +He wanted to bend down and kiss her but wisely he forbore. "It's easy to +see what's the matter," he said. "This war business you have been doing +has been too much for you. You're simply all in." Then happily he added, +"I'd call you a case of shell-shock." + +She rewarded that with a washed-out smile. "What's the treatment going to +be?" she asked. + +"Why," he said, "as soon as I'm done tucking you up properly in this +eiderdown quilt, I'm going out to your icebox and try to find the makings +of an egg-nog. Incidentally, I shall scramble up all the rest of the eggs +I find and eat them myself. And then I'll find something dull to read to +you until you go to sleep. When it's dark enough so that my evening +clothes won't attract too much attention, I'll go back and get into +uniform; then I'll buy two tickets for Chicago on the fast train +to-morrow, and two tickets for a show to-night; and then I'll come back +and take you out to dinner. Any criticisms on that program?" + +"Not just for this minute," she said contentedly. "I don't know whether +I'm going to Chicago with you, tomorrow, or not." + +"That's all right," he said. "I know all about that." He added, "I +hope the other girl won't mind--the one who lives here with you. What +was her name?" + +"Ethel Holland? Oh, she went over to France with the Y.M.C.A. just +about a year ago. I've tried to find somebody to take her place, but +there didn't seem to be any one I liked well enough. So I've been +living alone." + +She saw his face stiffen at that but his only comment was that that +simplified matters. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PICTURE PUZZLE + + +There was a good quarter of an hour beginning with the tear-blurred +moment when Mary caught sight of her father looking for her and Rush down +the railway station platform, during which the whole fabric of misgivings +about her home-coming dissolved as dreams do when one wakes. It had not +been a dream she knew, nor the mere concoction of her morbid fancy. He +had not looked at her like this nor kissed her like this--not once since +that fatal journey to Vienna five years ago. Had something happened +between him and Paula that made the difference? Or was it her brother's +presence, that, serving somehow to take off the edge, worked a mysterious +catalysis? + +When John, after standing off and gazing wordless for a moment at this +new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with +bits of ribbon on the breast of it,--tried to say how proud he was and +choked instead, it was for Mary that he reached out an unconscious, +embracing arm, the emotion which would not go into words finding an +outlet for itself that way. + +When they got out to the motor and old Pete, once coachman, now +chauffeur, his eyes gleaming over the way Rush had all but hugged him, +said to her, "You home to stay, too, Miss Mary?" her father's hand which +clasped her arm revealed the thrilling interest with which he awaited her +answer to that question. The importunity of the red-cap with the luggage +relieved her of the necessity for answering but the answer in her heart +just then was "Yes." + +It was with a wry self-scornful smile that she recalled, later that day, +the emotions of the ride home. If at any time before they got to the +house, her father had repeated the old servant's question, "Are you home +to stay, Mary?" she would, she knew, have kissed the hand that she held +clasped in hers, wept blissfully over it and told him she wanted never to +go away again. She hadn't minded his not asking because she thought she +knew quite surely why he had not. He was afraid to risk his momentary +happiness upon her answer. And why had she not volunteered the assurance +he wanted so eagerly and dared not ask for? The beastly answer to that +question was that she had enjoyed the thrill of his uncertainty--a +miserable sort of feline coquetry. + +Well, it had been short-lived, that little triumph of hers. It had +stopped against a blank wall just when the car stopped under the _ports +cochère_ of the Dearborn Avenue house. John's arm which had been around +her was withdrawn and he looked with just a touch of ostentation at his +watch. She knew before he spoke that when he did, his tone would ring +flat. The old spell was broken. He was once more under the dominion of +the newer, stronger one. + +"I'm terribly late," he said. "I must drive straight along to the +hospital. I'll see you to-night. We're having a few old friends in to +dinner. Run along now. Your Aunt Lucile will be waiting for you." + +His omission to mention Paula had been fairly palpable. Her reply, "All +right, dad, till to-night, then. _Au 'voir_" had been, she knew, as +brittle and sharp-edged as a bit of broken glass. It had cut him;--she +had meant it to. + +Well it served her right. Paula deserved to own the stronger spell. +Paula's emotional channels were open and deep. No choking snags and +sandbars, no perverse eddies in them. Look at her with Rush to-day! There +was a situation that fairly bristled with opportunities for blundering. +She might, with this grown-up son of her husband's whom she had hardly +seen, have shown herself shy, embarrassed, at a loss how to take him. She +might have tried to be archly maternal with him or elder-sisterly. But +she played up none of these sentimental possibilities, seemed, indeed, +serenely unaware of them. She treated him just as she had always treated +Mary--as a contemporary. From the beginning she had no trouble making him +talk. For one thing her acquaintance with France and Germany was intimate +enough to enable her to ask him questions which he found it pleasantly +stimulating to try to answer. As she felt her way to firmer ground with +him, she allowed what was evidently a perfectly spontaneous affection to +irradiate the look she turned upon him and to warm her lovely voice. + +So she must have begun--as simply and irresistibly as that--in Vienna! + +Mary tried hard to think of it as a highly skillful performance, but this +was an attitude she could not maintain. It was not a performance at all; +it was--just Paula, who, having taken her father away from her was now, +inevitably, going to take her brother too. Not because she meant +to--quite unconscious that she was doing any harm ("and of course she +isn't, except to a cat like me")--that was the maddening, and at the same +time, endearing thing about her. + +For there was a broad impartiality about her spell that tugged at Mary +even while she forlornly watched Rush yielding to it. And the way it +affected Aunt Lucile was simply funny. She melted, visibly, like a +fragment left on the curb by the iceman, whenever Paula--turned the +current on. What made this the more striking was that Aunt Lucile's +normal mood to-day impressed Mary as rather aggressively sell-contained. +Was it just that Mary had forgotten how straight she sat and how +precisely she moved about? Had she always had that discreet significant +air, as if there were something she could talk about but didn't mean +to--not on any account? Or was there something going on here at home that +awaited--breathlessly awaited--discovery? Whatever it was, when Paula +turned upon her it went, laughably;--only it would have been a pretty +shaky sort of laugh. + +It was after lunch that Paula electrified them by suggesting that they +all go together to a matinée. That's an illustration of the power she +had. To each of the three, to Lucile and to Mary as well as to the now +infatuated Rush, she could make a commonplace scheme like that seem an +irresistibly enticing adventure. Lucile recovered her balance first, but +it was not until Nat had fetched the morning paper and they had discussed +their choice of entertainments for two or three minutes that she said of +course she couldn't go. She didn't know what she'd been thinking of. The +number of things imperatively to be done or seen to in preparation for +the party to-night would keep her busy all the afternoon. + +Then Mary followed suit. If this was really going to be a party--she +hadn't quite got this idea before--she'd have to spend the afternoon +unpacking and putting her frocks in order or she wouldn't have +anything to wear. + +"Well," Paula said comfortably, "until they turn me on like a Victrola at +nine o'clock or so, I've nothing to do with the party except not think +about it." She made this observation at large, then turned on Rush. +"You'll come with me, won't you, and keep me from getting frightened +until tea-time?" + +Rush would go--rather!--but he laughed at the word "frightened." + +"I'm not joking," she said, and reaching out she covered his hand, which +rested on the cloth, with one of hers. + +He flushed instantly at that; then said to the others with slightly +elaborated surprise, "It _is,_ cold, for a fact." + +"So is the other one," said Paula. "For that matter, so are my feet. And +getting colder every minute. Come along or we'll be late." + +Mary branded this as a bit of rather crude coquetry. It wasn't +conceivable that a professional opera singer of Paula's experience could +look forward with any sort of emotion to the mere singing of a few songs +to a group of familiar friends. It occurred to her, too, that Paula had +calculated on her refusal to go to the matinée as definitely as on Aunt +Lucile's and for a moment she indulged the idea of changing her mind and +going along with them just to frustrate this design. Only, of course, it +wouldn't work that way. She couldn't keep Rush from being taken away from +her by playing the spoil-sport. She couldn't keep him anyhow she +supposed. She made a hasty, rather forlorn retreat to her own room as +soon as the departing pair were safely out of the house. + +That room of hers exerted now a rather curious effect upon her mood. It +had been hers ever since her promotion from the nursery and it, like +her brother's adjoining, had been kept unchanged, unoccupied during her +long absence. + +The furniture and the decoration of it had been her mother's last +Christmas present. The first Mrs. Wollaston had lived under the influence +of the late Victorian esthetes, and Mary's room looked as if it had been +designed for Elaine the lily maid of Astolat, an effect which was +heightened by a large brown picture in a broad brown frame of Watts' Sir +Galahad. After her mother's death, that winter, Mary added a Botticelli +Madonna, the one with the pomegranate, which she hung by itself on a wall +panel. There was a narrow black oak table under it to carry a Fra +Angelico triptych flanked by two tall candlesticks. It wasn't exactly a +shrine, even if there was a crimson cushion conveniently disposed before +it, and if Mary for a while said her prayers there instead of in the old +childish way at her bedside, and if she genuflected when she passed it, +that was her own affair. + +Coming to it now, as to port after storms, with the intention almost +openly avowed to herself of lying down upon the bed and, for an hour or +two, feeling as sorry for herself as she could, she found an appalling +strangeness about its very familiarity that pulled her up short. The +abyss she stared into between herself and the Mary Wollaston whose +image was so sharply evoked by the ridiculously unchanged paraphernalia +of that Mary's life, turned her giddy. Even the face which looked back +at her from the frame of that mirror seemed the other Mary's rather +than her own. + +From the doorway she stood, for a moment, staring. Then she managed a +smile (it was the only possible attitude to take) at Sir Galahad, above +the bed. The notion of flinging herself down for a self-pitying revel +upon that bed,--the other Mary's virginal little narrow bed--had become +unthinkable. The thing to do was to stop thinking. Quickly. + +She stripped off her suit and blouse, slipped on a pongee kimono that she +got out of her hand-bag, unlocked her trunk and began discharging its +contents all about the room. She covered the chairs with them, the bed, +the narrow table--that had never had anything upon it but that Fra +Angelico triptych and the two candlesticks--the round table with the +reading lamp, the writing desk in the corner, the floor. Then, a little +out of breath, she paused. + +Which among two or three possible frocks should she wear for the party +to-night? What sort of party was it going to be anyhow? It was curious, +considering the fact that they had done nothing but sit and talk all the +morning, how vague her ideas about it were. Her father had said +something out in the car about having a few old friends in for dinner. +Paula was going to sing and professed herself frightened by the +prospect. Also she had cited it as the reason for an unusually and +almost strenuously unoccupied day. On the other hand it was keeping Aunt +Lucile distractedly busy. + +Was it the chance result of their preoccupation with other things that +she had been given no more intelligible account of it, or was it +something that all three of them, her father, Paula and Aunt Lucile, were +walking round the edge of? The nub of some seriously trivial quarrel? Was +that why Paula was so elaborately disengaged and Aunt Lucile so +portentous? Was it even perhaps why her father had so abruptly fled this +morning without coming into the house? + +She treated this surmise kindly. It was something to think about anyhow; +something to sharpen her wits upon, just as a cat stretches her claws in +the nap of the drawing-room rug. She rescued from oblivion half a dozen +remarks heard during the morning, whose significance had gone over her +head, and tentatively fitted them together like bits of a picture puzzle. +She hadn't enough to go on but she believed there was something there. +And when a little later in the afternoon, she heard, along with a knock +on her door, her aunt asking if she might come in, she gave her an +enthusiastic welcome, scooped an armful of things out of a chair and +cleared a sitting space for herself at the foot of the bed. + +"Would this blue thing do for to-night?" she asked, "or isn't it enough +of an affair? What sort of party is it anyhow?" + +"Goodness knows," said Lucile. "Between your father and Paula I find it +rather upsetting." + +Mary had reached out negligently for her cigarette case, lighted one and +letting it droop at a rather impossible angle, supported by the lightest +pressure of her lips so that the smoke crept up over her face into her +lashes and her hair, folded her hands demurely in her lap and waited for +her aunt to go on. She was mischievously half aware of the disturbing +effect of this sort of thing upon Lucile. + +"What has there been between them?" Mary asked, when it became clear that +her aunt needed prompting. "Between father and Paula, I mean. Not a row?" + +Mary never used language like this except provocatively. It worked on her +aunt as she had meant it to. + +"There has been nothing between them," she said, "that requires a rowdy +word like that to express. It has not been even a quarrel. But they have +been for the last day or two, a little--at ..." + +"Outs?" Mary suggested. + +This had been the word on Lucile's tongue. "At cross purposes," she +amended and paused again. But Mary seeing that she was fairly launched +waited, economically, meanwhile, inhaling all the smoke from her +cigarette. "I suppose after all, it's quite natural," Lucile began, +"that Paula should attract geniuses, since she's rather by way of being +one herself." + +Mary took the cigarette in her fingers so that she could speak a little +more crisply than was possible around it. "Who is the genius she's +attracting now? Doesn't father like him? And is he being not asked to the +party? I'm sorry, aunt, I didn't mean to interrupt." + +"He is being asked which, it appears, is what Paula objects to; only not +until after dinner. That she insisted upon. Really," she went on, in +response to her niece's perplexed frown, "I shall be much more +intelligible If you'll let me begin at the beginning." + +"Please do," said Mary. "Where did Paula find him?" + +"I found him," said Miss Wollaston. "Paula discovered him a little later. +I found him on a bench in the park and told him he might come to tune +the drawing-room piano. Paula had him tune her piano instead and spent +what must have been a rather mad day with him over it. He brought round +some songs the next day for her to try and she and Portia Stanton's +husband have been practising them with hardly any intermission since. The +idea was that when they had 'got them up' as they say, the man,--March +his name is, Anthony March, I think,--should be invited round to hear +Paula sing them. Paula insists, absurdly it seems to me, that he never +has heard a note of them himself; that he can't even play them upon the +piano. How he could compose them without playing them on the piano first, +is beyond me. But she is inclined to be a little emotional, I think, over +the whole episode. Quite naturally--even Paula can't deny that--your +father thought he would like to be present when the songs were sung and +it was arranged that it should be this evening." + +"She may not have been able to deny that it was natural," Mary observed, +"but I'd bet she didn't like it." + +"It's only fair to Paula to say," Miss Wollaston insisted, "that she did +nothing to exhibit a feeling of that sort. But when, at John's +suggestion, I spoke of the possibility of having in the Cravens and the +Blakes,--the Cravens are very musical, you know--and Wallace Hood who +would be really hurt if we left him out, Paula came nearer to being +downright rude than she often allows herself to be. She said among other +things that she didn't propose to have March subjected to a +'suffocating' affair like that. She said she wanted him free to +interrupt as often as he liked and tell them how rotten they were. That +was her phrase. When I observed that Mr. March didn't impress me as the +sort of person who could conceivably wish to be rude as that she said he +could no more remember to be polite when he heard those songs for the +first time than she herself could sing them in corsets. She summed it +up by saying that it wasn't going to be a polite affair and the fewer +polite people there were, hanging about, the better. There was, +naturally, nothing I could say to that." + +"I should think not," Mary agreed, exhaling rather explosively an +enormous cloud of smoke. "Poor Aunt Lucile!" Her commiseration didn't +sound more than skin deep. + +"The matter rested there," the elder woman went on, "until your father +received Rush's telegram that you were coming to-day. Then he took +matters into his own hands and gave me a list of the people he wanted +asked. There are to be about a dozen besides ourselves at dinner and +perhaps as many more are to come after." + +"I can see Paula when you told her that," Mary reflected. "Or did you +make dad tell her himself? Yes, of course you did! Only what I can't +understand is why Paula didn't say, 'All right. Have your party, and I'll +sing if you want me to. Only not--what's his name?--March's songs.' And +have him all to herself, as she wanted him, later. That would have been +mate in one move, I should think." + +Then, at the fleeting look she caught in the act of vanishing from her +aunt's face, she cried, "You mean she _did_ say that? And that father +turned to ice, the way he can and--made a point of it? You know it's +serious, if he's done that." + +With a vigor meant to compensate for a sad lack of conviction, Miss +Wollaston protested against this chain of unwarranted assumptions. But +she admitted, at last, that her own surmise accorded with that of her +niece. John certainly had said to her at breakfast that he saw no reason +for foregoing the musical feature of the evening simply because an +audience was to be present to hear it. Paula's only comment had been a +dispassionate prediction that it wouldn't work. It wouldn't be fair to +say she sulked; her rather elaborate detachment had been too good-humored +for that. Her statement, at lunch, that she was to be turned on like a +Victrola at half past nine, was a fair sample. + +"What's he like, this genius of hers?" Mary wanted to know. "Young and +downy and helpless, I suppose. With a look as if he was just about to +burst into tears. I met one like that last winter." She knew exactly how +to get results out of her aunt. + +"He's not in the least like that! If he had been I should never have +brought him home, not even to tune the piano. He's quite a well behaved, +sensible-appearing young man, a little over thirty, I should say. And he +does speak nicely, though I think Paula exaggerates about that." + +"Sensible or not, he's fallen wildly in love with her, of course," Mary +observed. "The more so they are the more instantaneously they do it." + +But this lead was one Miss Wollaston absolutely declined to follow. "If +that clock's right," she exclaimed, gazing at a little traveling affair +Mary had brought home with her, "I haven't another minute." It was not +right, for it was still keeping New York time, but the diversion served. +"Wallace Hood spoke of coming in to see you about tea-time," she said +from the doorway. "I'm going to be to busy even to stop for a cup, so do +be down if you can." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +JOHN MAKES A POINT OF IT + + +Mary was warmly touched by the thought of Wallace's coming to see her in +that special sort of way when he was certain of finding her at dinner an +hour or two later. Her feelings about him were rather mixed but he dated +back to the very earliest of her memories, and his kindly affectionate +attitude toward her had never failed, even during those periods when she +had treated him most detestably. Even as a little girl, she had been +aware of his sentimental attachment to her mother and perhaps in an +instinctive way had resented it, though her actual indictment against +Wallace in those days had always been that he made her naughty; incited +her by his perpetual assumption that she was the angelic little creature +she looked, to one desperate misdemeanor after another, for which her +father usually punished her. Mary had, superficially anyhow, her mother's +looks along with her father's temper. + +But for two years after Mrs. Wollaston's death, she and Wallace had been +very good friends. She was grateful to him for treating her like a +grown-up, for talking to her, as he often did, about her mother and how +much she had meant to him. (She owed it, indeed, largely to Wallace that +her memories of this sentimental, romantic, passionless lady with whom in +life she had never been completely in sympathy, were as sweet and +satisfactory as they were.) He had taken infinite pains with her, guiding +her reading and her enjoyment of pictures in the paths of good taste. He +took her to concerts sometimes, too, though at this point her docility +ceased. She wouldn't be musical for anybody. He gave her much-needed +advice in dealing with social matters which her sudden prematurity +forced her to cope with. And with all this went a placidity which had no +part at all in her relations with her father. + +She got the idea, during this period, that he meant, when she was a +little older, to ask her to marry him, and she sometimes speculated +whether, if he did, she would. There would be something beautifully +appropriate about it;--like the Professor's Love Story. Usually, though, +she terminated the scene with a tender refusal. + +She had long known, of course, how unreal all this was. Wallace had faded +into complete invisibility at the time when she fell in love with Captain +Burch and quarreled with her father about him. She couldn't remember +afterward whether he had even been on the scene or not. But the savor of +their friendship, though mild, was a pleasant one and there was none of +her old acquaintances she'd rather have looked forward to to-day at +tea-time in the drawing-room. She knew exactly what he would be like; +just what they would say to each other. The only doubt in her mind was +whether he'd bring her chocolates or daffodils. + +She guessed wrong. It was a box of candied strawberries that he gave her +as soon as their double hand-shake set him free. But nothing else came at +once to the surface to falsify her prevision. She remembered how he liked +his tea and was able to get an affectionate warmth into her voice, that +sounded real though strangely enough it wasn't, in agreeing with him how +like old times this was and how good it seemed to be home. Then came the +joy of having Rush back again, and the war, and the Peace +Conference,--only we weren't going to talk about things like that. And +then Alan Seeger, Rupert Brooke, Conningsby Dawson. + +But oddly enough, she felt herself going back to still older times, to +the abominable little girl who had yielded to irresistible desires such +as making faces at him and rubbing the nap of his silk hat the wrong +way. She repressed, vigorously, this lawless vein. She was determined for +this one day to be just as nice as he tried, so hard, to think she was. +But with this resolution occupying her mind the talk presently ran rather +thin, her contribution to it for whole minutes drying up entirely. It was +after a rather blank silence that he said he supposed Paula was lying +down, resting for to-night's performance. His inflection struck Mary as a +little too casual and reminded her that it was his first mention of her +stepmother's name. This roused her attention. + +"Oh, Paula's off playing with Rush," she said. "I believe they went to +a matinée." + +He exclaimed at that, over Paula's stores of energy and her reckless ways +of spending them. He said she gave him the impression of being absolutely +tireless, superimposing a high speed society existence which John +Wollaston and he, in relays, could hardly keep up with, upon the heavy +routine of work in her studio. He illustrated this with a schedule of her +activities during the last three days. "Oh, yes," he threw in, in +parenthesis, "I'm as much in the family as ever. When your father can't +do escort duty, they call on me." He added in conclusion that he was glad +she had already made a start toward getting acquainted with Rush. + +Was this relief, Mary wondered--at learning that she was not at this +moment engaged less domestically somewhere with Anthony March? But she +doubted whether this was a good guess. If he did feel any such relief, it +was not, at all events, from a personal jealousy; for the illuminating +conviction had come over her that Wallace could not possibly be one of +Paula's conquests. A man still capable of cherishing as the most +beautiful event of his life, that sentimental platonic friendship he had +enjoyed with her mother, would be immune against Paula's spells. + +She wondered if he wasn't a little afraid of Paula. If he did not, in +his heart, actually dislike her. But if this were true, why did he +willingly devote so many of his hours to squiring her about, substituting +for her husband? (She told herself, as one discovering a great truth, +that a substitute was exactly what Heaven had ordained Wallace Hood to +be.) She kept him going about Paula easily enough, as a sort of obbligato +to these meditations and her name was on Wallace's lips when John +Wollaston came into the room. + +"Where is she?" he asked Mary. "I hoped I'd find her resting for +to-night." Evidently he had been up to her room to see. The relief was +plainly legible in his face when he got Mary's answer. + +"She and Rush, eh," he said. "I'm glad they've made a start together, but +they ought to be back by now. They drove, didn't they?" + +She couldn't inform him as to that and by way of getting him to come to +anchor, offered him his tea. + +"Oh, I'll wait for the others," he said. "They can't be much later than +this.--I'm glad she's taken a vacation from those songs," he went on +presently from the fireplace. "She told me last night she'd been working +all day with Novelli over them. Only sent him home about half an hour +before it was time for her to dress for dinner. Do you suppose,"--this to +Wallace--"that they're as wonderful as she thinks they are?" + +It was obvious to Mary that Hood's reply was calculated to soothe; his +attitude was indulgent. He talked to Mary about March as just another of +Paula's delightful extravagances. March's indignant refusal, at first, to +tune the Circassian grand, his trick of sitting on the floor under +Paula's piano while she played for him, his forgetting to be paid, though +he had not, in all probability, a cent in his pockets, were exhibited as +whimsicalities, such as Wallace's favorite author, J.M. Barrie, might +have invented. It was just like Paula to take him up as she had done, to +work away for days at his songs, proclaiming the wonder of them all the +while. "We're all hoping, of course," he concluded, "that when she's +finished with them to-night, she'll sing us some of the old familiar +music we really love." + +The neat finality of all this, produced, momentarily, the effect of +ranging Mary on the other side, with Paula and her musician. But just at +this point, she lost her character of disinterested spectator, for +Wallace, having put March back in his box and laid him deliberately on +the shelf, abruptly produced, by way of diversion, another piece of goods +altogether. + +"I hope Mary's come home to stay," he said to John. "We can't let her go +away again, can we?" + +Afterward, she was able to see that it was a natural enough thing for him +to have said. It would never have occurred to him, pleasant, harmless +sentimentalist that he was, that John's second marriage might be a +disturbing factor in his relation with Mary and that the question so +cheerfully asked as an escape from the more serious matter that he had +been talking about, struck straight into a ganglion of nerves. + +But at the time, no such excuse for him presented itself. She stared for +a moment, breathless, paled a little and locked her teeth so that they +shouldn't chatter; then, a wave of bright anger relaxed her stiffened +muscles. She did not look at her father but was aware that he was fixedly +not looking at her. + +"I don't know whether I am going to stay or not," she said casually +enough. "There isn't any particular reason why I should, unless I can +find something to do. You haven't a job for me, have you?" + +"A job?" Wallace gasped. + +"In your office," she explained. "Filing and typing, or running the +mimeograph. It seems to be a choice between something like that +and--millinery." + +"That's an extravagant idea," her father said, trying for, but not quite +able to manage, a tone that matched hers. "Good lord, Wallace, don't sit +there looking as if you thought she meant it!" + +"You do look perfectly--consternated," she said with a pretty good laugh. +"Never mind; I shan't do anything outrageous for a week or two. Oh, here +they come. Will you ring, dad? I want some more hot water." + +Rush came into the drawing-room alone, Paula having lingered a moment, +probably before the mirror in the hall. Mere professional instinct for +arranging entrances for herself, Mary surmised this to be. And she may +have been right for Paula was not one of those women who are forever +making minute readjustments before a glass. But when she came in, just +after Wallace Hood had accomplished his welcome of the returned soldier, +it was hard to believe that she was concerned about the effect she +produced upon the group about the tea-table. She didn't, indeed, +altogether join it, gave them a collective nod of greeting with a faint +but special smile for her husband on the end of it and then deliberately +seated herself with a "No, don't bother; this is all right," at the end +of the little sofa that stood in the curve of the grand piano, rather in +the background. + +When Mary asked her how she wanted her tea, she said she didn't think +she'd have any; and certainly no cakes. No, not even one of Wallace's +candied strawberries. There was an exchange of glances between her and +Rush over this. + +"They have been having tea by themselves, those two," Mary remarked. + +"No," said Rush, "not what you could call tea." + +Paula smiled vaguely but didn't throw the ball back, did not happen, it +appeared, to care to talk about anything. Presently the chatter among the +rest of them renewed itself. + +Only it would have amused an invisible spectator to note how those three +Wollastons, blonde, dolichocephalic, high-strung, magnetically +susceptible, responded, as strips of gold-leaf to the static electricity +about a well rubbed amber rod, to the influence that emanated from that +silent figure on the sofa. Rush, in and out of his chair a dozen times, +to flip the ash from his cigarette, to light one for Mary, to hand the +strawberries round again, was tugging at his moorings like a captive +balloon. When he answered a question it was with the air of interrupting +an inaudible tune he was whistling. John still planted before the +fireplace, taking, automatically, a small part in the talk just as he +went through the minimum of business with his tea, seemed capable of only +one significant action, which he repeated at short, irregular intervals. +He turned his head enough to enable him to see into a mirror which gave +him a reflection of his wife's face; then turned away again, like one +waiting for some sort of reassurance and not getting it. Mary, muscularly +relaxed, indeed, drooping over the tea-table, had visible about her, +nevertheless, a sort of supernormal alertness. Every time her father +looked into the mirror she glanced at him, and she rippled, like still +water, at all of her brother's sudden movements. + +As for Wallace Hood, one look at him sitting there, as unresponsive to +the spell as the cup from which he was sipping its third replenishment of +tea, would have explained his domestication in that household;--the +necessity, in fact, for domesticating among them some one who was always +buoyantly upon the surface, whose talk, in comfortably rounded sentences, +flowed along with a mild approximation to wit, whose sentiments were +never barbed with passion;--who was, to sum him up in one embracing +word, appropriate. + +Mary, in addition to feeling repentant over her outbreak just before +Paula came in, experienced a sort of gratitude to him for being able to +sit squarely facing the sofa, untroubled by the absent thoughtful face +and the figure a little languorously disposed that confronted him. His +bright generalities were addressed to her as much as to the rest of them; +his smile asked the same response from her and nothing more. + +Nothing short of an explosion that shattered all their surfaces at once +could have got a single vibration out of him. By that same token, when +the explosion did occur, he was the most helpless person there, the only +one of them who could really be called panic-stricken. + +John had, at last, crossed the room and seated himself beside his wife. +He spoke to her in a low voice but her full-throated reply was audible +everywhere in the room. + +"No, I'm not tired and I really don't want any tea. I've gone slack on +purpose because that's how I want to be till nine o'clock. I've just +eaten an enormous oyster stew with Rush. That's what we waited for." + +John frowned. "My dear, you'll have ruined your appetite for dinner." + +"I hope so," she said, "because I'm not to have any." + +At that, from the other two men, there began an expostulatory--"No +dinner!" "You don't mean ...!" but it was silenced by John's +crisp--"You're planning not to come down to dinner, then?" + +"Oh, I'll come down," said Paula, "and I'll sit. But I don't mean to eat +anything. Unless you think that will be too much like a--what is +it?--skeleton at the feast." + +"I think it would seem somewhat-exaggerated," he said. + +"Well," Paula retorted, drawing the rest of the room into it again just +as Wallace was making a gallant effort to start a subsidiary conversation +to serve as a screen, "that's because you haven't heard those songs. If +there's a singer in the world who'd dare--cut loose with them right after +eating the sort of dinner Lucile will have to-night for Mary and Rush, +I'd like to see him try it." + +"I didn't mean to imply that they were not difficult. I dare say they are +all but impossible. But it does seem to me that you are taking the +occasion of singing them--a little too--emotionally." + +The tone he was trying for was meant to have nothing in it--for other +ears than hers, at least, beyond mere good-humored remonstrance. But her +reply tore all pretense aside. She let him have it straight. + +"You're the one who's being emotional about it," she said. + +The blood leaped into his face at that but he did not reply. + +"Look here, John," she went on--and her big voice swept away the polite +convention that the others were not listening, "I've told you that this +won't work and you must see now that that's true. There's still time to +call up March and tell him that it's to-morrow instead of to-day. Because +of Rush and Mary. Won't you let me do that?" + +It is just possible that if he had been alone with her, he might have +acknowledged the issue, might have admitted that this new composer whose +works she had been so absorbed in, frightened him, figured in his mind as +the present manifestation of a force that was trying to take her away +from him. And having let her see that, he could safely enough have said, +"Have your own way about it. You know what will work and what won't. Only +make it as easy for me as you can." But in the presence of his +children--it was they, rather than Wallace, that he minded--he was at +once evasive and domineering. + +"I thought we'd already disposed of that suggestion," he said. "If the +situation is as it has been made to appear to me there is not the +smallest reason why March should be put off; why Mary and Rush and the +friends we have asked in to meet them, shouldn't be permitted to hear his +songs; or why I shouldn't myself. I think we'll consider that settled." + +Paula rose all in one piece. "Very well," she said--to the audience, "it +is settled. Also it's settled that I shall not come down to dinner. As +for what people will think, I'll leave that to you. You can make any +explanation you like. But I shall sing those songs to March--and for +him--for all they're worth. I don't care who else is there or whether +they like it or not.--A lot of patronizing amateurs! Bring them up to the +music room about nine o'clock, if you like. I'll be there." + +She left behind her, in that Victorian drawing-room, a silence +that tingled. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +STRINGENDO + + +A crisis of this sort was just what the Wollastons needed to tune them +up. The four of them, for Lucile had to be counted in, met the +enemy--which is to say their arriving guests--with an unbroken front. +They explained Paula's non-appearance with good-humored unconcern. She +was afraid if she sat down to Lucile's dinner that she would forget her +duty and eat it and find herself fatally incapacitated for cutting loose +on Mr. March's songs afterward. They must be rather remarkable songs that +required to be approached in so Spartan a manner. Well, Paula assured us +that they were. The family declined all responsibility in the matter, not +having themselves heard a note of them, but if you wanted to you might +ask Mr. Novelli, over there. He'd been working over them with Paula for +days. As for the composer, he was as much a mystery as his songs. He +wasn't coming to the dinner but was expected to appear from somewhere +afterward. + +Novelli, as it happened, was not very productive of information. Half an +hour before the dinner, his wife had telephoned Lucile to ask if he +might bring a guest of his own, a certain Monsieur LaChaise, who was one +of the conductors at the Metropolitan and was to have the direction of +the summer opera out here at Ravinia this year. Portia added with the +falsely deprecatory air of a mother apologizing for a child's prank, +that Pietro had in fact, already invited him to the dinner and had only +just informed her of the fact. Lucile had assured her, of course, that +this addition to the company would cause not the slightest +inconvenience, served on the contrary to bring it up to the number that +had originally been counted upon. + +When LaChaise arrived the discovery that he talked no English at all +beyond a few rudimentary phrases, a fact which normally would have seemed +calamitous, was now merely treated as an added feature of the evening. He +and Novelli were in the midst of an animated discussion when they +arrived. They stuck together in the drawing-room as if locked in the same +pair of handcuffs and seating arrangements were hastily revised so that +they might go on talking in untroubled mutual absorption straight through +the dinner. Rush being placed handily by, where he could come to the +rescue in case of need. + +It was only the extremest surface of Mary sitting at the head of the +table in Paula's place (which once had been her own) that was engaged +with her unforeseen duties as hostess. And yet in a way, the whole of her +consciousness had been drawn to the surface. The strong interior +excitement that had been burning in her during all this day of her +home-coming, the rising conviction that life at home might turn out to be +something very different indeed from the thing that it had, down in New +York, looked like, the blend of foreboding with anticipation that +accompanied it, and finally a sense of the imminence of something +important, not quite to be accounted for by the quarrel between her +father and his wife,--all this emotional reaction found its outlet during +the long dinner in a quite unusual vivacity. Her sphere of influence +spread down the table until it embraced a full half the length of it on +both sides and those just beyond the reach of it, aware that they were +missing something, listened but distractedly to the talk of their more +remote partners. And while she was doing all this she managed with her +left hand, as it were, to, keep going a vivid little confidential +flirtation with the Stannard boy, Graham, a neighbor and a contemporary +of hers just back from service on a destroyer. + +The thing that stimulated her to all this was a consciousness of her +father's intense awareness of her. She had been deliberately evasive of +him since his quarrel with Paula. What he wanted of her she knew as well +as if he had expressed the need of it in so many words. He had turned to +her for it as soon as Paula had gone up-stairs and Rush had accompanied +the thoroughly demoralized Wallace into the hall. She had found a certain +hard satisfaction in denying it to him, in not nestling up into the arms +that happened, for the moment, to be vacant of Paula. This was so +imperative an instinct that she had not even reproached herself for it, +though she supposed she would later. + +The sense that something in some way or other decisive was going to +happen to-night, quickened her pulse as she mounted, along with the last +of their guests to the music room, in response to Paula's message that +Mr. March had come and that the "rehearsal" was about to begin. She +looked about eagerly for a man who might be March but could not discover +him anywhere. Was he, perhaps, she absurdly wondered, sitting once more +under the piano? + +Novelli drooped over the keyboard. LaChaise was half hidden in a deep +chair in one of the dormers. Paula, her back to the little audience, +stood talking to Novelli. Mary allowed herself a faint smile over the +expression in those faces that Paula wouldn't look at. The half-concealed +impatience, the anticipatory boredom, showed through so unfaltering a +determination to do and express to the end the precisely correct thing. +Even her father's anger looked out through a mask like that. + +LaChaise, from his corner said something in French that Mary didn't +catch. Novelli straightened his back. And in that instant before a note +was sounded, Mary's excitement mounted higher. The absorption of those +three musicians, the intensity of their preoccupation, told her that the +something she had expected was going to happen--now. But she did not know +that it was going to happen to her. + +Long ago the family had acquiesced in Mary's assertion that she was not +in the least musical and in her stubborn refusal to "take" anything, even +the most elementary course of lessons on the piano. She had been allowed +to grow up in an ignorance almost unique in these days, of the whole +mystery of musical notation and phraseology, an ignorance that might be +reckoned the equivalent of a special talent. + +Later, indeed, she had made the discovery--or what would have been a +discovery if she had fully admitted it to herself--that music sometimes +exerted a special power over her emotions. Whether it was a certain sort +of music that created the mood or a certain sort of mood that was capable +of responding to music, she had never seriously inquired. The critical +jargon of the wiseacres always irritated her. She supposed it meant +something because they seemed intelligible to each other but she rather +enjoyed indulging the presumption that it did not. When she went to +concerts, she liked to go alone, or at least to be let alone, to sit back +passively and allow the variegated tissue of sound to envelop her spirit +as it would. If it bored her, as it frequently did, there was no harm +done, no pretense to make. If, as more rarely happened, it stole somehow +into complete possession, floated her away upon strange voyages, she was +at least immune from analysis and inquisition afterward. + +So it was with no critical expectancy that she listened when Novelli +began to play; indeed, in the active sense, she did not listen at all. +She forgot to be amused by the composed faces about her; she forgot, +presently, whose music it was and whose voice she heard. What she felt +was a disentanglement, an emergence into more open, wider spaces,--cold +ethereal spaces. It seemed, though, that it was her own mood the music +fitted into, rather than the other way about. + +She heard the talk that followed the polite rustle of applause at the +first intermission, without being irritated by it, without even +listening to what it meant, though here and there a phrase registered +itself upon her ear. Henry Craven's "Very modern, of course. No tonality +at all, not a cadence in it," and Charlotte Avery's "No form either. And +hardly to be called a song. A tone poem, really, with a part written +into it for the voice." + +The music began again, and now was given ungrudging credit for the +recreation of her mood. Only its admitted beauty created a longing which +it did not serve to satisfy. The cold open sky with its mysterious +interstellar spaces, the flow of the black devouring clouds, the +reemergence of the immortal Pleiades, remote, inhuman, unaware, brought +no tranquillity but only a forlorn human loneliness. + +On that note it ended, but Paula, with a nod to Novelli, directed him to +go straight on to the love song. The two do not form a sequence in the +poem; indeed the love song occurs very early in it and the Burial of the +Stars comes afterward, nearly at the end. But I think, as March did, that +Paula's instinct was sound in using the unearthly Schubert-like beauty of +the Burial of the Stars as a prelude to the purely human passion of the +love song. + +It is, I suppose, one of the supreme lyric expressions in the English +language of the passion of love. Furthermore, Whitman's free unmetered +swing, the glorious length of his stride, fell in with March's rhythmic +idiom as though they had been born under the same star. + +The result is one of those happy marriages so rare as to be almost +unique, in which the emotional power of a great song is enhanced by its +musical setting, and where, conversely, a great piece of lyric music +gains rather than loses by its words. + +March did not use the whole poem. His setting begins on the line "Low +hangs the moon," and ends with the "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" +Why he elected not to go on with it, I don't know. Possibly, because his +own impulse was spent before Whitman's; possibly, because he did not wish +to impose the darker melancholy of the latter stanzas upon the clear +ecstasy of that last call. + +It lost something, of course, from the inadequacy of the piano +transcription, for it was conceived and written orchestrally. Paula, too, +has given finer performances of it;--indeed, she sang it better a little +later that same evening. But spurred as she was by the knowledge that the +composer was listening to it and by her determination to win a victory +for it, she flung herself into it with all the power and passion she had. + +I doubt whether any other auditor ever is more completely overwhelmed +by it than Mary was. It was so utterly her own, the cry of it so verily +the unacknowledged cry of her own heart, that the successive stanzas +buried themselves in it like unerring arrows. The intensity of its +climax was more poignant, more nearly intolerable, than anything in all +the music she had ever heard. Limp, wet, breathless, trembling all +over, she sat for a matter of minutes after that last ineffable +yearning note had died away. + +There was a certain variety in the emotions of the rest of the audience, +but they met on common ground in the feeling of not knowing where to look +or what to say. Their individualities submerged in a great crowd, they +might--most of them--have allowed themselves to be carried away, +especially if they'd come in the expectation--founded on the experience +of other audiences--that they would be carried away. But to sit like +this, all very much aware of each other while a woman they knew, the +wife of a man they had long known, proclaimed a naked passion like that, +was simply painful. What they didn't know you see--there was no program +to tell them--was whether the thing was inspired or merely dreadful, and +when it was over they sat in stony despair, waiting, like the children of +Israel, for a sign. + +It was LaChaise who broke the spell by crossing the room and +unceremoniously displacing Novelli at the piano. He turned back to the +beginning of the score and began reading it, at first silently, then +humming unintelligible orchestral parts as he was able to infer them from +the transcription; finally with noisy outbursts upon the piano, to which +din Novelli contributed with one hand reached down over the conductor's +shoulder. Paula standing in the curve of the instrument, her elbows on +the lid, followed them from her copy of the score. It got to the audience +that an alert attitude of attention was no longer required of them. That +in fact, so far as the three musicians were concerned, nothing was +required of them, not even silence. As an audience they ceased to exist. +They were dissolved once more into their social elements and began a +little feverishly to talk. + +The realization broke over Mary with the intensity of panic that some one +of them might speak to her. She rose blindly and slipped out into the +hall, but even there she did not feel safe. Some of them, any of them, +might follow her. She wanted to hide. There was a small room adjoining +the studio--it had been the nurse's bedroom when the other had been the +nursery--and its door now stood ajar. She slipped within and closed it +very softly behind her. + +Here in the grateful half-dark she was safe enough although the door into +the studio was also part way open. There was nothing in here but +lumber--an old settee, a bookcase full of discarded volumes from the +library and an overflow of Paula's music. No one would think of looking +for her in here. + +But as she turned her back upon the door that she had just closed, she +saw that some one was here, a man in khaki sitting on the edge of that +old settee, leaning forward a little, his hands clasped between his +knees. She had come in so quietly he had not heard her. + +It seemed to her afterward that she must have had two simultaneous and +contradictory ideas as to who he was. She knew,--she must have known, +instantly--that he was Anthony March, but his uniform suggested Rush and +drew her over toward him just as though she had actually believed him to +be her brother. And then as he became aware of her and glanced up, Paula +in the other room began singing the last song over again, her great broad +voice submerging the buzz of talk like the tide rushing in over a flat. +Without a word Mary dropped down beside him on the settee. + +In the middle of a phrase the music stopped. + +"A vous le tour!" they heard LaChaise say to Novelli. "Je ne suis pas +assez pianiste. Maintenant! Recommencons, n'est-ce-pas?" + +The song resumed. March's frame stiffened. + +"Oh night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the + breakers? + What is that little black thing I see there in the white?" + +"Now then," March whispered. "Quicker! My God, can't they pick it up?" +Like an echo came LaChaise's "Plus vite! _Stringendo_, jusque au bout!" +and with a gasp the composer greeted the quickened tempo. Then as the +song swept to its first tempestuous climax he clutched Mary's arm. +"That's it," he cried. "Can't you see that's it?" + +"Loud! loud! loud! + Loud I call to you, my love! + High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves, + Surely you must know who is here, is here, + You must know who I am, my love." + +He let go her arm. The song went on. + +"Low-hanging moon! + What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? + O it is the shape, the shape of my mate! + Oh moon, do not keep me from her any longer." + +From there, without interruption it swept along to the end. + +It was during the ecstatic pianissimo just before the final section +that their hands clasped. Which of them first sought the contact +neither of them knew but they sat linked like that, tingling, +breathless during the lines:-- + +"... somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, + So faint I must be still, be still to listen, + But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to + me." + +On the last "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" the clasp tightened, +convulsively. But it was not until the circuit was broken that the spark +really leaped across the gap. + +There was no applause in the other room when the song ended for the +second time, but it won a clear half minute of breathless silence before +the eddies of talk began again. During that tight-stretched moment the +pair upon the settee, their hands just unclasped, sat motionless, fully +aware of each other for the first time, almost unendurably aware, +thrilling with the just-arrived sense of the amazing intimacy of the +experience they had shared. Neither of them was innocent but neither had +ever known so complete a fusion of his identity with another as this +which the spell of his music had produced. + +They sat side by side but not very close, not so close that there was +contact anywhere between them and neither made any move to resume it. +Both were trembling uncontrollably and each knew that the other was. + +The hum of talk in the other room rose louder and finally became +articulate in Charlotte Avery's crisp, "Good night, my dear Paula, +we've had a most interesting evening. I shall hope to hear more of +your discovery. And see him too sometime if you make up your mind to +exhibit him." + +March started from his seat at that. "Don't make any noise," Mary +whispered, rising too, and laying a detaining hand on him. "Nobody will +come in here. They'll all go now. We must wait." + +He obeyed tractably enough, only turned toward her now and gazed at her +with undissimulated intensity; not, though, as if speculating who she +might be, rather as if wondering whether she were really there. + +"Don't you want them to find you, either?" he asked. + +"N-not after that," she stammered; and added instantly, "We +mustn't talk." + +So silent once more, they waited while the late audience defiled in +irregular, slow moving groups down the hall toward the stairs. Mary +distinguished her father's voice, her brother's, her aunt's, all taking +valiantly just the right social note. They were covering the retreat in +good order. And she heard Portia Stanton taking her husband home. But the +music room was not yet deserted. There were sounds of relaxation in +there, the striking of a match, the sound of a heavy body--that of +LaChaise, probably--dropping into an easy chair. + +"And now," Mary heard him say to Paula--"Now fetch out your composer. +Where have you had him hidden all this while?" + +"He's in there. I was just waiting until they were really gone. I'll get +him now, though. No, sit still; I'd rather, myself." + +March, however, didn't move; not even when they could hear Paula coming +toward the door. He stood gazing thoughtfully at Mary, his eyes luminous +in the dark. It occurred to her that the conversation in the other room +had been in French and that he had not understood it. + +"Oh, go--quickly!" she had just time to breathe. Then she crowded back, +close against the partition wall. The door opened that way, so that when +Paula flung it wide it screened her a little. + +The singer stood there, a golden glowing thing in the light she had +brought in with her. "Where are you?" she asked. Then she came up to +March and took him by the arms. "Was it good?" she asked. "Was it--a +little--as you meant it to sound?" + +When he did not speak, she laughed,--a rich low laugh that had a hint of +tears in it, pulled him up to her and kissed his cheek. "You don't have +to answer, my dear," she said. "Come in and hear what LaChaise has got to +say about it." + +Without effort, irresistibly, she swept him along with her into the +music room. + +Mary, when they were gone, let herself out by the other door as softly as +she had come in. She fled down one flight of the stairs and a moment +later had locked the door of her own room behind her. She switched on the +light, gave a ragged laugh at Sir Galahad; then lay down, just as she +was, on the little white bed, her face in the pillow, and cried. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +NO THOROUGHFARE + + +It was hours later, well along toward one o'clock in the morning when +Rush coming into his room saw a light under the door communicating with +his sister's and, knocking, was told he might come in. + +He found her in bed for the night, reclining against a stack of pillows +as if she had been reading, but from the way she blinked at the softened +light from the lamp on her night table, it appeared that she had switched +it on only when she heard him coming. She might have been crying though +she looked composed enough now;--symmetrically composed, indeed, a braid +over each shoulder, her hands folded, her legs straight down the middle +of the bed making a single ridge that terminated in a little peak where +her feet stuck up (the way heroines lie, it occurred to Rush, in the last +act of grand operas, when they are dead) and this effect was enhanced by +the new-laundered whiteness of the sheet, neatly folded back over the +blankets and the untumbled pillows. + +"You always look so nice and clean," he told her, and, forbearing to sit +on the edge of the bed as a pat of her hand invited him to, pulled up a +chair instead. It was going to be a real talk, not just a casual +good-night chat. + +"We were wondering what had become of you," he said. "Poor Graham +was worried." + +"Graham!" But she did not follow that up. "I decided we'd had temperament +enough for one evening," she explained in a matter-of-fact tone, "so when +I saw I was going to explode I came away quietly and did it in here. By +the time it was over I thought I might as well go to bed." + +"It doesn't look as if you'd exploded very violently," he observed. + +"Oh, I've cleared away the ruins," she said. "I hate reminders of a +mess." + +It was like her exquisiteness to do that and it tightened his throat to +think about it. He'd have liked to make sure what the cause of the +explosion had been, but thought he'd better wait a while for that. All he +ventured in the way of sympathetic approbation was to reach out and pat +the ridge that extended down the middle of the bed. "It certainly has +been one devil of an evening," he said. + +"I suppose it has," she agreed, thoughtfully. Then, noticing that this +had rather thrown him off his stride, she went on, "Tell me all that's +been happening since I ran away. How did Paula act when it was over?" + +"I haven't seen her," he said. "She never came down at all. Of course it +must have been--well, in a way, a devil of an evening for her, too. +Though I can't believe our being there cramped her style very much in +singing those songs. If it did, I'd hate to think what she would have +done if we hadn't been. I hope March liked his own stuff. He was there +all the while, you know. She must have had him tucked away in that little +old room of Annie's that opened off the nursery. Somewhere anyhow, +because long after every one else had gone, he came down-stairs with the +Frenchman. I got one surprise just then all right. He's a private +soldier, did you know that? Just a plain doughboy." + +"Overseas?" Mary asked. + +"As far as Bordeaux, with the Eighty-sixth. Saxaphone player with one of +the artillery bands. In a way I'm rather glad of it. That that's what he +turns out to be, I mean." + +"Why?" Mary made the word rather crisply. + +"Oh, well," Rush explained uncomfortably, "you know what it had begun to +look like. Paula quarreling with father about him and not going down to +dinner; and--cutting loose like that over his music. But of course there +couldn't be anything of that sort--with a chap like that." + +"What is the lowest military rank," Mary inquired, "that you think Paula +could fall in love with?" + +The satirical import of her question was not lost upon him but he held +his ground. "It may sound snobbish but it's true just the same," he +insisted. "A doughboy's a doughboy, and Paula wouldn't get mixed up with +one--any more than you would." + +There was a silence after that. + +"His music didn't sound to me like doughboy music," Mary observed at +last. "Nor his going to Walt Whitman to get the words." + +"Was that Walt Whitman? It sounded to me as if he was making it up as he +went along." He had the grace to grin at himself over that admission, +however. "Oh, well," he concluded, "Paula's all right anyhow. I think +she's--wonderful, myself. Only poor old dad! He is a peach, Mary. It's +funny how differently I remember him. He acted like one real sport +to-night." + +"Afterward, you mean." Mary, it seemed, would not have characterized her +father's behavior earlier in the evening in just that way. "Tell me all +about it. Only reach me a cigarette first." + +He obeyed the latter injunction with an air of protest. "It's the only +thing you do that I wish you didn't," he said. + +"Why? Do you think it's bad for me?" + +He wouldn't commit himself by answering that. The retort it offered her +was obvious. "It doesn't seem like you," he explained. + +"Very well," she said, taking a light from his match, "then I shall go on +just to keep you reminded that I'm not plaster of Paris. I like to have +somebody around who doesn't think that." + +"Father doesn't," Rush asserted, and got so eager a look of inquiry from +her that he regretted having nothing very substantial to satisfy it +with. "Oh, down there in the hall," he said, "after everybody but March +and the Frenchman had gone. Aunt Lucile began fussing about you. She was +rather up in the air, anyway. She'd done the nonchalant, all +right,--overdone it a bit in fact--as long as there was any one around +to play up to. But when we had got rid of the Novellis--they were the +last--she did a balloon ascension. She had a fit or two in general and +then came round to wondering about you. Wanted to know when we'd last +seen you--what _could_ have happened to you,--that sort of thing. I'd +been having a little talk with Graham so I supposed I knew. But of +course I said nothing about that." + +He was looking rather fixedly away from her and so missed her frown of +incomprehension. "Well, but father?" she asked. + +It had been coming over him that what his father had said was not just +what he wanted to report to Mary. Not while she felt about him as she +had confessed, down there in New York, she did. But he had let himself +in for it. + +"Why, it wasn't much," he said; "just that nothing could have happened to +you; that you wouldn't 'fall off anything and break.' What you said about +plaster of Paris made me think of it. He was only trying to get Aunt +Lucile quieted down." + +"While he had Paula on his mind, he didn't want to be bothered about me. +That's natural enough, of course." Her dry brittle tone was anything but +reassuring. Still without looking at her, he hurried on. + +"Well, it _is_ natural that he should be worried about Paula. I know +how I'd feel about a thing like that. It was rather weird while we +waited after Aunt Lucile went up to bed for those two to come down. +Old Nat was fussing around the drawing-room, shutting up and putting +things to rights. Dad sent him to bed, too, told him we'd do the +locking up ourselves. I got the idea that he was expecting Paula to +come sailing down, with March, you know, and perhaps didn't want any +one around. So I made a bluff of going to bed myself. But he told me +to stick; said we'd settle down and have a smoke presently. I don't +know how long it was before we heard LaChaise and March coming but it +seemed a deuce of a while. + +"Dad was right on the job then, calm as a May morning. He introduced +March and me and said something polite about his music, never a word +about his having been hiding all the evening. + +"Then LaChaise spoke to dad in French. Said there was some business he +wanted to talk with him about and that he'd like an appointment. I wasn't +sure that dad quite got him so I crashed in and interpreted. + +"Dad reached out and took hold of me, as if he was sort of glad that I +was there, and told me to tell Mr. LaChaise that we had plenty of time +right now, and if there was anything to discuss the sooner we got at it, +the better. + +"I handed that on in French--I tried not to lose any of the kick out of +it--and while I was doing that March made a move to go. + +"Dad told him not to. I wish you could have been there. I remember he +said after inviting him to stay, 'I imagine you are as much concerned in +this as any one.' It didn't faze March though. He said that he didn't +believe that what Mr. LaChaise had to say concerned him. Then he made a +stiff little bow for good night and went off down the hall to get his +hat. Oh, that wasn't like a doughboy, I'll admit. I went to the door +with him and we made a little conversation there for a minute or two just +to--take off the edge. That's when I found out where he'd been. + +"Father had taken LaChaise into the drawing-room when I got back but I +don't believe either of them had said three words. They were waiting for +me. Dad led off by asking what he thought of March, and LaChaise told +him, though you could see that wasn't what was on his mind. He said March +had a very strong and original talent and that he believed he had operas +in him. There was one about finished that he was going to look at +to-morrow. Then he pulled up short and said it was Paula he wanted to +talk about. + +"Dad caught that all right without waiting for me to translate it. What +he wanted to get at, right at the jump off, was whether Paula knew +LaChaise had come down to talk about her. Was he to consider Mr. +LaChaise her emissary? I took a chance on _émissaire_ for that and it +worked all right. + +"Well, the Frenchman said, as cool as you please, that he was. Said he +wouldn't have ventured to intrude otherwise:--and dad froze to ice right +there. But LaChaise went on and spoke his piece just the same. He said +he'd come to-night to verify the enthusiastic reports he had heard of her +singing but that she had outdone them all. He said the voice itself was +unusual, of great power and of beautiful quality, adequate in range for +anything that could be expected of her. But he said that was only the +beginning of it. The important things were that she was a real musician +in the first place and a woman with real passions in the second. + +"I didn't know whether to translate that to dad or to shut the Frenchman +up myself right there. I would have liked to take a punch at him. But, of +course, you're nothing but a part of the machinery when you are +interpreting, so I handed it on, without looking at dad. All he said was, +'We'll get to the point, if you please, Monsieur.' + +"LaChaise understood that without waiting for me. He said he had had no +hesitation in offering Paula a contract to sing the leading dramatic +soprano rôles at Ravinia this summer and that he had told her if it +worked anywhere near as well as he expected it to there was no doubt of +her getting a good Metropolitan engagement next season. He finished up by +saying he had had to ask her to make a decision as soon as possible +because he was at that moment negotiating with some one else who couldn't +be put off very long. + +"Dad asked then whether Paula had given him an answer to-night. LaChaise +told him she had accepted--subject to his obtaining dad's consent. Then +he finished up with a full-dress bow. 'That is the point you have asked +me to come to, Monsieur,' he said. + +"Dad never said a word for a minute. You could see it must have been +ghastly for him. I guess LaChaise must have seen it himself, for he went +on and tried to soften it down a bit. Said he didn't want to seem to +_brusqué_ the affair. All he wanted to ask dad to-night was that he +should agree to consider the matter, bearing in mind that a real artist +like _madame_, his wife, couldn't be kept shut up in a brass tower +indefinitely. + +"Dad cut him off rather short on that. He said that from a legal or +business point of view, which was all that could possibly concern +LaChaise, his consent wasn't necessary. If his wife signed a contract he +would put no obstacles in the way of her fulfilling it. Beyond that he +had obviously nothing to say. + +"Well, that was about all. They both put on all the trimmings saying good +night to each other and LaChaise thanked me very handsomely for +interpreting. I chucked him into his overcoat and let him out the front +door.--And bolted it after him, you bet! Lord, but I hated to go back to +dad after that. + +"I needn't have worried though. When we sat down for our smoke in the +library, it was exactly as if nothing had happened. I'd have been tearing +my hair but old dad.... He certainly is a peach." + +Rush paused there for some comment from her and when she made none, +looked around at her. Her hands were lightly clasped across her breast, +her eyelids nearly closed. Save for her barely perceptible breathing, she +lay dead still. + +"Have I talked you to sleep?" he asked. + +"No," she said, "I was thinking what a mixed-up thing life is. The way +you can't help liking and admiring the people you wish you could hate and +hating and hurting the ones you love." Then her eyes came open with a +smile and she held out a hand toward him. "You don't have to answer that. +It's the sort of silly thing people say when they have been drinking gin. +What I was really wondering was whether there will be anything about Mr. +March's opera in that contract Paula signs with LaChaise?" + +This startled him. "I never thought of that," he answered. "Do you +suppose that's it? Oh, it can't be! She wouldn't chuck dad for that +doughboy piano tuner. Not Paula!" + +"Oh, no," said Mary. "She wouldn't do that. It wouldn't look to her like +that, anyhow. She's got enough, don't you see, for everybody; for dad +and--and the doughboy as well. Father wouldn't have any less, if he could +just make up his mind that he didn't have to have it all. And as for the +other, why, it might be the greatest thing that could possibly happen to +him;--being in love with Paula and writing operas for her and having her +sing them the way she sang those songs to-night. I suppose that's what a +genius needs. And you couldn't blame her exactly. At least there always +have been people like that and the world hasn't blamed them--no matter +how moral it pretends to be. It's the other sort of people, the ones who +won't take anything unless they can have it all and who can't give +anything unless they can give it all--those that haven't but one thing to +give--that are--no good." + +He didn't more than half understand her, which was fortunate, since he +was rather horrified as it was. He put it down broadly as the same sort +of nervous crisis that he had encountered in New York, a sort of +hypersensitiveness due to the strain of war work--the thing he had amused +her by speaking of as shell-shock. + +"I think perhaps I know what has upset you to-night," he said +uncomfortably. "At least Graham told me about it." + +She looked at him with a puzzled frown. It was the third time that he had +brought up the Stannard boy's name. What in the world...? + +"He's terribly distressed about it," Rush went on. In his embarrassment +he wasn't looking at her and she composed her face. "He didn't +mean to shock you or--or offend you. He says he gave you reason enough +to be offended, but only because you didn't understand. He says he +has always--cared for you a lot. He said he thought you were the +most--well, about the most perfect thing in the world. Only to-night +he said he got carried off his feet and went further than he had any +right to. And he simply can't bear to have you think that he meant +anything--disrespectful. He felt he had to apologize to you before he +went home, but you didn't come down so finally he told me about it and +made me promise that I'd tell you to-night. Of course, I don't know what +he did," Rush concluded, "but I can tell you this. Graham Stannard's a +white man; they don't make them whiter than that." + +Her reply, although it was unequivocally to the effect that it was all +right--Graham needn't worry--failed, altogether, to reassure him. Was +this, after all, he wondered, what she had exploded about? She prevented +further inquiry, however, by an abrupt change of the subject, demanding +to be told what it was that he and his father, all these hours, had been +talking about. + +He took up the topic with unforced enthusiasm. He had been surprised and +deeply touched over the discovery that his father did not require to be +argued out of the project either to send him back to Harvard or to start +him in at the bottom in Martin Whitney's bank. "If he'd just been +through it all himself, he couldn't have understood any better how I +feel about it." + +"Did you tell him about the farm?" Mary asked. + +This was an idea of Graham's which she and Rush had been developing with +him during the half hour in the drawing-room before they had gone down to +dinner. Young Stannard, during his two years on a destroyer, had +conceived an extraordinary longing for Mother Earth, and had filled in +his dream in tolerably complete detail. What he wanted was an out-of-door +life which should not altogether deprive him of the pleasures of an urban +existence; and he accomplished this paradox by premising a farm within +convenient motoring distance of Chicago, on one of the hard roads. +Somewhere in the dairy belt, out Elgin way perhaps. You could have +wonderful week-end house parties in a place like that, even in winter, +with skiing and skating for amusements, and in summer it would be simply +gorgeous. And, of course, one could always run into town for the night if +there was anything particular to come for. + +Mary had volunteered to keep house for them and they had talked a lot of +amusing nonsense as to what her duties should be. Graham, too, had a kid +sister, only seventeen, who fitted admirably into the picture. She loved +the country, simply lived in riding breeches and rode like a man--a sight +better than most men--and drove a car like a young devil. There was +nothing, in fact, she couldn't do. + +Graham was altogether serious about it. He had been scouting around +during the fortnight since his return and had his eyes on two or three +places that might do. There was one four-hundred-acre property that was +altogether desirable, ideal in fact, except for the one painful +particular that the cost of it was just about twice as much as Graham's +father was willing to run to. But if Rush would go in with him they need +seek no further. The thing was as good as settled. + +"I did talk to father about it," Rush now told Mary. "The thing is a real +idea. Graham and I talked seriously about it while we were smoking before +we went up-stairs. The scheme is to run a dairy, hog and poultry +combination on a manufacturing basis and then sell our whole product +direct to two or three customers in town, one or two of the +clubs--perhaps a hotel. Deliver by motor truck every day, you see, and +leave the middleman out entirely. It's the only way to beat the game. +Father saw it like a shot. He said it would take a lot of money, of +course, but he thought he could manage my share." + +Mary relaxed just perceptibly deeper in the pillows and her eyelids +drooped again. "It's getting awfully late," Rush said; "don't you want to +go to sleep?" But he needed no urging to go on when she asked him to tell +her all about it, and for another half hour he elaborated the plan. + +He was still breezing along on the full tide of the idea, when, +happening to glance at her little traveling clock, he pulled himself up +short, took away her extra pillows, switched off her night lamp and +ordered her to go to sleep at once. Her apparent docility did not +altogether satisfy him and two or three times during the hour before he +himself fell asleep, he sat up to look under the door and see whether +she had turned the light on again. + +He was right about that, of course. The enforced calm Mary had imposed +upon herself as a penance for the tempest of emotion she had +indulged--she had lain without moving, hardly a finger, from the time she +remade that bed and crept back into it until hearing Rush coming she +switched on the light--had had a sort of hypnotic effect upon her. So +long as her body did not move, it ceased to exist altogether and set her +spirit free, like a pale-winged luna moth from its chrysalis to adventure +into the night. The light it kept fluttering back to was that blinding +experience with March while the music of his song had surged through her +and her hand had been crushed in his. + +Rush's coming in had brought her back to that tired still body of hers +again; his voice soothed, his presence comforted her; at his occasional +touch she was able to relax. (If only there were some one who loved her, +who would hold her tight--tight--) She hoped he would go on talking to +her; on and on. Because while he talked she could manage to stop +thinking--by the squirrel-like process of storing away all the ideas he +was suggesting to her for consideration later. + +But when the respite was over and she lay back in the dark again, she +made no effort to deny admission to the thoughts that came crowding so +thickly. She must think; she must, before the ordeal of the next +breakfast table, have taken thought. She must have decided if not what +she should do, at least what she could hope for. She was much clearer and +saner for the little interlude with Rush. + +Suppose in the first place;--suppose that Paula's rebellion was serious. +Suppose the Tower of Brass violated and the Princess carried away by the +_jinn_ or upon the magic carpet--whichever it was--to a world where none +of them could follow her. Suppose John Wollaston bereft again. Would not +Mary's old place be hers once more? Would not everything be just as it +had been during those two years before her father went to Vienna? + +But some instinct in her revolted utterly at that. It was an instinct +that she could not completely reason out. But she knew that if such a +calamity befell, her old place would not exist or would be intolerable +if it did. + +Suppose again:--suppose that Paula's rebellion could be somehow +frustrated. Would it be possible to save Paula for her father by saving +March from Paula? In plain words, by diverting him from Paula to herself. + +That was a disgustingly vulgar way of putting it. But wasn't it what she +meant? And if she couldn't be honest with her own thoughts.... Well then, +were her powers of attraction great enough, even if they were consciously +exerted to the utmost, to outpull Paula's with a musician, with a man +whose songs she could sing as she had sung to-night? + +That moment in Annie's old bedroom off the nursery supplied concretely +enough the answer to her question. They had been soul to soul in there, +they two. There was no language to describe the intimacy of it, except +perhaps the hackneyed phrases of the wedding service which had lost all +their meaning. And while they had stood together in the half dark, Paula +had opened the door, bringing the light in with her. She had taken him +confidently in her strong hands and kissed him and led him away without +one hesitating backward thought. + +And the truth seemed clear enough, incandescent, now she looked back at +it, that it was Paula who had possessed him all along. That moment which +she had called her own had been Paula's. Mary had got it because she had +happened to come in and sit down beside him. She had, as it were, picked +his pocket. She stood convicted the moment the rightful owner appeared. +That was how much her chance of "saving" March from Paula amounted to. + +What a hypocrite she had been to use that phrase even in her thoughts. +Save him from Paula, indeed! Paula could give him, even if she gave only +the half loaf, all he needed. She could inspire his genius, float it +along on the broad current of her own energy. Compared to that, what +could Mary give? What would it, her one possible gift, amount to? + +She pulled herself up short. Wallowing again! No more of that. She'd +leave March alone, and on that resolution she'd stop thinking about him. +She'd think about Rush and Graham and the farm. + +Graham! They didn't come, Rush had said, any whiter than that. Probably +he was right about it. It was a wonderful quality, that sort of +whiteness. What was it he had done (she didn't even remember!) that had +caused him such bitter self-reproach? You couldn't help liking him. It +ought not to be hard to fall sufficiently in love with him. And out on a +farm... A farmer's wife certainly had enough to do to keep her from +growing restless. With a lot of children, four to half a dozen,--no one +could call that a worthless life. + +And it was practicable. With an even break in the luck, she could +accomplish the whole of it. A man like Graham she could make happy. Her +one gift would be enough for him; all he'd want. What was it he had told +Rush to-night? That he had always thought her the most perfect... + +At that, appallingly, she was seized in the cold grip of an unforeseen +realization. She couldn't marry a boy like that--she couldn't marry any +man who regarded her like that--without first telling him what she was; +what she was not! She would have to make clear to him--there was simply +no escape from that--the nature of the thing that had happened in that +tiny flat in New York where she had lived alone so long. + +It was possible, of course, oh, more than that, probable even, that after +hearing the story he would still want to marry her. That he might regard +her, no matter what she said, as having been wronged; her innocence, +though once taken advantage of by a scoundrel, intact. His love would be +reenforced by pity. He'd think of nothing, in the stress of that moment, +but the desire to protect her, to provide a fortress for her. + +But would she dare, on these terms, marry him, or any other man for that +matter, no matter how ardently he professed forgiveness? It wouldn't be +until after the marriage was an accomplished thing, its first desires +satisfied, its first tension relaxed, that the story of her adventure +would begin to loom black and thunderous over the horizon of his mind. +(Who was the man? How could it have happened? In what mood of madness +could she have done such a thing? Might it ever,--when might it +not--happen again?) No! Marriage was difficult enough without being +handicapped additionally by a perennial misgiving like that. No +thoroughfare again! + +She started once more around the circle, but one can not keep at that +sort of thing forever. About sunrise she fell asleep. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE DUMB PRINCESS + + +None of his own family knew quite what to make of Anthony March. All of +them but his mother disapproved of him, on more or less mutually +contradictory grounds. Disapproved of him more than they did of one +another, though he occupied a sort of middle ground between them. It is a +possible explanation to the paradox that each of them regarded him as a +potential ally and so spent more time trying to change his ways, scolding +at him, pointing out his derelictions and lost opportunities, than it was +worth while spending on the others who were hopeless. + +I shall be a little more intelligible, perhaps, if I tell you briefly +who they were. The father, David March, and Eveline, his wife, were New +Englanders. They both came, as a matter of fact, from within ten miles +of Glastonbury, Connecticut, though they didn't discover this fact until +after they'd met a number of times in the social and religious +activities of the Moody Institute. The lives of both had been woven in +the somber colors of Evangelical religion. With him this ran close to +fanaticism and served as an outlet for a very intense emotional life. +She was not highly energized enough to go to extremes in anything, but +she acquiesced in all his beliefs and practises, made him in short, a +perfectly dutiful wife according to the Miltonian precept, "He for God +only, she for God in him." + +Back in New England she probably would not have married him for she was a +cut or more above him socially, the played-out end of a very fine line, +as her beautiful speech would have made evident to any sensitive ear. But +in Chicago, the disheveled, terrifying Chicago of the roaring eighties, +to all intents and purposes alone, clinging precariously to a +school-teacher's job which she had no special equipment for, she put up +only the weakest resistance to David March's determination that she +should be his wife. + +He was a skilled artisan, a stringer and chipper in a piano factory +(chipping, if you care to be told, is the tuning a piano gets before its +action is put in). One would hardly have predicted then, considering the +man's energy and intelligence, that he would remain just that, go on +working at the same bench for thirty-five years. But, as I have said, his +energy found its main outlet in emotional religion. + +Their first child, born in 1886, was a girl whom they named Sarah. +Anthony came two years later and for twelve years there were no more. +Then came the late baby, whom they appropriately named Benjamin and +allowed a somewhat milder bringing up than the iron rule the elder ones +had been subjected to. + +It was the dearest wish of David's life to make a preacher of Anthony +and he must have got by way of answers to his prayers, signs which +reconciled him to the sheer impossibility of this project. The boy's +passion for music manifested itself very early and with this David +compromised by training him for the higher reaches of his own craft. He +got employment for Anthony in the piano factory for a year or two after +his graduation from high school and then sent him on for a liberal two +years in a school in Boston where the best possible instruction in piano +tuning was to be had. + +Sarah was half-way through high school when her brother Benjamin was born +and for two years after she graduated, her mother's ill health, the +familiar breakdown of the middle forties, kept her at home. Then she +defied her father and took a job in a down-town office. What he objected +to, of course, was not her going to work but the use she made of the +independence with which self-support provided her. The quarrel never came +to a real break though often enough it looked like doing so, and except +for the brief period of her marriage Sarah always lived at home. + +When Anthony came back from Boston, he revolted, too. He had not been a +prodigal; indeed, during his second year in the East, he had in one way +or another, earned his own living and he had learned even beyond his +father's hopes to tune pianos. But he did it at an incredibly small +expense in time and energy. What his heart went into during those two +years was the study of musical theory and composition, and, thanks to a +special aptitude which rose to the pitch of genius, he managed to make +the comparatively meager training he could get in so short a time, +suffice to give him the technical equipment he needed. + +He came home armed, too, with a discovery. The discovery that a man not +enslaved by a possessive sense, a man whose self-respect is not dependent +upon the number of things he owns, a man able therefore to thumb his nose +at all the maxims of success, occupies really a very strong position. + +He didn't like the factory, though he gave it what he considered a fair +trial. He didn't like the way they tuned pianos in a factory. The dead +level of mechanical perfection which they insisted upon was a stupid +affront to his ear. And, of course, the strict regimentation of life at +home, the, once more, dead level of the plateau upon which life was +supposed to be lived, was distasteful to one with a streak of the nomad +and the adventurer in him. + +Thanks to his discovery he was able to construct an alternative to a life +like that. A skillful piano tuner could earn what money he needed +anywhere and could earn enough in a diligent week to set him free, his +simple wants provided for, for the rest of the month. + +But even a wanderer needs a base, a point of departure for his +wanderings, and his father's house could not be made to serve that +purpose, so Anthony domiciled himself, after a long quest, in the half +story above a little grocery just off North LaSalle Street and not far +from the river. + +It happened when Anthony had been living there a year or more that the +grocer, with whom he was on the friendliest of terms, got, temporarily, +into straits at precisely the time that Anthony had three hundred +dollars. He had won a prize of that amount offered by a society for the +encouragement of literature for the minor orchestral instruments, with a +concerto for the French horn. The grocer offered his note for it, but +Anthony thought of something better. He bought his room. It was to be his +to live in, rent free, for as long as time endured. + +He took a childlike pleasure in this lair of his. It accumulated his +miscellaneous treasures like a small boy's pocket. He made a mystery of +it. He never gave it as his address. Not even his family knew where it +was, nor, more than vaguely, of its existence. The address he had given +Paula was the one he gave every one else, his father's house out on the +northwest side, just off Fullerton Avenue. This room, in a sense seldom +attained, was his own. When he came back from France, the day Lucile saw +him sitting on the bench in the park, he found it exactly--save for a +heavy coating of dust--as he had left it, in 1917, when he went down to +Camp Grant. + +A good philosophy, so John Wollaston with a touch of envy had +admitted--if you can make it work. Where it breaks down with most young +men who set out so valiantly with it, is the point where one sees the +only girl in the world and recognizes the imperious necessity of winning +her, of holding out lures for her, of surrounding her, once won, with the +setting her superlative worth demands. That this did not happen to +Anthony March was due to the fact that the young woman he--not so much +saw as gradually perceived, was his sister Sarah's friend, Jennie +MacArthur. + +Independence had been forced upon Jennie so early that she never was +called upon to decide whether she liked it or not. She had an inquiring +mind--perhaps experimental would be the better word for it--abundant +self-confidence and a good stiff backbone. It was easy to make the +mistake of thinking her hard. She was not a pretty woman, with her +sandy hair and rather striking freckles, but she was well formed, she +dressed always with that crisp cleanliness which is the extravagant +standard of young women who work in good offices, and her voice had an +attractive timbre. + +To Sarah March (who, having fought for independence, was a little at a +loss what to do with it) Jennie's experience and her rather interesting +range of friends were a Godsend. It was at one of Jennie's parties in the +tiny pair of rooms where she lived alone that Sarah met Walter Davis, a +mechanical draftsman by day and an ardent young Socialist by night, whom +she afterward married. + +On the other hand, the home which Sarah was sometimes rather dubious +about the advantage of possessing, was to Jennie a delightful place to be +a familiar visitor in. She liked old David, who was a surprisingly +charming person when he had no authority over you, she liked Mrs. March, +she adored little Ben--young Ben he was now rapidly growing up to be--and +finally, she began taking an interest which eventually outweighed all the +rest, in the family black sheep, Anthony. + +The intimacy between them which began around the time of Sarah's marriage +continued intermittently for nearly four years. It had not, indeed, been +definitely broken off when he went into the army. + +When the attraction faded as it had definitely begun to do some months +before he went to Camp Grant, it left their friendship unimpaired, +enriched on the contrary. He could talk to her more easily, confide his +thoughts to her more freely than to any one else he knew. + +This ability to be confided in and depended upon was one of her special +talents. She had emerged, years before, from the crowded stenographers' +room in a big engineering concern into the private office of the chief. +He was an erratic genius, brilliant, irritable, exacting, tireless, all +but impossible to maintain any consistent relation with but one of bitter +enmity. He had about made up his mind that a fresh stenographer every +morning was all he could hope for, when Jennie became his Scheherazade. +By the time the war broke out she was as indispensable to him as his +hands. He had made her an officer of the company and paid her a salary of +six thousand dollars a year, but she went on remembering his engagements, +writing his letters and soothing the outraged feelings of his clients +just as she had done in humbler days. She was, in the good, old-fashioned +sense, his better half. Her amusement was the stock market and she played +it cannily and with considerable success with his rather diabolic +encouragement. + +She was in New York when March got home, and he saw her for the first +time since his return at his father's house on a Sunday morning more +than a fortnight after the evening at the Wollastons' when Paula had +sung his songs. + +It was his first appearance anywhere since the afternoon in Novelli's +studio when he had shown his opera to La Chaise and Paula. It had been +agreed among them that with certain important changes, it would make an +admirable vehicle for Paula's return to the operatic stage, and being a +small affair from the producer's point of view, involving only one +interior set, would be practicable for production during the summer at +Ravinia in case the project for Paula's singing there went through. March +had agreed to the changes and withdrawn into his stronghold over the +grocery store with a determination not more than to come up for air until +he had worried the thing into the shape they wanted. + +He didn't know it was Sunday--having attributed the peacefulness he +found pervading Fullerton Avenue to his own good conscience, a purely +subjective phenomenon--until in the parlor of his father's house the +sight of his brother Ben at the piano playing a soundless tune upon +the tops of the keys, brought it home to him. When he inquired for the +rest of the family, he learned that they were up-stairs getting ready +for church. + +"I hope," he said, with a grin at his younger brother, "that you aren't +suffering from that old hebdomadal sore throat of yours." + +"No, it's all right," Ben said, declining though to be amused. "I've got +a gentleman's agreement with Sarah. Every other Sunday. Father's well +enough satisfied now if he gets one of us. When they're all gone, I can +slip out and buy a Sunday paper--jazz up the piano--have a regular orgy. +Every other Sunday! Gee, but it's fierce!" + +"It's pathetic," March said. "Poor father! I don't suppose there's any +help for it." + +What struck him was the pitiful futility of his father's persistence in +trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly +growing into full independence. The only sanction he had was a tradition +daily becoming more fragile. He was in for the bitterness of another +disappointment. That was what there was no help for. + +Naturally young Ben didn't interpret it this way. "You're a nice one +to talk like that," he said resentfully. "You've always done whatever +you pleased." + +"There's nothing to prevent you from doing the same thing if you look at +it that way," Anthony observed. "You've got a job a man could live on, +haven't you?" + +"Live on? Fifteen dollars a week?" + +And it may be admitted that Ben's sense of outrage had some foundation. +Years ago he had made up his small young mind that he would never work in +the factory and he settled the question by getting himself a job in one +of the piano salesrooms on Wabash Avenue. He wasn't precisely a salesman +yet, he might perhaps have been spoken of by an unkind person as an +office boy. But it was essential that he look like a salesman and act +like a salesman, even in the matter of going to lunch. Some day soon, he +was going to succeed in completing a sale before some one else came +around and took it out of his hands, and he could then strike for a +regular commission. + +In the meantime with shoes and socks and shirts and neckties costing what +they did, the suggestion that his salary was adequate to provide a +bachelor's independence was fantastic and infuriating. + +"Yes," he grumbled, "if I wanted to live in a rat hole and look +like a tramp." + +"My rat hole isn't so bad to live in," Anthony said, "but I'd be sorry to +think I looked like a tramp. Do I, for a fact? I haven't had this suit on +since I went into the army but I thought it looked all right." + +"Oh, there's a big rip in the back of the shoulder where the padding is +sticking through and your cuffs are frayed and your necktie's got a hole +worn plumb through it where the wing of your collar rubs. You don't look +like a tramp, of course, because you look clean and decent. It would be +all right if you had to be like that. Only it's all so darned +unnecessary. You could make good money if you'd only live like a regular +person. Every day or two, somebody telephones to know if you aren't home +and if there isn't some way we can get word to you, and it's kind of +humiliating to have to say there isn't;--that we don't know where you +are, haven't seen you for a week,--things like that. Of course, it's none +of my business, but _I'm_ trying to pull out of this. I'd like to _be_ +somebody someday and it would be a darn sight easier if you were trying +to pull the same way instead of queering us all the time." + +"Yes, I know," Anthony said thoughtfully. "But then there's Sarah on the +other hand who can't forgive me for not putting on a red necktie and +going Bolshevik. She'd have me put in my time trying to upset the +bourgeois applecart altogether." + +Ben grinned. "You ought to have heard her go on about the limousine that +came and left a note for you the other day. Lady inside, chauffeur in a +big fur coat. He came up to the door and asked whether you were home and +left the note when Sarah said you weren't. Last Thursday, I think that +was, just before supper. It's over there on the mantel, I guess. Sarah's +afraid you're going to turn into a little brother of the rich." + +"You tell Sarah," Anthony said off the top of his mind, the rest of it +obviously engaged with the note,--"you tell Sarah there's nothing +capitalistic about this. This is from her Doctor Wollaston's wife. +Certainly he earns his living if anybody does." + +"Do they want their piano tuned again?" Ben asked. + +"They don't mention it. They want to know if I'll come to lunch to-day. +I'm going to telephone to see if the invitation has expired." + +"Good lord!" said Ben, "what have you got to wear? You can't go looking +like that!" He meant to go into particulars when his brother came back +from the telephone. But by that time he had something of nearer concern +to himself to think about. Anthony found him staring out the window with +an expression of the liveliest dismay. + +"Oh, look who's here!" he said. "Can you beat it?" + +Anthony looked and saw a little Ford coupé pulling up to the curb in +front of the house; looked more closely at the person at the wheel +and blinked. + +"Jennie MacArthur! I thought she was still in New York. But what's she +doing in that car?" + +"Oh, she bought it last fall," Ben said. "She's getting rich. But can't +you see what it means? She's coming around to see Sarah and that'll give +Sarah an excuse for staying home from church. And that means that _I'll_ +have to go." + +"Don't worry about that," Anthony said, catching up his hat. "I'll head +her off. Tell mother I'll be around to-night." + +He intercepted Jennie at the car door, caught both her hands and pressed +them tight, pushed her back into her seat as he did so, climbed in and +sat down beside her. "I'm supposed to be saving Ben from the horrible +fate of getting dragged to church when it's really Sarah's Sunday," he +said. "If you'll just drive me around the corner, I'll explain." + +But she prevented him with a little laugh when he would have begun. "This +is good enough for me. I don't want any explanation." + +"It's pretty good," he agreed. "Stop a minute now we're safely around the +corner and let me have a look at you." + +She obeyed him, literally, pulling up to the curb again, accorded him the +look he wanted and took, meanwhile, one of her own at him. Neither of +them, however, seemed to find just the phrase in which to announce the +result of this scrutiny. She started on again presently and he relaxed +against the cushion. "This is more like being home again than anything +that's happened yet," he said. "Are we to have a real visit?" + +She was free till lunch she told him, and he, after saying "Well, that's +something," admitted his own engagement. "However, that's the best part +of two hours. The thing is not to waste any of it." + +Naturally enough they wasted a good deal of it. They talked about the +little car they were riding in, how she had learned to drive, why she had +bought it; how Mr. Ferris, her boss, had said he wouldn't be any good for +the day after coming down-town in a tight jammed elevated train and how, +having tried the new method of transportation she had agreed with him; +how it was as easy to run as a typewriter. + +A few minutes more of that, she thought, and she'd begin telling Ford +jokes, so she wrenched around to a new subject and asked him how much +he'd seen of France; what he thought of the French; how long he'd been +home; and what it seemed like to be in civilian clothes again;--topics +upon which he enlarged as well as he could. She had driven meanwhile, +north to Diversey Boulevard and had then turned west, around the ring. +They were out in the middle of Garfield Park when she said after a hard, +tight silence, "Isn't this perfectly ghastly?" + +"It's awful," he agreed. "I don't know what's the matter with us--or +whose fault it is. But I certainly didn't mean to get started like this." + +"I expect that's it," she told him. "Haven't you been trying to treat +me just exactly right? Make me feel perfectly comfortable? Haven't you +been--being tactful, with all your might, ever since we started? +Because I have." + +"Well, then, for heaven's sake," he said, "let's quit! Quit trying so +infernally hard, I mean. It's too nice a morning to spoil. You know, if +the sun manages to come out, as it's trying to, it will be a very +handsome April day." + +"I don't think talking about the weather is much of an improvement," she +commented. "Tony, let's give it up, for to-day I mean. We'll try again +sometime from a fresh start. This is perfectly hopeless." + +He tried to pretend that she didn't mean it but she made it clear even +with a touch of asperity that she did. "Oh, all right," he growled and +reached for the handle to the door. + +"Don't be silly," she commanded. "I'm not going to leave you out here in +the wilds of Garfield Park. Where do you want to go? Is it too early for +your lunch?" + +"Mrs. Wollaston told me to come at one," he said. "You aren't supposed to +be ahead of time for a thing like that, are you? Anyhow, I've got to go +back to my room first." + +She caught up the name. "Sarah told me about your going there. First to +tune the piano and then the evening when she sang your songs. Sarah's +quite eloquent about it." + +"Yes, poor Sarah, I know. Ben was quoting her this morning. However, that +won't make the least difference with what I'm going to do." + +"What are you going to do?" she asked. + +"Why, I suppose," he said, "that I'm going to do what people speak of as +settling down. What they mean by that is taking an interest in +consequences--more of an interest in what things lead to than in what +they are. Well, that's what I'm at now." + +"That's a change, all right, for you," she said. + +He agreed with her. "I knew when it happened," he added. "It happened +when I heard Paula Carresford sing one of my songs. Do you remember the +story that used to be in the school reader about the tiger that tasted +blood and ate up the princess? You know, Jennie, it's practically true +that up to that night I'd never heard any of my music at all--except +mutilated fragments of it as I played it myself. And I'll tell you it was +a staggering experience. The queerest experience I ever had in my life, +too. I'll tell you about that sometime. But I changed right there, just +the way the tiger did. I don't happen to want a fur overcoat nor an +automobile nor an apartment on the Drive. I honestly don't want them. +They aren't a part of my dreams--never were. But I do want to hear my own +music. I want to hear it done for all it's worth. I want to hear +orchestras play it and singers as good as Paula Carresford sing it. And +in order to do that I've got to look ahead a little. I've got to stop +doing always exactly as I damned please. I've got to do things because +somebody besides myself wants them done." + +"Have you got something like that to do to-day--with an eye to the +consequences?" she asked. + +He looked sharply around at her. She was very intent on her driving just +then. "That's a remarkably good guess in a way," he said. "I dread going +to that house to lunch. A month ago I'd have refused--or pretended I +hadn't got the invitation until too late. And I'd have pretended to +myself that it was because I didn't care to play the social game; didn't +want to take on obligations of a kind I couldn't meet. But now I've told +Mrs. Wollaston I'd come, I know the real reason why I don't want to. + +"I said just now I didn't want a fur overcoat nor an automobile, and +that's eighty percent true. And yet, there's a crawly little snob +inside me that's in a panic right now because I haven't got proper +clothes to wear and because I'm going to have to sit down in front of a +lot of funny shaped forks that I don't know the special uses of. + +"Oh, there's more to it than that of course. It's rather a cross-grained +situation. Wollaston doesn't like me. He thinks I'm responsible for his +wife's having kicked over the traces and signed up to sing at Ravinia +this summer. In a way, I suppose I am. She's planning to use that opera +of mine, you remember,--_The Outcry_ we called it--for a novelty, +provided they like the way I've padded up her part. The big rôle in it is +really for the baritone, of course. That's what I've been slaving over +for the last two weeks. If she makes a hit with it, she'll take it to the +Metropolitan next winter. Of course, there's no reason in God's world why +she shouldn't do that if she can get away with it. She hasn't any +children to look after; she told me she didn't even keep house for her +husband. All the same he regards me as a sort of potential homewrecker." + +"You can't quite blame him for that, can you?" Jennie suggested. "If you +began reading a story about a beautiful young opera singer who left her +husband to go back on the stage again and sing an opera by a musical +genius she'd discovered, wouldn't you expect them to fall in love with +each other?" + +"That shows what nonsense stories are," he said. "That couldn't happen to +us in a thousand years. She's beautiful, and kindly, and affectionate. +She's got temperament enough to blow the cork out of any bottle you tried +to hold it down in. But I couldn't fall in love with her if I tried. It +doesn't happen on that basis. Besides which, it's my belief that she's +altogether in love with her husband. All the same, she's taken me up. She +means to push me for all she's worth and let her husband like it or lump +it as he pleases. She's got some plans, I don't know just what, for +showing me off to one or two of the 'right' people to-day. You can +imagine what it will be like, can't you?" + +"I should think it would be rather good fun--that sort of game," she +commented. + +"That's where the forks come in," he said. "And not having a proper +coat. That sort of social skill is the suit of armor those people wear. +I've got to go back to my room and sew up the rip Ben told me about and +trim my cuffs and try to tie my necktie so that the worn-out spots won't +show-and make them do." + +It was but a few minutes later--they had been silent ones--that she +stopped her car in front of the little grocery store where the rickety +outside stair led up to his door. + +"I'll come in with you and sew up the rip in your coat," she said. + +She wouldn't have made that offer, indeed would hardly have driven him up +to his own door, if she had not been a young woman with steady nerves and +a level head, and an abundant confidence in both. Because that dingy +little wooden building with its outside stair to his attic, was the +nucleus of memories that had by no means lost their poignancy. It was +not, after all, so many years ago that she had mounted that stair for the +first time, and it couldn't be considered strange that her heart +quickened a little as she climbed it now. + +The room startled her by being so utterly unchanged. Not only the major +articles in it; the stove, the iron bed, the deal table he wrote at, the +carpenter's bench, the half invented musical typewriter that he had once +attempted to convert an old square piano into, the hollow-backed easy +chair,--but the quite minor and casual trifles as well. On top of the set +of home-made shelves that served for his music and his books was a sort +of still-life composed of a meerschaum pipe with a broken stem and an +empty goblet of pressed glass, standing upon a yellow paper-covered copy +of Anatole France's _Thais_, that had been just like that the last time +she was here. She had stuck a bunch of sweet peas she was wearing into +that goblet. It made an uncannily short bridge to the past, a trivial +reminder like that. + +Evidently he felt it, too. Perhaps he had followed her glance toward that +dusty shelf corner. Because, a moment after he had shut the door behind +them, opened a window and taken a look at the fire, he came hesitantly +and a little awkwardly up to her and took her by the shoulders as if to +draw her into an embrace. He was very gentle about it. + +Also he was ludicrously tentative. If she'd wanted to let herself go she +could have laughed rather hysterically about that. She disengaged herself +from his hands, decisively, indeed, yet without any air of pique. + +"Oh, no, my dear," she said. "Take off your coat and let me get to work. +Where's your sewing kit?" + +He produced it instantly (the room was not in real disorder; it only +looked like that to one who did not understand its system), gave her his +coat, wandered restlessly about for a few minutes and presently came to +rest at the deal table where he had spent the greater part of the last +fortnight, turning over, discontentedly, the sheets of score paper he had +left there. + +Over her sewing she let her mind run free, forgetting this present Sunday +with its problems, mixing a pleasant amalgam of the past. She wasn't +heartbroken, you know, hardly regretful. She had life about as she wanted +it. She never had been in love with March in the accepted meaning of the +phrase--she had never even thought she was--and it is altogether probable +that if she had found him eager to resume the old relation, she would +have felt a certain reluctance about taking it up again. Life changed +with the years and some of its old urgencies quieted down--for the time +anyhow. Still the night when she had worn those sweet peas remained a +fragrant memory. She was recalled to the present by the violent gesture +he made over the score on his work table. + +"This damned thing is rotten," he said with angry conviction. "I knew +it,--I knew it while I wrote it. It may be what they want, but it's +rotten. Straight into the stove is where it ought to go." + +"Is that what you're writing for Mrs. Wollaston?" she asked. + +He nodded. "I was trying to make up my mind whether to take this with me +to-day or not. If she's the musician I think she is, she'll tell me to +carry it out to the ash can." + +"Well, that will be better than putting it in the stove yourself," she +observed, going back with an air of placidity to her sewing, "because +then you'll know it's bad and if you burn it up now, you won't. You +haven't even heard it." + +"I heard it before I wrote it," he argued. "I hear it again when I read +it. That's a silly argument. Of course I know it." + +"You said a little while ago that you'd never heard any of your music +until Mrs. Wollaston sang those songs. They sounded better than you +thought they would." + +"That's different," he protested. "I knew they were good, damned good. +Only I didn't quite realize how good they were. I suppose I won't realize +until I hear her sing this how rotten it is. But I don't need to. I know +well enough right now." + +He went on turning the pages back and forth with gloomy violence, reading +a passage here and another there and failing to get the faintest ray of +comfort out of any of it, even out of the old soiled quires which +belonged obviously to the original score. + +"Is it all bad?" she asked. "Or just the new part." + +"The whole thing," he grunted. + +"That's that Belgian thing, isn't it?" + +"That's the one." + +"Well," she pointed out to him, "you thought that was good once. If it +all looks alike to you this morning, perhaps what you've just been +writing is as good as that, and it's just your mood to-day that makes it +look rotten." + +He closed the score and slapped his hand down upon it with a gesture of +dismissal. Then he rose and leaned back against the edge of the table. +"That's good logic, my dear," he conceded, "but it doesn't cover the +ground. The old stuff was good in a way. I really meant it and felt it +and I managed to get it down on paper. And the new stuff is like it, in +that it's a damned clever imitation of it. I had to do it that way +because I couldn't get back into the old mood. I'm sick of atrocities and +horrors--everything that's got the name of war in it, even though I was +never under fire myself. Well, writing the imitation has made me hate the +thing I was trying to imitate. I stuck at it for the reason I told you +this morning. But, good God, when it results in stuff like this...! +Jennie, what shall I do about it? Shall I take this thing now and chuck +it into the stove and then tell La Chaise and Mrs. Wollaston to go to the +devil? Or shall I tuck it under my arm like a good little boy and see if +I can get away with it?" + +She looked at him thoughtfully. "What is the new thing you want to +write?" she asked. + +He smiled. "You're a wonder, Jennie," he said. "There is a new thing. +I'm simply swamped in it. It won't let me alone. It's been driving me +pretty nearly crazy. That's why it's been such perfect hell sticking to +this other thing. Jennie, it's another opera. A big one, full size. A +romantic fairy opera. I haven't got it in order yet. It isn't fit to +talk about. But it's about a princess, a little blue-eyed, pale-haired +princess, who is under a spell. She's dumb. She's dumb except in the +presence of her true lover. Do you see? They are trying to cure her and +they can't. But mysteriously in the night they hear her singing. Her +lover is with her, and they try to solve the mystery. Maybe they kill +him, I don't know. Or maybe they make him faithless to her. I don't know +whether there is a fairy story like that or whether I just made it up. +And I haven't worked it out at all. I haven't any words for it, no book, +nor anything. But I tell you it comes in waves, whole scenes from it. +I'd like a hundred hands to write it down with. I'd like to take one +header into it and never come up. And meanwhile I'm slugging away at +that other damned thing because Mrs. Wollaston and LaChaise want +it,--because it's the main chance." + +She asked why he didn't tell them about the new idea and get them to +adopt it instead, but he greeted this suggestion with an impatient laugh. + +"It would be absolutely impossible for Ravinia in the first place," he +said. "The thing would need as big a production as, oh, _Pelléas and +Melisande_. And then this woman could never sing it. She isn't the type. +This is different altogether from anything she could do. Oh, no, it's +quite hopeless until after I've succeeded with something else. But, oh, +my God, Jennie, if you could hear it!" + +She had finished her repairs on his coat and rising now held it up to +him. While he was groping for the sleeves, she asked quietly, "Who is the +princess, Tony? The dumb little princess with the blue eyes." + +For a second he stood just as he was, like one suddenly frozen, then he +settled into his coat, walked over to his work chair and dropped into it, +leaning forward and propping up his head with his hands. "Yes," he said. +"In a way, perhaps, there is some one. That's what I was going to tell +you about. She came in as quiet as a little ghost, just as Mrs. +Wollaston was beginning to sing and she sat down beside me without a +word. And somehow while we listened, we--we were the same person. I can't +make you understand that. It never happened to me before, nothing in the +least like it, nothing so--intimate. I felt that song go vibrating right +through her. She didn't speak at all, even after it was over, except to +say that we mustn't talk--while we were waiting for the people in the +other room to go away. And then Mrs. Wollaston came and got me. She +didn't see her at all. She had disappeared somehow by that time." + +He stopped but Jennie, it seemed, had nothing to say just then. She +turned away to her outdoor wrap but she laid it down again and stood +still when he went on. + +"You don't want to run away with the idea that I'm in love with her," he +said. "That isn't it. That's particularly--not it. I haven't an idea who +she is nor any intention of trying to find out. Even if I knew the way to +begin getting acquainted with her, I'm inclined to think I'd avoid it. +But as an abstraction--no, that's not what I mean--as a symbol of what +I'll find waiting for me whenever I get down to the core of things ... +I've got a sort of--superstition if I don't do anything to--to break the +spell, you know, that sometime she'll come back just the way she came +that night." + +With a little exaggeration of the significance of the act, she put on the +coat she had crossed the room to get. He got up and came over to help her +but he stopped with a sudden clenching of the hands, and a wave of color +in his face as he saw the look in hers. At that she came swiftly to meet +him, pulled him up in a tight embrace and kissed him. + +"Good luck, my dear," she said. "I must be running and so must you. I'd +take you with me only we go different ways. Carry your score along to the +Wollastons. That's the first step to the princess, I guess." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +IN HARNESS + + +The episode upon which March had built the opera he called _The Outcry_, +was one that was current during the autumn of 1914. A certain Belgian +town had been burnt and it had been officially explained that this was +done because the German officer who was billeted upon the burgomaster had +been shot. The story was that the burgomaster's son shot him because he +had raped his sister. The thing got complete possession of March's mind. +At first just the horror of it and later its dramatic and musical +possibilities. He saw, in orchestral terms, the sodden revelry in that +staid house--with its endless cellars of Burgundy. He saw the tight-drawn +terror in the girl's room where she lay in bed. He saw the room lighted +fitfully by the play of searchlights over the city; the sinister entrance +from a little balcony through the French widow, of the officer in +uniform, his shadow flung ahead of him by the beam of the searchlight. He +saw the man, blood--as well as wine--drunk, garrulous and fanatic with +the megalomania of the conquering invader. He saw the man's intention +made clear from the first, but the execution of it luxuriously postponed. +Safely postponed because of the terrified girl's acceptance of his +assurance that if anything happened to him, if a hand were raised against +him, her father and a dozen more hostages would be shot and the town +burned to the ground. Then came the girl's irrepressible outcry when he +first touched her; the brother's knock at the door; her frantic effort to +reassure him frustrated by the officer's drunken laugh; the forcing of +the door and the fight half in the dark; the killing of the girl and then +of her ravisher. + +The thing that wouldn't let March alone, that forced him into the +undertaking, was the declaration of the brutal philosophy of the +conqueror made by the officer while he gloated over the girl who was to +be his prey; the chance to put into musical terms that paranoiac delusion +of world conquest. One recognized in it, vaguely, some of 'Wagner's +themes and some of Straus', distorted and grown monstrous. + +The thing had haunted March, as I have said, and he had tried to find +somebody who would write him the book, the indispensable preliminary to +his getting to work. Failing here, he had audaciously made up his mind to +write it himself. It was not his first attempt to do, in the mere light +of nature, a thing commonly supposed to be impossible except at the end +of painful instruction. He had once experimented at painting in oils, he +had tried his hand at the stylus, he had made a few figurines in +modeling-wax. He wrote his play, then, by the simple process of building +first with painstaking accuracy, a model of his stage, the girl's room in +that burgomaster's house with the French windows giving upon the little +balcony. He modeled the furniture in plastiscene. He bought three little +dolls to represent his characters. And then he reported what he saw +happening in that room; what his characters did and what they said. By +the time he had finished this work, the music was all in his head. He +couldn't write it down fast enough. + +It had been one of the great experiences of his life, writing that opera. +Jennie's reminder that he had once believed it good, was a conservative +statement. LaChaise and Paula were deeply impressed by the power, both of +its music and its drama and saw possibilities in it for a sensational +success. The drawback, fatal unless it could be overcome, lay in the fact +that the dominant rôle in it was that of the baritone. Dramatically the +soprano's part was good enough, but there was nowhere near enough for +her to sing. There was no reason though, they both asserted, and sent +March away from their conference at least half convinced, why the girl's +part could not be greatly amplified. There were various expedients;--a +preliminary scene between the girl and her brother; an apostrophe to an +absent lover; a prayer. Also instead of being frozen into terror-stricken +silence by her ravisher's monstrous purpose, she could just as well be +represented as making a desperate resistance. She could plead with him, +denounce him; attempt to take advantage of his drunkenness and trick him. +It could be made as good a woman's part as the big act of _Tosca_. + +March had assented to all this and gone to work. + +Paula did not tell him, as he had gloomily prophesied to Jennie, to take +the new first scene he brought her that Sunday out to the ash can. And, +indeed, it sounded so much better when they read it over together, that +he was for the moment reassured. But her attitude toward the opera was +different from the one she had taken toward the group of Whitman songs, +and this difference grew more marked at their subsequent sessions over +it. There had been about the songs the glamour of discovery. One does not +hasten to apply the assayer's acid to treasure trove. And, too, it was an +altruistic impulse which had prompted her to take up the songs. + +There aren't many people who can travel steadily, or very far, on that +motivation, and Paula was not one of them. From the moment when she took +the plunge, ignored--all but defied--her husband's wishes, and signed the +Ravinia contract, she ceased to be concerned for anything, broadly +speaking, but her own success. March's opera, then, was not, to her, the +expression of his genius but a potential vehicle for hers. She was +acutely critical of it. She knew what she wanted and it was not +thinkable that she should put up with anything less. + +She was not aware of this change of attitude. She was blessed with a +vigorous non-analytical mind that asked no awkward questions, +suggested no paralyzing doubts. The best thing that could possibly +happen to March's opera was that it should be made to fit her; that it +should demand precisely all her resources and nothing that was beyond +them. Obviously, since it was going to be her opera, a thing she was +going to wear. + +Had she been, as many eminent persons in her profession are, a mere +bundle of insensate egotisms complicated by a voice, she would have +driven March to flat rebellion in a week, all his good resolutions +notwithstanding. What made it tolerable was that she had a good musical +intelligence of her own, and a real dramatic sense. He could recognize, +what she wanted as an intelligible thing, consistent with itself. Only, +it was not his thing-not the thing he saw. By reason of its very +consistency it was never the thing he saw. + +"She wouldn't do it that way," he would protest. + +"I would," Paula would tell him. "I wouldn't lie there, whimpering." + +He was always arguing with her--wrangling, it almost came to, +sometimes--in defense of his own conception. For a sample: + +"Look at what she is; a burgomaster's daughter. That means prosperous, +narrow-minded, middle-class people. She's convent-bred, devout. She's +still young or she'd be married. She's altogether without experience. +She's frightened just as a child would be over what's going on in the +house. And the prayer she says when she goes to bed would be just the +nice little prayer a child would say, an Our Father or a Hail Mary, +whatever it might be. As simple as possible, on the surface, but with an +undertone of overmastering terror. The sort of Promethean defiance you're +talking about would be inconceivable to a child like that." + +"I suppose it would, to most of them," she admitted, "but this one's +going to be different. After all, it's the exceptional ones that usually +have operas written about them. I don't believe all the dancers in +Alexandria were like Thais, nor all the gipsy cigar-makers in Seville +like Carmen. I don't believe many little Japanese girls would feel about +Pinkerton the way Cio Cio San did. Why can't our Dolores be an +exception, too?" + +The only answer he could make to that was that it spoiled the other +figure, reduced him from a sort of cosmic monster to the mere custom-made +grand-opera villain. + +"What if it does?" she retorted. "This isn't being written for Scotti or +Vanni Marcoux. It's being written for me." That was the tonic chord they +always came back to. It was Paula's opera. + +March presently began to feel, too, that he was growing to be nothing +more than Paula's composer. It was important to the success of their +enterprise that his reputation should be intensively exploited among the +rich and influential who figured as patrons of the Ravinia season. She +went at the task of building it as ruthlessly as she remodeled his opera. + +Her demands upon him were explicit. In the first place he was to bring +her all his music, early as well as late, trivial as well as important, +in order that she might select from it what, if anything, might be +exploited at once. She had promised to give a recital just before Easter, +in aid of one of the local charities--it was one that boasted an +important list of patronesses--and if she could make an exclusive program +of his songs she would like to do so. Then, while it was too late to get +any of his compositions performed by the orchestra this season, it would +be a good thing to get Mr. Stock to read something in the hope of his +taking it for next year. An announcement, even a mere unofficial +intimation, that Anthony March (whose opera ... and so on)--was to be +represented on the symphony programs next season, would help a lot. + +What dismayed him most was her insistence--she was clear as a bell about +this--that he himself get up the accompaniments to some of the simpler of +his songs so that when she took him out to meet people who wanted to hear +a sample of his music then and there, they could manage, between them, +some sort of compliance. He nearly got angry, but decided to laugh +instead, over her demand that he be waiting, back stage, when she gave +her recital of his songs (which she did with great success) to come out +at the end and take his bow in his now discarded uniform. It was the only +reference she ever made to his shabby appearance. + +(It was steadily growing shabbier, too, since she left him hardly any +time at all for tuning pianos. She would have been utterly horrified had +she known what tiny sums he was living on from week to week. And it never +occurred to her when she suggested that a certain score of his ought to +be copied, that he could not afford to take it out to a professional +copyist and so sat up nights doing it himself. He did it rather easily, +to be sure, since it was one of the numerous things at which he had +earned a living.) + +There was only one of her many demands that he persistently refused to +comply with. And she took this refusal rather hard; acted more hurt than +angry about it, to be sure, but came back to it again and again. When she +discovered that he made no pretense of living at his father's house, she +asked for his real address so that she could always be sure of getting +at him when she wanted him. This he would not give her. If he did, he +said, it would only result in his staying away from there and doing his +work somewhere else. It was one of his simple necessities to know that he +couldn't be got at. He would make every possible concession. Would go, or +telephone, at punctiliously regular and brief intervals, to his father's +house to learn whether she had sent for him, but give up the secrecy of +his lair he would not. It wasn't possible. + +I think she compensated herself for this refusal by sending for him +sometimes when she did not really need him, just to be on the safe side, +and, on the same basis, engaged his attendance ahead from day to day. +Anyhow, she occupied, in one way or another, practically the whole of his +time; and the dumb little blue-eyed princess knocked at his door in vain. +Only in those hours when sheer fatigue had sent him to bed had she any +opportunity of visiting him. Sometimes she made white nights for him by +haunting those hours, refusing to go away; sometimes, by not coming at +all, she filled him with terror lest she had gone for good--would not +come back even when he was ready for her. When that panic was upon him he +hated Paula with a devouring hatred. + +Of the human original of his blue-eyed princess, he saw during those +weeks, nothing. On that first Sunday when he lunched at the house he +heard them speak of a member of the family, a daughter of John Wollaston, +named Mary, who had been living in New York and had recently returned but +was not lunching at home that day. He got the idea then that she might be +the girl who had so mysteriously come in and sat beside him while Paula +sang; and without any evidence whatever to support this surmise, it +became a settled conviction. But an odd shrinking, almost superstitious, +as he had confessed to Jennie, from doing anything that might break the +spell kept him from asking any questions. + +During the first week of his almost daily visits to the house, he got +repeated intimations of her, a glimpse once through an open door on the +third floor into a room that struck him as being, probably, hers. The +impression, once more, when he was coming down from the music room that +this was the door which he had just heard softly shut as if some one, the +princess herself, of course, who had stood listening to the music for a +while, had withdrawn there when she heard his step on the stairs. Once on +the settee in the hall he saw a riding crop and a small beaver hat that +he felt a curious certainty belonged to her and once out of a confusion +of young voices in the drawing-room, and a dance tune going on the +Victrola, he heard some one call out her name, hers he was sure though he +didn't hear her answer. Perhaps she had answered without speaking. The +dumb princess again. + +Then suddenly even these faint hints of her presence ceased, and he +remarked their absence with a troubled wonder until one day Paula +volunteered the statement that Mary had gone away on a visit for a month +or two, out to Wyoming, where a great friend of hers, Olive Corbett, and +her husband had a ranch. + +By asking a few intelligent questions, he could have found out a lot +more about her from Paula for she was disposed to talk freely enough +about the family life she was so oddly enclosed in, and their perpetual +quarrels about the opera never carried over into their breathing spells. +In the long hours of their almost daily sessions the occasional rests +made up quite a total and March accumulated a lot of information about +Paula herself. + +Indeed it was not quite as idle as that sounds. Paula talked to him +thirstily, gave him somehow the impression that she had had no one for a +good many years with whom she could converse without reservation in her +own idiom. + +She came, he learned, of a Virginia family which had migrated during her +early childhood to California. It was obvious that they were well-bred, +but equally so that they were not very competent. The victims, he judged, +of a lot of played-out southern ideas and traditions. They were still +living and March allowed himself to guess that they were one of the minor +reasons why Doctor John had to earn a lot of money. + +Paula with her splendid physique and gorgeous voice must have looked to +them like the family hope. They had managed at considerable sacrifice to +send her abroad, but evidently without any idea of the time and the money +it takes to erect even the most promising material into a genuine +success. After a year or two, she had been abandoned to make her way as +best she could. + +Even now that they were safely consigned to the past, Paula could not +talk about the shifts and hardships of that time with any relish. The +discouragements must have sunk in pretty deep. She hinted--it was not +the sort of topic she could discourse candidly about--that the +blackest of those discouragements had come from the amorous advances +of men who had it in their power to open opportunities to her but +wanted a _quid pro quo_. + +He asked her in that connection whether during those hard times she had +never felt inclined to fall in love on her own account. + +"I never cared a snap of my fingers for any man," she said with obvious +sincerity, "until I saw John." + +This slowness of her erotic development surprised him rather until he +evoked the explanation that her energies had been concentrated upon her +musical ambition. Music, since she was a real musician, had been a +genuine emotional outlet for her. + +March speculated rather actively upon the relation between Paula and her +husband. There was no dark room in the composer's mind. He was the other +pole from Aunt Lucile. All human problems set his mind at work. He was +not widely read in the literature of psychology and he had a rough +working theory which he regarded as his own, a dynamic theory. People got +started off in life with a certain amount of energy. It varied immensely +between individuals, of course, but one couldn't alter the total of his +own. Upon that store you ran until you were spent. What channels this +stream of energy cut for itself was partly a matter of luck, partly one +of self-determination. The important fact was that there was only so much +and that what went down one way did not also go down another. It might be +a hundred rivulets or one river, it couldn't be both. This philosophy was +largely responsible for the ordering of his own life, for his doing +without possessions, for the most part without friends, for his keeping +the brake set so tightly upon his sex impulses. + +John must have come into Paula's life, he reflected, at a time when the +musical outlet to her energies had been dammed up. Her main stream, like +that of the Mississippi, had cut a new channel for itself. Had there +been, he wondered, some similar obstruction in the main channel of John +Wollaston's emotional life? Anyhow, there was no doubt that for the five +years since this cataclysm had occurred, the course of true love had run +smooth and deep. But suppose now that, through LaChaise's intervention, +Paula's musical career was again opened to her, would the current turn +that way? Would John be left stranded? Had Paula herself any misgivings +to this effect? + +That she was deeply troubled about her present relation with John and in +general about John himself, would have been plain to a less penetrating +eye than Anthony's. There was no open quarrel between them. Wollaston +dropped into the music room sometimes, late in the afternoon, to ask how +the opera was getting along. His manner to March on these occasions was +one of, perhaps, slightly overwrought politeness, but the intention of it +did not seem hostile. Toward Paula he presented the image of humorous, +affectionate concern, the standard behavior of the perfect husband. + +It was Paula, on these occasions, who gave the show away, betraying by a +self-conscious eagerness to make him welcome, the fact that he was not. +She made the mistake of telling him he looked tired and worried, facts +too glaringly true to be bandied about in the presence of a stranger. He +looked to March as if he were approaching the elastic limit of complete +exhaustion. That it looked pretty much like that to Paula herself was +made evident from the way she once spoke about him, her eyes full of +tears, after he had left the room. + +"He's working so insanely hard," she said. "Nights as well as days. I +don't believe he's had five hours' consecutive sleep this week." + +When March wanted to know why he did it, she hesitated, but gave him, at +last, a candid answer. No one else would have answered it at all. + +"I don't think it can be because he feels he has to," she said. "To earn +the money, I mean. Of course, he's been buying a big farm, half of it, +for Rush. But he said the other day that if I needed any extra money for +this"--she nodded toward the score on the piano--"I was to let him know. +Of course, he isn't happy about it and I suppose it makes him take +things harder." + +Naturally enough, March agreed with her here. John Wollaston was clearly +a member of the gold coast class. It wasn't thinkable that his financial +difficulties could be real. The unreality of them was, of course, the +measure of the genuineness of his fear of losing Paula,--of seeing the +main current of her life shift once more to its old channel. Did Paula +see that, March wondered? What was it she foresaw? + +He got a partial answer one day in the course of one of their quarrels +about the opera. He had unguardedly given expression to his growing +despondency about it. + +"This thing can't go," he had said. "It's getting more lifeless from week +to week. We're draining all the blood out of it and this stuff we're +putting in is sawdust." + +She whipped round upon him in a sudden tempest. "It's got to go," she +said. "It's got to be made to go. If what you're putting into it is +sawdust, take it out. Put some heart into it." + +He had been staring gloomily at the score. Now he turned away from it. +"That's what I don't seem able to do," he said. + +She came up and took him by the shoulders so violently that it might +almost be said she shook him. "You can't let go like that. It's too late. +Everything I've got in the world is mixed up in it." She must have read +his unspoken thought there for she went on, "Oh, I suppose you'd say I'd +still have John if I did fail. Well, I wouldn't. He's mixed up in it, +too. He'd never forgive me if I failed. It's the fear I'll fail and make +myself look cheap and ridiculous that makes him hate it so. Well, I'm not +going to. Make up your mind to that!" + +Later, when he was leaving, under a promise to improve some of the +passages they had been arguing about, she reverted to this aspect of the +matter and added something. "John can see what a failure would mean. But +what the other thing--the big real success--would mean to both of us, he +hasn't the faintest idea of. He won't till I get it." + +"He's a famous person, himself, of course," March observed, not without a +gleam of mischief. + +She echoed the word quite blankly, and he went on to amplify. + +"That European Medical Commission that was out here a few weeks ago +attended some of his clinics in a body. I don't suppose there's a +first-class hospital anywhere in this country or in Europe where his name +isn't known. That operation he did on Sarah turned out to be a classic, +you know. He used a new technique in it which has become standard since." + +But it seemed to him that she still looked incredulous when he went away, +incapable of really digesting that idea at all. No, he wouldn't have bet +much on the chance that any great success of hers could reunite them. The +love life that they had been enjoying this last five years hadn't thrown +out any radicles to bind them together--children for instance. + +March wondered why there had been no children. He was not inclined to +accept the obvious explanation that she hadn't wanted any. She had spoken +once of her childlessness in a tone that didn't quite square with that +explanation. Nor had she said it quite as she would, had she felt that +her husband shared equally in her disappointment. It was all very +intangible, of course, just the way she inflected the sentence, "You see, +I haven't any children." Was it John that didn't want them? Well, he had +two of his own, of course. Had he shrunk from having this new passion of +his domesticated? And then he was a gynecologist. Was he, perhaps, afraid +for her? That explanation had a sort of plausibility about it for Anthony +March. If that were true, his caution had only brought him face to face +with a greater risk. March felt sorry for John Wollaston. + +But it quite truly never occurred to him to hold himself in the smallest +degree responsible for the husband's troubles. To a man with a better +developed possessive sense, it might have occurred that he was poaching +in another's preserves. When a husband made it plain that he chose to +keep a particularly rare and valuable possession such as a wife like +Paula must be considered, in the tower of brass LaChaise had talked +about, it became the duty of every other well-disposed male to take pains +to leave no keys, rope ladders or files lying about by which she might +effect her escape. But a consideration of this sort would not even have +been intelligible to March, let alone troublesome. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AN INTERVENTION + + +Mary could not have described the thing there was about old Nat's manner +of going by her door that led her to halt him and inquire what he was up +to. One sees, sometimes, one of his children gliding very innocently +along toward the nearest way out with an effect of held breath that +prompts investigation. In this sixty-year old child, upon whom the terror +of John Wollaston's desperate illness lay more visibly than on any other +member of the household, this look of gusto was especially striking. +Mary's question was prompted by no more serious an impulse than to share +with him a momentary escape from the all-enveloping misery. + +But she found old Nat unwilling to share his source of satisfaction with +her. He protested, indeed, with an air of deeply aggrieved innocence, +that nothing of the sort existed. A man was waiting now in the lower hall +who had come to make the customary inquiries. Nat had conveyed them to +Paula and was returning with her answer. This was so flagrantly +disingenuous that Mary smiled. + +"Who is the man?" she asked. + +The old servant shuffled his feet. "It's that good-for-nothing piano +tuner, Miss Mary," he told her reluctantly. "I reckon you don't know much +about him. He's been coming around a lot since you've been away. He's +been sticking to Miss Paula like a leech, right up to the day your father +got sick. Then he didn't come any more and I thought we were done with +him. But he came back to-day and asked me if Miss Paula was up in the +music room. He'd have gone right straight up to that room where Doctor +John is fighting for his life if I hadn't stopped him." + +"Did you tell him father was ill?" she asked, and was astonished at the +flare of passion this evoked from him. + +"It ain't no business of his, Miss Mary," he said grimly. "Nothing about +this family is any business of his." Then as if anxious to prevent the +significance of that from reaching her, he hurried on. "He was so sure +Miss Paula wanted to see him, I told him if he'd wait, I'd inform her +that he was here. I've done told her and she said he was to go away. She +couldn't be bothered with him. And then she said to me with tears in her +eyes, 'I wish I'd never seen him, Nat.' Those were her words, Miss Mary. +'I wish my eyes had never beheld him!' That's what she said to me not a +minute ago. I'm going down to fix him so she'll never see him again." + +"You needn't go down," Mary said decisively. "I'll see him myself." + +She had got home that morning summoned by a telegram, one of those +carefully composed encouraging telegrams that are a simple distillate of +despair. During the three days it had taken to accomplish her journey +from the ranch, she had gradually relinquished all hope of finding her +father alive. Rush, who met the train, had reassured her. It was a bad +case of double pneumonia. They were expecting the crisis within +twenty-four hours. The doctors gave him an even chance, but the boy was +more confident. "They don't know dad," he said. "He isn't going to die." + +On the way back to the house he had outlined the facts for her. His +father had driven out to the farm in his open roadster a week ago Sunday +to see how he and Graham were getting on--driven out alone, though he had +spoken the night before, over the telephone, of bringing Paula with him. +For some reason that hadn't come off. Dad had seemed well enough, then, +though rather tired and dispirited. The day had begun as if it meant to +be fine, for a change, but it had turned off cold again and begun to rain +while they were walking over the place. His father, he was afraid, had +got pretty wet. When they got back to the farm-house they found a +telephone message urgently summoning him to town, and he had driven away, +in the open car, without changing. + +Rush had meant to telephone but had neglected this--they were terribly +busy, of course, trying to get things done without any labor to do them +with. He had come home Wednesday, on a promise to Graham's kid sister +that he would attend a school dance of hers. He had dressed at home but +not dined there and had seen nothing of his father until very late, about +two o'clock in the morning, when he noticed a light in his room as he +passed on the way to his own. + +"I don't know why I stopped," he said. "He was talking and his voice +didn't sound natural, not as if he was telephoning nor talking to any +one in the room, either. He was trying to telephone--to the hospital to +send an ambulance for him. He hadn't any breath at all, even then, and +the thermometer he'd been taking his temperature with read a hundred +and four." + +"But--the _hospital_?" + +"I know," Rush agreed. "It's pretty rum. He stuck to it. Wanted to be got +straight out of the house without rousing anybody. He was a little bit +delirious, of course. I agreed to it to pacify him, but I telephoned +straight to Doctor Darby and he told me not to do anything till he got +around. It wasn't more than ten minutes before he came. Paula had roused +by that time, and she persuaded Darby against the hospital. She suggested +the music room herself and as soon as he saw it he said it was just the +place. They've got a regular hospital rigged up for him there and two men +nurses. But the main person on the job is Paula herself. The two men keep +watch and watch, but she's there practically all the time. They say she +hasn't slept in more than half-hour snatches since that first night. She +won't let any of us come near him--and Darby backs her up. The doctors +are all crazy about her. Say it'll be her doing if dad pulls through. +Well--she'd better make it!" + +There wasn't time to explore the meaning of that last remark for they +were then pulling up at the door. She laid it aside for future reference, +however. She was so fortunate as to meet Doctor Darby on the stairs and +so to get at once the latest and most authoritative report. + +He brightened at the sight of her but she thought he didn't look very +hopeful. He said though, that he believed her father was going to get +well. "Medically, he hasn't more than an even chance. He hasn't much +fight in him somehow. But that stepmother of yours means to pull him +through. She doesn't mean to be beaten and I don't believe she will be. +I've never seen the equal of her. It shows they're born, not made. She's +never had, your aunt assures me, any nursing experience whatever." + +Mary thought she detected a twinkle in Darby's eye over this mention of +Aunt Lucile, but it was gone before she could make sure. + +"You're to go up and see him for five minutes," he went on. "Paula's +keeping a look-out for you. He mustn't be allowed to talk, of course, but +she wants him to know you're back. She has an idea, and she's probably +right, that he is worrying about you." + +"What is there that I can do?" she asked. "To help, I mean." + +"Hope," he told her bluntly. "Pray if you can. Cheer up your aunt a bit, +if possible; she's in despair. Only don't try to take away any of her +occupations. That's about all." + +"In other words, nothing," she commented. + +"Well, none of us can do much more than that," he said, "excepting +always, Paula." + +It was not until she had spent that heart-tearing five minutes at her +father's bedside, while she talked cheerful little encouraging futilities +in a voice dry with the effort she had to make to keep it from breaking, +that she saw her aunt--and felt grateful for Doctor Darby's warning. Mary +had never thought of Lucile before as an old woman, but she seemed more +than that now,--broken and, literally, in despair--of her brother's life. +And beyond this there was a bitterness which Mary could not, at first, +account for. + +"Paula, I hear, has allowed you to see him. For five minutes! Well, that +is more than she has allowed me. Or any of us. It was a chance for +showing off, I suppose, that was more than she could resist." + +"I was a little afraid it might be that," Mary admitted. "Afraid of +finding her--carefully costumed for the part, you know. But she wasn't. +She didn't come into the room with me at all; just told me not to show I +was shocked by the way he looked and not to let him talk. And she seemed +glad I was back; not for me but because it might help him. It seems a +miracle that he's still alive, after almost a week of that, and I guess +it is she who has done it. They all say so." + +"Men!" the old woman cried fiercely. "All men! The two nurses as well. +There's something about her that makes idiots of all of them. She knows +it. And she revels in it. It's the breath of life to her. She has played +fast and loose with your father's happiness for it. And now she's playing +with his life as well. And feeling, all the while, that it is a very +noble repentance!" + +"Repentance for what?" Mary asked. "Rush said something like that. I +thought, before I went away, that father was getting reconciled to the +Ravinia idea. Do you think it was worrying about ..." + +"No, I don't," Lucile interrupted shortly. "Your father was exposed, +soaking wet, to a cold north wind, while he was driving forty miles in an +open car. That's the reason he took pneumonia. And it's the only reason. +I don't know what Rush may have been saying to you, but I've known your +father ever since he was born, and I can tell you that Paula might have +gone on making a fool of herself to the end of time without his dying of +it. He was--fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that +she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she +hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this +emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.--Meanwhile, +she is adding to her collection five new men!" + +"I don't believe," said Mary quietly, "that there is one of them she +knows exists. Or wouldn't poison," she added with a smile, "to improve +father's chance of getting well." + +This won a nod of grim assent. "There are plenty of them. She could +replace them easily enough. But her hunger for their worship is +insatiable. For a while your father's--infatuation satisfied her. She may +have tried to pull herself up to his level. I dare say she did. But even +at that time she could not abide Wallace Hood, though he was kindness +itself to her, simply because he kept his head. Unfortunately, this poor +young musician was not able to keep his." + +It seemed to Mary, even when allowance was made for the bitterness of the +desperate old woman, who then went on for the better part of an hour with +her bill of particulars, that this must be true. Paula must have lost her +head, at any rate. What Mary herself had seen the beginning of, must +have gone on at an accelerated speed until it was beyond all bounds. +There had been few hours when March might not come to the house and none +to which he did not stay. There were whole days when Paula was hardly out +of his company. She took him about with her to people's houses. She +talked about him when she went alone. Those who had at first not known +what to think, at last had come to believe that there was only one thing +they could. + +"I tried to suggest to her, quite early, before it had gone so far, that +she was in danger of being misunderstood. It only made her furious. And +John was hardly less so when I mentioned to him that I had spoken to her. +He would see nothing; kept a face of granite through it all." + +"Aunt Lucile," Mary asked, after a little silence, "do you think she has +really been--unfaithful to father?" + +Miss Wollaston hesitated. "Should you consider the conduct I have +described, to be an example of fidelity?" + +"I mean, in the divorce court sense," Mary persisted. + +"That," her aunt said, more nearly in her old manner than anything that +Mary had yet seen--"that is a matter upon which I have no opinion." + +It was a possibility that Mary had contemplated as early as that first +night of all, when Paula, having sung his song, had come herself to +find him in Annie's old bedroom where she had him hidden and with a +broken laugh had pulled him up in her arms and kissed him, unaware that +she was not alone with him. One kiss, as an isolated phenomenon, didn't +mean much, Mary allowed, but when a man and a woman who were going to +be left alone together a lot, started off that way, they were likely +to--get somewhere. And where the man was the composer of that love song +and the woman the singer of it, it was almost a foregone conclusion +that they would. + +But this was not the conclusion that she had come to when she stopped +old Nat on his way down-stairs to turn March out of the house. The +evidence, Rush's and Aunt Lucile's, might seem to point that way but it +didn't, somehow, make a convincing picture. I think, though, that in any +case, she would have gone down to see him. + +He had found himself a seat on a black oak settee in the hall around the +corner of the stairs and his attitude, when she came upon him, was very +like what it had been the other time, bent forward a little, his hands +between his knees, as if he were braced for something. + +"Mrs. Wollaston won't be able to see you to-day," she said. He sprang to +his feet and she added instantly, "I'm her stepdaughter, Mary Wollaston. +Won't you come in?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned and led the +way into the drawing-room. + +So far it had been rehearsed, on her way down-stairs, even to the chair +in the bow window which she indicated, having seated herself, for him to +sit down in. She had up to that point an extraordinarily buoyant sense of +self-possession. This left her for one panicky instant when she felt him +looking at her a little incredulously as if, once more, he wondered +whether she were really there. + +"I think, perhaps, you haven't heard of father's illness," she began--not +just as she had expected to. "Or did you come to ask about him?" + +"No," he said. "I hadn't heard. Is it--yes, of course it must +be--serious. I'm sorry." + +She was struck by the instantaneous change in his manner. From being, +part of him, anyhow, a little remote--wool-gathering would have been Aunt +Lucile's term--he was, vividly, here. It wasn't possible to doubt the +reality of his concern. As a consequence, when she began informing him of +the state of things she found herself pulled away, more and more, from +the impersonal phraseology of a medical bulletin. She told how the attack +had come on; how they had put up a bed for him in the music room, where +there was the most air, and begun what it was evident from the first +would be a life-and-death struggle; she quoted what Rush had told her +when he met the train. "I agree with Rush," she concluded. "They let me +see him, for a few minutes, this morning, just so he'd know that I had +come back. Yet it isn't possible not to believe that he will get well." + +When she had squeezed away the tears that had dimmed her eyes, she saw +that his own were bright with them. "He's more than just a great man," he +said gravely. Then, after a moment's silence, "If there's anything I can +do... It would be a great privilege to be of service to him. As errand +boy, any sort of helper. I had some hospital experience at Bordeaux." + +It was, on the face of it, just such an offer as any kindly disposed +inquirer would have made. Such as Wallace Hood, for example, had, in +fact, made, only rather more eloquently less than an hour ago. But Mary's +impulse was not to answer as she had answered Wallace with a mere polite +acknowledgment of helpless good intentions. In fact, she could find, for +the moment, no words in which to answer him at all. + +He said then, "I mustn't keep you." + +Even in response to that she made no movement of release. "There's +nothing, even for me to do," she said, and felt from the look this drew +from him that he must, incredibly, have caught from her some inkling of +what her admission really meant. + +He did not repeat his move to go, nor speak, and there was silence +between them for, perhaps, the better part of a minute. It was +terminated, startlingly, for her, by her brother's appearance in the +doorway. He had on his raincoat and carried his hat and an umbrella in +his hands. + +"Mary, I'm just going out" ... he began, then broke off short, stared, +and came on into the room. March rose, but Mary, after one glance at +Rush's face, sat back a little more deeply in her seat. Rush ignored her +altogether. + +"My sister has been away during the last few weeks," he said to March. It +had, oddly, the effect of a set speech. "If she had not been, I'm sure +she would have told you, as I do now ..." He stumbled there, evidently +from the sudden blighting sense that he was talking like an actor--or an +ass. "This isn't the time for you to come here," he went on. "This house +isn't the place for you to come. When my father's well enough to take +matters into his own hands again, he'll do as he sees fit. For the +present you will have to consider that I'm acting for him." + +Mary's eyes during the whole of that speech never wavered from March's +face. There was nothing in it at all at first but clear astonishment, but +presently there came a look of troubled concern that gave her an impulse +to smile. Evidently it disconcerted her brother heavily for at the end of +an appalling silence, not long enough however, to allow March to get his +wits together for a reply, Rush turned about abruptly and strode from the +room. A moment later they heard the house door close behind him. + +The two in the drawing-room were left looking at each other. Then, +"Please sit down again," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +NOT COLLECTABLE + + +The effect of Rush's interruption was rather that of a thunderclap, +hardly more. Recalling it, Mary remembered having looked again into +March's face as the street door banged shut to see whether he was +laughing. She herself was sharply aware of the comic effect of her +brother's kicking himself out of the house instead of his intended +victim, but she could not easily have forgiven a sign of such awareness +from March. + +He had betrayed none, had tried, she thought--his amazement and concern +had rendered him pretty near inarticulate--to tell her what the look in +his face had already made evident even to Rush; his innocence not only of +any amorous intent toward Paula but even of the possibility that any one +could have interpreted the relation between them in that way. He might +have managed some such repudiation as that had she not cut across his +effort with an apology for her brother. + +It had been a terrible week for them all, she said. Especially for Rush +and for his Aunt Lucile, who had been here from the beginning. Even the +few hours since her own return this morning had been enough to teach her +how nearly unendurable that sort of helplessness was. + +It must have been in this connection that he told her what had not got +round to her before, the case of his sister Sarah whom they had watched +as one condemned to death until John Wollaston came and saved her. "He +simply wouldn't be denied," March said. "He was all alone; even his +colleagues didn't agree with him. And my father, having decided that she +was going to die and that this must, therefore, be the will of God, +didn't think it ought to be tampered with. + +"I remember your father said to him, 'Man, the will of God this morning +is waiting to express itself in the skill of my hands,' and it didn't +sound like blasphemy either. He carried father off in his apron, just as +he was, to the hospital and I went along. I scraped an acquaintance +afterward with one of the students who had been there in the theatre +watching him operate and got him to tell me about it. They felt it was a +historic occasion even at the time; cheered him at the end of it. And +that sort of virtuosity does seem worthier of cheers than any scraping of +horsehair over cat-gut could ever come to. I wonder how many lives there +are to-day that owe themselves altogether to him just as my sister +does.--How many children who never could have been born at all except for +his skill and courage. Because, of course, courage is half of it." + +Upon Mary the effect of this new portrait of her father was electrifying; +eventually was more than that--revolutionary. These few words of March's +served, I think, in the troubled, turbid emotional relation she had got +into with her father, as a clarifying precipitant. + +But that process was slower; the immediate effect attached to March +himself. The present wonder was that it should have been he, a stranger, +equipped with only the meagerest chances for observation, who, turning +his straying search-light beam upon the dearest person to her in the +world, should thus have illuminated him anew. Even after he had gone it +was the man rather than the things he had said that she thought about. + +Amazingly, he had guessed--she was sure she had given him no hint--at the +part Paula was playing in their domestic drama. It had come pat upon what +he had told her of the lives her father had plucked from the hand of +death, the ironic, "he saved others, himself he can not save," hanging +unspoken in their thoughts. + +"Paula will be fighting for his life," he said. "Magnificently. That must +be one of your hopes." + +She had confirmed this with details. She got the notion, perhaps from +nothing more than his rather thoughtful smile, that he comprehended the +whole thing, even down to Aunt Lucile. Though wasn't there a phrase of +his,--"these uninhibited people, when it comes to getting things _done_ +..." that slanted that way? Did that mean that he was one of the other +sort? Wasn't your ability to recognize the absence of a quality or a +disability in any one else, proof enough that you had it yourself? It +would never, certainly, occur to Paula to think of any one as +"uninhibited." + +But the opposed adjective didn't fit him. She couldn't see him at all as +a person tangled, helpless, in webs of his own spinning;--neither the man +who had written that love song nor the man who had sat down in his chair +again after Rush had slammed the door. + +He wasn't even shy but he was, except for that moment when a vivid +concern over John Wollaston's illness brought him back, oddly remote, +detached. He might have been a Martian, when in response to her leading +he discussed Paula with her; how good a musician she was; how splendidly +equipped physically and temperamentally for an operatic career. "She has +abandoned all that now, I suppose," he said. "Everything that goes with +it. She would wish, if she ever gave us a thought, that LaChaise and I +had never been born." + +Mary would have tried to deny this but that the quality and tone of his +voice told her that he really knew it and that, miraculously, he didn't +care. She had exclaimed with a sincerity struck out of her by amazement, +"I don't see how you know that." + +"Paula's a conqueror," he had answered simply, "a--compeller. It's her +instinct to compel. That's what makes her the artist she is. Without her +voice she might have been a tamer of wild beasts. And, of course, a great +audience that has paid extravagantly for its pleasure is a wild beast, +that will purr if she compels it, snarl at her if she doesn't manage to. +She's been hissed, howled at. And that's the possibility that makes +cheers intoxicating. Left too long without something to conquer, she +feels in a vacuum, smothered. Well, she's got something now; the greatest +thing in the world to her,--her husband's life. She's flung off the other +thing like a cloak." + +Without, at the moment, any sense of its being an extraordinary question, +Mary asked, "Are you glad? That she has forgotten you, I mean." + +She was not able, thinking it over afterward, to recall anything that +could have served as a cue for so far-fetched a supposition as that. It +could have sprung from nothing more palpable than the contrast suggested +between Paula, the compeller, the _dompteuse_, and the man who had just +been so describing her. He was so very thin; he was, if one looked +closely, rather shabby, and beyond that, it had struck her that a haggard +air there was about him was the product of an advanced stage of +fatigue,--or hunger. But that of course, was absurd. Anyhow, not even the +sound of her question startled her. + +Nor did it him. There was something apologetic about his smile. "It _is_ +a reprieve," he admitted. "I left her a week ago," he went on to +explain,--"it must have been the day Doctor Wollaston fell ill--on a +promise not to come back until I had got this opera of mine into the +shape she wants. I came back to-day to tell her that it can't be +done--not by me. I have tried my utmost and it isn't enough. I haven't +improved it even from her point of view let alone from mine. She isn't an +easy person to come to with a confession of failure." + +"She's spoiling it," Mary said. "Why do you let her?" + +But March dissented from that. "If we agree that the thing's an +opera--and of course that's what it is if it's anything--then what she +wants it made over into is better than what I wrote. She's trying to put +the Puccini throb into it. She's trying to make better drama out of it. +LaChaise agrees with her. He said at the beginning that I relied too much +on the orchestra and didn't give the singers enough to do. And, of +course, it's easy to see that what a woman like Paula said or did would +be more important to an audience than anything that an oboe could +possibly say. When I'm with her, she--galvanizes me into a sort of belief +that I can accomplish the thing she wants, but when I go off alone and +try to do it...." He blinked and shook his head. "It has been a +first-class nightmare, for a fact, this last week." + +But Mary demanded again. "Why do you let her?" + +"I made a good resolution a while ago," he said. "It was--it was the +night she sang those Whitman songs. You see I've never been tied to +anything; harnessed, you know. Somehow, I've managed to do without. But +I've had to do without hearing, except in my own head, any of the music +I've written. There was an old tin trunk full of it, on paper, that +looked as if it was never going to be anywhere else. Well, I came to a +sort of conviction after I went away from here that night, that those two +facts were cause and effect; that unless I submitted to be harnessed I +never would hear any of it. And it seemed that night that I couldn't +manage to do without hearing it. Keats was wrong about that, you +know,--about unheard melodies being sweeter. They can come to be clear +torment. So I decided I'd begin going in harness. I suppose it was rather +naive of me to think that I could, all at once, make a change like that. +Anyhow, I found I couldn't go on with this. I brought it around +to-day,--it's out there in the hall--to turn it over to Paula to do with +as she liked. That's why it was so--incredible, when you came down the +stairs instead." + +He sprang up then to go, so abruptly that he gave her the impression of +having abandoned in the middle, the sentence he was speaking. This time, +however, rising instantly, she released him and in a moment he was gone. +There had been a word from him about her father, the expression of +"confident hopes" for his recovery, and on her part some attempt, not +successfully brought off she feared, to assure him of his welcome when he +came again. She didn't shake hands with him and decided afterward that it +must have been he who had avoided it. + +She was glad to have him go so quickly. She wanted him to go so that she +could think about him. It was with a rather buoyant movement that she +crossed the room to the piano bench and very lightly with her finger-tips +began stroking the keys, the cool smooth keys with their orderly +arrangement of blacks and whites, from which it was possible to weave +such infinitely various patterns, such mysterious tissue. + +A smile touched her lips over the memory of the picture her fancy had +painted the night Paula sang his songs, the sentimental notion of Paula's +inspiring him with an occasional facile caress to the writing of other +love songs. She might have been a boarding-school girl to have thought of +that. She smiled, too, though a little more tenderly, over his own +attempt--naive he had called it--to go in harness, like a park hack, +submissive to Paula's rein and spur. Pegasus at the plow again. She +smiled in clear self-derision over her contemplated project of saving +him from Paula. He didn't need saving from anybody. He was one of those +spirits that couldn't be tied. Not even his own best effort of submission +could avail to keep the harness on his back. + +It was most curious how comfortable she had been with him. During the +miserable month she had spent at home before she went to Wyoming with the +Corbetts, she had dreaded a second encounter with March and had +consciously avoided one. To meet and be introduced as the strangers they +were supposed by the rest of the family to be, to elaborate the pretense +that this was what they were--they who had shared those flaming moments +while Paula sang!--would be ridiculous and disgusting. But anything else, +any attempt to go on from where they had left off was unthinkable. In the +privacy of her imagination she had worked the thing out in half a dozen +ways, all equally distressing. + +She had not made good her resolution to quit thinking about him. She was +not able and did not even attempt to dismiss her adventure with him as a +mere regrettable folly to be forgotten as soon as possible. It had often +come back to her during sleepless hours of the long nights and had always +been made welcome. She didn't wish it defaced as she had felt it +necessarily must be by the painful anti-climax of a second meeting. + +The impulse upon which she had taken him out of old Nat's hands was +perhaps a little surprising now she looked back on it, but it had not +astonished her at the time. Of course, there, there was something +concretely to be done, an injustice to be averted from a possibly +innocent head. She doubted though if it had been pure altruism. + +Whatever its nature, the result of it had been altogether happy. She +_was_ glad she had come down to see him. There need be no misgiving now +about the quality of their future encounters, were there to be any such. +They were on solid ground with each other. + +How had that been brought about? How had they managed to talk to each +other for anyway fifteen or twenty minutes without either a reference to +their adventure or a palpable avoidance of it? It wasn't her doing. From +the moment when she got to the end of the lines she had rehearsed coming +down the stairs, the lead had been in his hands. Indeed, to the latter +part of the talk, what she had contributed was no more than a question or +two so flagrantly personal that they reminded her in review of some of +her childish indiscretions with Wallace Hood. How had he managed it? + +He hadn't been tactful. She acquitted him altogether of that. She +couldn't have endured tact this afternoon from anybody. Of course, the +mere expressiveness of his face helped a lot. The look he had turned on +Rush for example, that had stopped that nerve-racked boy in full career. +Or the look he gave her when he first learned of her father's illness. +That sudden coming back from whatever his own preoccupation might have +been to a vivid concern for her father. + +Well, there, at last, it was. That was his quality. A genius for more +than forgetting himself, for stepping clean out of himself into some one +else's shoes. Wasn't that just a long way of saying imagination? He had +illuminated her father for her and in so doing had given her a ray of +real comfort. He had interpreted Paula--in terms how different from those +employed by Aunt Lucile! He had comprehended Rush without one momentary +flaw of resentment. Last of all, he had quite simply and without one +vitiating trace of self-pity, explained himself, luminously, so that it +was as if she had known him all her life. + +One thing, to be sure, she didn't in the least understand--the very +last thing he had said. "That's why it was so incredible when you came +down the stairs instead." That had been to her, a complete non sequitur, +an enigma. But she was content to leave it at that. + +Such a man, of course, could never--belong to anybody. He was not +collectable. There would always be about him, for everybody, some last +enigma, some room to which no one would be given the key. But there was a +virtue even in the fringe of him, the hem of his garment. + +Was she getting sentimental? No, she was not. Indeed, precisely what his +little visit had done for her was to effect her release from a tangle of +taut-drawn sentimentalities. She hadn't felt as free as this, as +comfortable with herself, since she came home with Rush from New York. + +She had no assurance that he'd come to the house again of his own accord +or that Paula would send for him. But she was in no mood to distress +herself just now, even with that possibility. + +She crossed the room and got herself a cigarette, and with it alight she +returned to her contemplation of the piano keyboard. She didn't move nor +speak when she heard Rush come in but she kept an eye on the drawing-room +door and when presently he entered, she greeted him with a smile of +good-humored mockery. He had something that looked like a battered school +atlas in his hand. + +"What do you suppose this is?" he asked. "It was lying on the bench in +the hall." + +She held out a hand for it and together they opened it on the lid of the +piano and investigated. + +"It's the manuscript of his opera," she said. "He brought it around to +leave with Paula. To tell her he had done with it. He's been trying to +spoil it for her but he can't." + +"I suppose I made an infernal fool of myself," he remarked, after a +little silence. + +She blew, for answer, an impudent smoke ring up into his face. + +He continued grumpily to cover his relief that she had not been more +painfully explicit,--"I suppose I shall have to make up some sort of +damned apology to him." + +"I don't know," she said. "That's as you like. I don't believe he'd +insist upon it. He understood well enough." + +He looked at her intently. "Has there been any better news from father +since I went out?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "Except that there's been none. Every hour now that +we aren't sent for counts. What made you think there might have been?" + +He said he didn't know. She looked a little more cheerful somehow, +less--tragic. Evidently her visit to the Corbetts had done her good. + +His eye fell once more on the manuscript. "Did he go off and forget +that?" he asked. "Or did he mean to leave it for Paula? And what shall we +do with it,--hand it over to her or send it back?" + +Thoughtfully Mary straightened the sheets and closed the cover. "I'll +take care of it for him," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +HICKORY HILL + + +Pneumonia, for all it is characterized by what is called a crisis, has no +single stride to recovery, no critical moment when one who has been in +peril passes to safety. Steinmetz and Darby were determined that Mary and +all the household should understand this fully. She had waylaid them in +the hall as they were leaving the house together--this was seventy-two +hours or so after Anthony March's call--and demanded the good news she +was sure they had for her. There was a look about them and a tone in +their voices that were perfectly new. + +They would not be persuaded to say that her father was out of danger. +There was very little left of him. His heart had been over-strained and +this abnormal effect was now, in due course, transferred to the kidneys. +All sorts of deadly sequellae were lying in ambush. + +But the more discouraging they were, the more she beamed upon them. She +walked along with them to the door, slipping her arm inside Doctor +Darby's as she did so. "If you only knew," she said, "what a wonderful +thing it is to have the doctors stop being encouraging and try to +frighten you, instead. Because that means you really do think he's +getting well." + +"The balance of probability has swung to that side," Steinmetz admitted +in his rather affected staccato. "At all events he's out of my beat." His +beat was the respiratory tract and his treatment the last word in +vaccines and serums. + +She held Darby back a little. "Must we go on feeling," she asked, +"that anything could happen any minute? Or--well, could Rush go back +to the farm? Graham Stannard has gone to New York, I think, they're +partners, you know, so he must be rather badly wanted. And this +waiting is hard for him." + +Rush could go, of course, Darby assured her. "For that matter," he went +on with a quick glance at her, "why don't you go with him? Take your aunt +along, too. For a few days, at least. You couldn't do better." + +She demurred to this on the ground that it didn't seem fair to Paula. If +there was a period of Arcadian retirement down on the books for anybody, +it was Paula who was entitled to it. + +But Paula, as Darby pointed out, wouldn't take it in the first place, +and, surprisingly, didn't need it in the second. "She told me just now +that she'd slept eighteen hours out of the last twenty-four and was ready +for anything. She looked it, too." + +He understood very well her irrepressible shrug of exasperation at that +and interrupted her attempt to explain it. "It's another breed of animal +altogether," he said. "And at that, I'd rather have had her job than +yours. You're looking first rate, anyhow. But your aunt, if she isn't to +break up badly, had better be carried off somewhere." He glanced around +toward Steinmetz who had withdrawn out of ear-shot. "There are some +toxins, you know," he added, "that are even beyond him and his +microscopes." + +Mary had meant to broach this project at dinner but changed her mind and +waited until Aunt Lucile had withdrawn and she and Rush were left alone +over their coffee cups for a smoke. + +"Poor Aunt Lucile! She has aged years in the last three weeks. And it +shows more, now the nightmare is over, than it did before." + +"Is it over? Really?" he asked. + +"Well, we don't need miracles any more for him. Just ordinary good care +and good luck. Yes, I'd say the nightmare was over." + +"Leaving us free," he commented, "to go back to our own." + +"You can go back to the farm, anyhow," she said. "I asked Doctor Darby, +especially, and he said so. He wants me to go along with you and take +Aunt Lucile. Just for a week or so. Is there any sort of place with a +roof over it where we could stay?" + +He said, "I guess that could be managed." But his tone was so absent and +somber that she looked at him in sharp concern. + +"You didn't mean that the farm was your nightmare, did you?" she asked. +"Has something gone terribly wrong out there?" + +"Things have gone just the way I suppose anybody but a fool would have +known they would. Not worse than that, I guess." + +He got up then and went over to the sideboard, coming back with a +decanter of old brandy and a pair of big English glasses. She declined +hers as unobtrusively as possible, just with a word and a faint shake of +the head. But it was enough to make him look at her. + +"You didn't drink anything at dinner, either, did you?" he asked. + +She flushed as she said, "I don't think I'm drinking, at all, just now." + +"Being an example to anybody?" he asked suspiciously. + +She smiled at that and patted his hand. "Oh, no, my dear. I've enough to +do to be an example to myself. I liked the way it was out at the +Corbetts'. They've gone bone-dry. And,--oh, please don't think that I'm a +prig--I am a little better without it--just now, anyway. Tell me what's +gone wrong at the farm." + +"This is wonderful stuff," he said, cupping the fragile glass in his two +hands and inhaling the bouquet from the precious liquor in the bottom of +it. "It's good for nightmares, at any rate." After a sip or two, he +attempted to answer her question. + +"Oh, I suppose we'll come out all right, eventually. Of course, we've got +to. But I wish Martin Whitney had done one thing or the other; either +shown a little real confidence and enthusiasm in the thing or else +stepped on it and refused to lend father the money." + +"Lend?" Mary asked. "Did he have to borrow it?" + +He dealt rather impatiently with that question. "You don't keep sixty or +eighty thousand dollars lying around loose in a checking account," he +said. "Of course, he had to borrow it. But he borrowed it of Whitney, +worse luck--and Whitney being an old friend, pulls a long face over it +whenever we find we need a little more than the original figures showed. +That's enough to give any one cold feet right there. + +"Graham's father is rich, of course, but he's tighter than the bark on a +tree. He's gone his limit and he won't stand for anything more. He can't +see that a farm like that is nothing but a factory and that you can't run +it for any profit that's worth while without the very best possible +equipment. He wanted us to pike along with scrub stock and the old tools +and buildings that were on the place and pay for improvements out of our +profits. Of course, the answer to that was that there wouldn't be any +profits. A grade cow these days simply can't earn her keep with the price +of feed and labor what it is. We didn't figure the cost of tools and +modern buildings high enough--there _was_ such a devil of a lot of +necessary things that we didn't figure on at all--and the consequence +was that we didn't put a big enough mortgage on the place. Nowhere near +what it would stand. And now that we want to put a second one on, Mr. +Stannard howls like a wolf." + +The mere sound of the word mortgage made Mary's heart sink. She looked so +woebegone that Rush went on hastily. + +"Oh, that'll come out in the wash. It's nothing to worry about really, +because even on the basis of a bigger investment than we had any idea of +making when we went in, it figures a peach of a profit. There's no +getting away from that. That's not the thing about it that's driving +Graham and me to drink." + +He stopped on that phrase, not liking the sound of it, and in doubt about +asking her not to take it literally. She saw all that as plainly as if +she had been looking through an open window into his mind. He took +another deliberate sip of the brandy, instead, and then went on. + +"Why, it's the way things don't happen; the way we can't get +anything done." + +He did not see the sympathetic hand she stretched out to him; went back +to the big brandy glass instead, for another long luxurious inhalation +and a small sip or two. "It's partly our own fault, of course," he went +on, presently. "We've made some fool mistakes. But it isn't our mistakes +that are going to beat us, it's the damned bull-headed incompetence of +the so-called labor we've got to deal with." + +He ruminated over that in silence for a minute or two. "They talk about +the inefficiency of the army," he exclaimed, "but I've been four years in +two armies and I'll say that if what we've found out at Hickory Hill is a +fair sample of civilian efficiency, I'll take the army way every time. +There are days when I feel as if I'd like to quit;--go out West and get +a job roping steers for Bob Corbett, even if he is bone-dry." + +She thought if he played any longer with that brandy glass she must cry +out, but he drained it this time and pushed it away. With an effort of +will she relaxed her tight muscles. + +"I suppose I must have looked to you like a hopeless slacker," he said, +"or you wouldn't have asked Darby to send me back to work. No,--I didn't +mean to put it that way. I look like one to myself, that's all, when I +stop to think. Only you don't know how it has felt, this last six weeks, +to go on getting tighter and tighter in your head until you feel as if +you were going to burst. I went out and got drunk, once,--just plain, +deliberately boiled--in order to let off steam. It did me good, too, for +the time being." + +She didn't look shocked at that as he had expected her to--gave him only +a rather wry smile and a comprehending nod. "We're all alike; that's the +trouble with us," she said. "But you will take us out to Hickory Hill, +won't you? Aunt Lucile and I. I'll promise we won't be in the way nor +make you any more work." + +She saw he was hesitating and added, "At that, perhaps, I may be some +good. I could cook anyhow and I suppose I could be taught to milk a cow +and run a Ford." + +He laughed at that, then said a little uncomfortably that this wasn't +what he had been thinking about. "I suppose you're counting on Graham's +being in New York. He isn't. At least, he telegraphed me that he'd be +back at Hickory Hill to-morrow morning. I knew you'd been rather keeping +away from him and I thought perhaps..." + +"No, that's all right." She said it casually enough, but it drew a keen +look of inquiry from him, nevertheless. "Oh, nothing," she went on. "I +mean I haven't made up with him. Of course, I never quarreled with him +as far as that went. Only it's what I meant when I said just now that we +were all alike, father and you and I. We all get so ridiculously--tight +about things. Well, I've managed to let off steam myself." + +He patted her hand approvingly. "That trip to Wyoming did you a lot of +good," he observed.--"Or something did." + +"They're wonderfully easy people to live with, Olive and Bob," she said. +"They're immensely in love with each other I suppose, but without somehow +being offensive about it. And they have such a lot of fun. Olive has a +piebald cayuse, that she's taught all the _haute ecole_ tricks. He does +the statuesque poses and all the high action things just as seriously as +a thoroughbred and he's so short and homely and in such deadly earnest +about it that you can hardly bear it. You laugh yourself into stitches +but you want to cry too. And Bob says he's going to train a mule the same +way. If he ever does that pair will be worth a million dollars to any +circus.--Well, we'll be doing things like that out at Hickory Hill some +day. Because there is such a thing as fun left in the world." + +"We'll have some of it this week," he agreed, and in this rather +light-headed spirit they arranged details. + +The only building at Hickory Hill that had been designed for human +habitation was the farm-house and it was at present fully occupied and +rather more by a camp cook and his assistant, the farm manager and half +a dozen hands. The partners themselves slept in a tent. There was also a +cook tent near the house where three meals a day were prepared for +everybody, including the carpenters, masons, concrete men and well +diggers who were working on the new buildings. They drove out in Fords +from two or three near-by towns in time for breakfast and didn't go home +till after supper. The wagon shed of the old horse barn served as a +mess hall. + +There were some beds, though, two or three spare ones, Rush was sure, +that had never been used. Given a day's start on his guests, he would +promise some sort of building which, if they would refrain from inquiring +too closely into its past, should serve to house them. + +"A wood-shed," she suggested helpfully, "or a nicely swept-out hennery. +Even a former cow stable, at a pinch. Only not a pig-pen." + +"If our new hog-house were only finished, you could be absolutely +palatial in it. But I think I can do better than any of those. You leave +that to me.--Only, how about Aunt Lucile? She's--essential to the scheme, +I suppose. Can you deliver her?" + +"She'll come if it's put to her right,--as a sporting proposition. +She really is a good sport you know, the dear old thing. You leave +her to me." + +"Lord, I feel a lot better than I did when I sat down to dinner," he told +her when they parted for the night, and left her reflecting on the folly +of making mountains out of mole-hills. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LOW HANGS THE MOON + + +He broke his promise to be waiting for them Friday morning at the farm. +It was Graham who caught sight of their car, as it stopped in front of +the farm-house, and came plunging down the bank to greet them and explain +how unavoidable it had been that Rush should go to Elgin. + +He was somewhat flushed and a little out of breath but he seemed, after +the first uncomfortable minute, collected enough. He mounted the +running-board and directed the chauffeur to drive on across the bridge +and fork to the right with the main road up to a small nondescript +building on the far side of it. + +It was a part of the farm, he explained, indicating the wilderness off to +the left,--a part of what must once have been a big apple orchard. +Indeed, exploring it yesterday for the first time, he had found a +surprising number of old trees, which, choked as they were with +undergrowth, looked as if they were still bearing fruit. The building, +which they had never even entered until yesterday, had served as a +sorting and packing house for the crop, though the old part of +it--paradoxically the upper part--appeared to have been built as a +dwelling by some pioneer settler. A second story had been added +underneath by digging out the bank. + +It stood well back from the road, a grass grown lane with a turning +circle leading to it. It had what had once been a loading platform, wagon +high, instead of a veranda. The lower story, a single room which they +peered into through a crack in a warped unhinged door, seemed unpromising +enough, a dark cobwebby place, cumbered with wooden chutes from the floor +above by which, Graham explained, they rolled the apples down into +barrels after they had been sorted up-stairs. A carpenter had been busy +most of the morning, he added, flooring over the traps from which these +chutes led down. + +Mary, though, fairly cried out with delight, and even Miss Wollaston +beamed appreciation when, Graham, having led them up the bank and around +to the back of the building, ushered them in, at the ground level up +here, to the upper story of the building. There was a fireplace in the +north end of it with twin brick erections on either side which they +thought must have been used for drying apples. The opposite end, +partitioned off, still housed a cider mill and press, but they had +contrived, he said, a makeshift bedroom out of it. + +Along the east side of the room were three pairs of casement windows +which commanded a view of the greater part of the farm; across the road, +across Hickory Creek, across the long reach of the lower pasture and the +seemingly limitless stretches of new plowed fields. The clump of farm +buildings, old and new, was in the middle of the picture. Over to the +left not quite a mile away, behind what looked like nothing more than a +fold in the earth (the creek again, Graham explained. It swung an arc of +two hundred degrees or so, about the main body of their tillable land) +rose the heavily wooded slopes of Hickory Hill. + +"We were surprised at this place," he said, "when we opened it up +yesterday. It's the best view on the farm. It will be a fine place +to build a real country house, some day, if we ever make money +enough to do that." + +"It is a real country house already," Mary told him briskly. "You two, +living in a tent with a lovely old place like this just waiting for you! +Wait until Aunt Lucile and I have had a day at it and you'll see." + +He looked as if he believed her. Indeed, he looked unutterable things, +contemplating her, there in that mellow old room,--wrinkling her nose a +little and declaring that she could still smell apples. But all he said +was that he supposed the roof leaked, but it couldn't be very bad because +everything seemed quite decently dry and not at all musty. He added that +he must be getting back to work, but that an odd-job man, capable more or +less of anything, was at her disposal for as long as she wanted him. + +She went with him to the door when he made his rather precipitate +departure and stood, after she had waved him a temporary farewell, gazing +up at the soft sun-bathed slope with its aisles of gnarled trees. She +smiled at the sight of a decrepit long-handled wooden pump. She took a +long breath of the smell of the month of May. Then she turned, with Aunt +Lucile, to such practical matters as bedding, brooms and tea-kettles. + +There was more to do than a first look had led them to suppose, and +their schemes grew ambitious, besides, as they advanced with them, so +that, for all the Briarean prodigies of Bill, the odd-job man, they went +to bed dog tired at nine o'clock that night with their labors not more +than half complete. They slept--Mary did, anyhow, the deepest sleep she +had known in years. + +She waked at an unearthly--a heavenly hour. The thin ether-cool air was +quivering with the dissonance of bird calls; the low sun had laid great +slow-moving oblongs of reddish gilt upon the brown walls of the big room. +(She had left her aunt in undivided possession of the extemporized +bed-chamber.) She rose and opened the door and looked out into the +orchard. But what her eye came to rest upon was the old wooden pump. + +It was a triumph of faith over skepticism, that pump. Graham had +contemned it utterly, hardly allowing, even, that it was picturesque, but +Bill, the odd-job man had, with her encouragement, spent a patient hour +over it and in the teeth of scientific probability, lo, it had given +forth streams of water as clear as any that had ever miraculously been +smitten out of a rock. The partners had forbidden her to drink any of it +except boiled, until it had been analyzed. + +She looked about. She had the world to herself. So she carried her rubber +tub, her sponge and a bath-towel out to the warped wooden platform and +bathed _en plein air_, water and sun together. She came in, deliciously +shuddering, lighted a fire, already laid, of shavings and sticks, put the +kettle on to boil and dressed. She felt--new born that morning. + +This sensation made the undercurrent of a long fully filled day. She +almost never had time to look at it but she knew it was there. It +enabled her to take with equanimity the unlooked-for arrival (so far as +she and her aunt were concerned) of Graham's young torn-boy sister, +Sylvia. It made it possible for her to say, "Why, yes, of course! I'd +love to," when Graham, along in the afternoon asked her if she wouldn't +go for a walk over the farm with him. They spent more than an hour at +it, sitting, a part of the time, side by side atop the gate into the +upper pasture, yet not even then had the comfortable sense of pleasant +companionship with him taken fright. It was a security that resided, she +knew, wholly in herself. + +He was holding himself, obviously, on a very tight rein, and it was quite +conceivable that before her visit ended, he would bolt. There was a +moment, indeed--when he came with Rush to supper at the apple house and +got his first look at the transformation she had wrought in it--when that +possibility must have been in the minds of every one who saw his face. + +She had dramatized the result of her two days' labor innocent of any +intention to produce an effect like that. The partners when they came +dropping in from time to time had, learned nothing of her plans, seen +none of their accomplishments, so to-night the old-fashioned settle +which Bill had knocked together from lumber in the packing room and she +had stained, two of the sorting tables, fitted into the corners beside +the fireplace to make a dais, the conversion of another into a capital +dining table by the simple expedient of lengthening its legs, the rag +rug, discovered in the village, during a flying trip with Sylvia this +morning in her car and ravished from the church fair it had been +intended for, the sacks of sheeting Aunt Lucile had been sewing +industriously all day, covered with burlaps and stuffed with hay to +serve as cushions, the cheese-cloth tacked up in gathers over the +windows and hemmed with pins,--all this, revealed at once, had the +surprise of a conjurer's trick, or, if one were predisposed that way, +the entrancement of a miracle. + +She was a little entranced, herself, partly with fatigue for she had put +in, one after the other, two unusually laborious days, but partly no +doubt with her own magic, with this almost convincing simulation of a +home which she and her assistants had produced. It didn't matter that she +had gone slack and silent, because Sylvia, who just before supper had +shown a disposition to dreamy elegiac melancholy, rebounded, as soon as +she was filled with food, to the other end of the scale altogether and +swept Rush after her into a boisterous romp, which none of Aunt Lucile's +remonstrant asides to her nephew was effectual to quell. + +She was an amazing creature, this product of the latest generation to +begin arriving at the fringes of maturity, a reedy young thing, as tall +as Graham, inches taller than Rush. She had the profile of a young Greek +goddess and the grin of a gamin. She was equally at home in a +ballgown--though she was not yet out--or in a pair of khaki riding +breeches and an olive drab shirt. She was capable of assuming a manner +that was a genuine gratification to her great aunt or one that startled +her father's stable men. She read French novels more or less at random, +(unknown to her mother. She had a rather mischievous uncle who was +responsible for this development) and she was still deadly accurate with +a snowball. A bewildering compound of sophistications and innocence, a +modern young sphinx with a riddle of her own. + +Mary watched her tussling and tumbling about with Rush, pondering the +riddle but making no great effort to find an answer to it. Was she child +or woman? To herself what was she? And what did Rush think about her? +They were evidently well established on some sort of terms. Rush, no +doubt, would tell you--disgustedly if you sought explanation--that Sylvia +was just a kid. That he was fond of her as one would be of any nice kid +and that her rough young embraces, her challenges and her pursuits, meant +precisely what those of an uproarious young--well, nephew, say,--would +mean. Only his eagerness to go on playing the game cast a doubt upon that +explanation. + +They went out abruptly after a while, just as it was getting dark, to +settle a bet as to which of them could walk the farthest along the top +rail of a certain old fence. Miss Wollaston saw them go with unconcealed +dismay, but it was hard to see how even a conscientious chaperon could +have prevented it so long as the child's elder brother would do nothing +to back her up. To Mary, half-way in her trance, it didn't seem much to +matter what the relation was or what came of it. It was a fine spring +night and they were a pair of beautifully untroubled young animals. Let +them play as they would. + +Their departure, did, however, arouse Graham to the assumption of his +duties as host and he launched himself into a conversation with Miss +Wollaston; a fine example, Mary thought, of what really good breeding +means. Her aunt's questions about life in the navy were not the sort that +were easy to answer pleasantly and at large. They drew from him things he +must have been made to say a hundred times since his return and sometimes +they were so wide of the mark that it must have been hard not to stare or +laugh. He must have been wishing, too, with all his might down in the +disregarded depths of his heart, that the old lady would yield to the +boredom and fatigue that were slowly creeping over her. Soon! Before that +pair of Indians came back. But by nothing, not even the faintest +irrepressible inflection of voice was that wish made manifest. + +It broke over Mary suddenly that this would never happen. Aunt Lucile +might die at her post, but she'd never, in Graham's presence, retire +through a door which was known to lead to her bedroom. She rose and going +around to her aunt's chair, laid a light hand on her shoulder. But she +spoke to Graham. + +"Let's go out and bring in the wanderers," she said. "Aunt Lucile has had +a pretty long day and I know she won't be able to go to sleep until +Sylvia is tucked in for the night." + +When the door had closed behind them and they stood where the path, +already faintly indicated, led down to the road, he stopped with a jerk +and mutely looked at her. + +"Do you know where that fence of theirs is?" she asked. + +"Yes, I guess so," he said. Then--it was almost a cry--"Must we go there? +Right away?" + +"I don't know that we need." (Why should he be tortured like that! What +did it matter if the rigidity of some of her nightmare-born resolutions +got relaxed a little?) "Where do you want to go with me?" + +He didn't answer for a minute, but when he did speak his voice was +steady enough. "There's a place up on the top of this hill where the +trees open out to the east, a lovely place. I went up there last night +after Rush had turned in. There'll be a moon along in a few minutes and +you can see it come up, from there. Could we wait for it?--I suppose Miss +Wollaston..." + +"No, she'll be all right," Mary said. "Now that she thinks we're looking +for them." + +As she moved up the slope she added, "I've a sort of interest in the +moon, myself, to-night." + +"Perhaps if you'll take my hand--" he said stiffly. "It is dark here +under the trees." + +Her single-minded intention had been to make him a little happier. She +liked him better to-night than ever, and that was saying a lot. But this +elaborate covering up of what he really wanted under the pretended need +of guiding her, tried her patience. The pretense was for himself, too, as +much as for her. He was holding her off at arm's length behind him as if +they were scaling an Alp! + +In the spirit of mischief, half irritated, half amused, she crowded up to +his side and turned her hand so that their palms lay together. And she +said in a voice evenly matter-of-fact, "That's nicer, isn't it?" + +He didn't succeed in producing anything audible in answer to that, but he +began presently, and rather at random, to talk. As if--she reflected, +mutinously,--some fact that must on no account be looked at would emerge, +un-escapable, the moment he stopped. + +But the bewitching loveliness of the place he led her to made amends, +sponged away her irritation, brought back the Arcadian mood of the day. A +recently fallen apple tree just on the crest of the hill, offered in its +crotched arms a seat for both of them. With an ease which thrilled her he +lifted her in his hands to her place and vaulted up beside her. His arm +(excusably, again, for the hand was seeking a hold to steady him), crept +around behind her. + +Once more he began to talk,--of nature, of the farm, of how it was the +real way to live, as we were meant to. One couldn't, of course, cut off +the city altogether. There were concerts and things. And the +companionship of old friends. Even at that it would be lonely. They had +felt it already. That was why it was such a marvelous thing to have her +here. She made a different world of it. Just as she had made what seemed +like a home out of that old apple house. No one could do that but a +woman, of course ... + +She was no longer irritated by this. She barely listened, beyond noting +his circuitous but certain approach to the point of asking her, once +more, to marry him. + +Her body seemed drugged with the loveliness of the night, with fatigue, +with him, with the immediacy of him,--but her mind was racing as it does +in dreams. + +Nature was not, of course, the gentle sentimentalist Graham was talking +about, but one did get something out of close communion with her. A sense +of fundamentals. She was a--simplifier of ideas. Plain and +straightforward even in her enchantments. That moon they were waiting +for.... Already she was looking down upon a pair of lovers, somewhere,--a +thousand pairs!--with her bland unseeing face. And later to-night, long +after she had risen on them, upon a thousand more. + +Of lovers? Well perhaps not. Not if one insisted upon the poets' +descriptions. But good enough for nature's simple purposes. Answering to +a desire, faint or imperious, that would lead them to put on her harness. +Take on her work. + +Anthony March had never put on a harness. A rebel. And for the price of +his rebellion never had heard his music, except in his head. Clear +torment they could be, he had told her, those unheard melodies. Somehow +she could understand that. There was an unheard music in her. An +unfulfilled destiny, at all events, which was growing clamorous as the +echo of the boy's passion-if it were but an echo-pulsed in her throat, +drew her body down by insensible relaxations closer upon his. + +The moon came up and they watched it, silent. The air grew heavy. The +call of a screech-owl made all the sound there was. She shivered and he +drew her, unresisting, tighter still. Then he bent down and kissed her. + +He said, presently, in a strained voice, "You know what I have been +asking. Does that mean yes?" + +She did not speak. The moon was up above the trees, yellow now. She +remembered a great broad voice, singing: + +"Low hangs the moon. It rose late. +It is lagging-O I think it is heavy with love, with love" + +With a passion that had broken away at last, the boy's hands took +possession of her. He kissed her mouth, hotly, and then again; drew back +gasping and stared into her small pale face with burning eyes. Her head +turned a little away from him. + +"... Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me + My mate back again if you only would, + For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look. + O rising stars!..." + +The languor was gone. She shivered and sat erect, he watching her in an +agony of apprehension. She looked slowly round at him. + +"You haven't answered!" His voice broke over that into a sob. "Will you +marry me, Mary?" + +"I don't know," she said dully, like one struggling out of a dream. "I +will if I can. I meant to for a while, I think. But ..." + +He leaped to the ground and stood facing her with clenched hands. "I +ought to be shot," he said. "I'm not fit to touch you--a white thing like +you. I didn't mean to. Not like that. I meant ..." + +She stared for an instant, totally at a loss for the meaning--the mere +direction of what he was trying to say. Then, slipping down from the +branch, she took him by the arms. "Don't!" she cried rather wildly. +"Don't talk like that! That's the last impossibility. Listen. I'm going +to tell you why." + +But he was not listening for what it might be. He was still morosely +preoccupied with his own crime. He had been a beast! He had bruised, once +more, the white petals of a flower! + +It was not that her courage failed. She saw he wouldn't believe. That he +couldn't be made to believe. It was no use. If he looked at her any +longer like that, she would laugh. + +She buried her face in her arms and sobbed. + +He rose to this crisis handsomely, waited without a word until she was +quiet and then suggested that they go and find Rush and Sylvia. And until +they were upon the point of joining the other pair nothing more was said +that had any bearing on what had happened in the apple tree. But in that +last moment he made a mute appeal for a chance to say another word. + +He reminded her that she had said she would marry him if she could. This +was enough for him. More than he deserved. He was going back to the +beginning to try to build anew what his loss of self-control had wrecked. +She need say nothing now. If she'd wait, she'd see. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +A CLAIRVOYANT INTERVAL + + +It was still May and the North Carolina mountain-side that John Wollaston +looked out upon was at the height of its annual debauch of azalea blooms, +a symphonic romance in the key of rose-color with modulations down to +strawberry and up to a clear singing white. For him though, the invalid, +cushioned and pillowed in an easy chair, a rug over his knees, these +splendors and the perfume of the soft bright air that bathed them had an +ironic significance. + +He had arrived with Paula at this paradise early in the week, pretty well +exhausted with the ordinary fatigues of less than a day's journey in the +train. They were feeding him bouillon, egg-nogs and cream. On Paula's arm +he had managed this afternoon, his first walk, a matter of two or three +hundred yards about the hotel gardens, and at the end of it had been glad +to subside, half reclining into this easy chair, placed so that through +the open door and the veranda it gave upon, he could enjoy the view of +the color-drenched mountain-side. + +He had dismissed Paula peremptorily for a real walk of her own. He had +told her, in simple truth, that he would enjoy being left to himself for +a while. She had taken this assurance for an altruistic mendacity, but +she had yielded at last to his insistence and gone, under an exacted +promise not to come back for at least an hour. + +It offered some curious compensations though, this state of +helplessness--a limpidity of vision, clairvoyant almost. For a fortnight +he had been like a spectator sitting in the stalls of a darkened theatre +watching the performances upon a brilliantly lighted stage, +himself--himselves among the characters, for there was a past and a +future self for him to look at and ponder upon. The present self hardly +counted. All the old ambitions, desires, urgencies, which had been his +impulsive forces were gone--quiescent anyhow. He was as sexless, as cool, +as an image carved in jade. + +And he was here in this lover's paradise--this was what drew the tribute +of a smile to the humor of the high gods--with Paula. And Paula was more +ardently in love with him than she had ever been before. + +The quality of that smile must have carried over to the one he gave her +when she came back, well within her promised hour, from her walk. One +couldn't imagine anything lovelier or more inviting than the picture she +made framed in that doorway, coolly shaded against the bright blaze that +came in around her. She looked at him from there, for a moment, +thoughtfully. + +"I don't believe you have missed me such a lot after all," she said. +"What have you been doing all the while?" + +"Crystal-gazing," he told her. + +She came over to him and took his hands, a caress patently enough through +the nurse's pretext that she was satisfying herself that he had not got +cold sitting there. She relinquished them suddenly, readjusted his rug +and pillows, then kissed him and told him she was going to the office to +see if there were any letters and went out again. She was gone but a +moment or two; returning, she dropped the little handful which were +addressed to him into his lap and carried one of her own to a chair near +the window. + +He dealt idly with the congratulatory and well-wishing messages which +made up his mail. There was but one of them that drew even a gleam of +clearly focused intelligence from him. He gave most of his attention to +Paula. She was a wonderful person to watch,--the expressiveness of her, +that every nerve and muscle of her body seemed to have a part in. She +had opened that letter of hers with nothing but clear curiosity. The +envelope evidently had told her nothing. She had frowned, puzzled, over +the signature and then somehow, darkened, sprung to arms as she made it +out. She didn't read it in an orderly way even then; seemed to be trying +to worry the meaning out of it, like one stripping off husks to get down +to some sort of kernel inside. Satisfied that she had got it at last, +she dropped the letter carelessly on the floor, subsided a little deeper +into her chair and turned a brooding face toward the outdoor light and +away from him. + +"Are you crystal-gazing, too?" he asked. Unusually, she didn't turn at +his voice and her own was monotonous with strongly repressed emotion. + +"I don't need to. I spent more than a week staring into mine." + +That lead was plain enough, but he avoided, deliberately though rather +idly, following it up. The rustle of paper told her that he had turned +back to his letters. + +"Anything in your mail?" she asked. + +"I think not. You can look them over and see if I've missed anything. To +a man in my disarticulate situation people don't write except to express +the kindness of their hearts. Here's a letter from Mary designed to +prevent me from worrying about her. Full of pleasant little anecdotes +about farm life. It's thoroughly Arcadian, she says. A spot designed by +Heaven for me to rusticate in this summer when--when we go back to town. +Somehow, I never did inhabit Arcady. There's a letter from Martin +Whitney, too, that's almost alarmingly encouraging in its insistence that +I mustn't worry. If only they knew how little I did--these days!" + +"Well, that's all right then," she said. "Because those were Doctor +Darby's orders. You weren't to be excited or worried about anything. But, +John, is it really true that you don't? Not about anything?" + +The fact that her face was still turned away as she asked that question +gave it a significance which could not be overlooked. + +"It's perfectly true," he asserted. "I don't believe I could if I +tried. But there's something evidently troubling you. Let's have it. +Oh, don't be afraid. You've no idea what an--Olympian position one +finds himself in when he has got half-way across the Styx and come +back. Tell me about it." + +"You know all about it already. I told you the first day you could +talk--that I was going to give up singing altogether except just for +you,--when you wanted me to. I knew I'd been torturing you about it. I +thought perhaps you'd get well quicker,--want to get well more--if you +knew that the torture wasn't to go on. It was true and it is true. +Perhaps you thought it was just one of those lies that people tell +invalids--one of those don't-worry things. Well, is wasn't. + +"But you made me promise I wouldn't do anything--wouldn't break my +Ravinia contract--until we could talk it all out together. Your +temperature went up a little that afternoon and when Doctor Darby asked +me why, I told him. He said I mustn't, on any account, speak again to you +about it until you brought the subject up yourself. I don't know whether +he'd call this bringing it up or not, but anyway that's it. I've kept my +promise to you though," she concluded. "I haven't written. They still +think I am going to sing this summer." + +"I am very glad of that," he said quietly. "I thought the thing was +settled by our first talk. I didn't realize that you had taken it merely +as an--adjournment." + +She was still turned rigidly away from him, but the grip of one of her +hands upon the arm of a chair betrayed the excitement she was laboring +under, while it showed the effort she was making to hold it down. + +"I didn't think, though," he went on, "that that resolution of yours to +give up your whole career,--make ducks and drakes of it, in obedience to +my whim--was nothing more than one of those pious lies that invalids are +fed upon. I knew you meant it, my dear. I knew you'd have done +it--then--without a falter or a regret." + +"Then or now," she said. "It's all the same. No, it isn't! Now more than +then. With less regret. Without a shadow of a regret, John,--if it would +bring you back to me." + +The last words were muffled, for she had buried her face in her hands. + +He had heard the ring of undisguised passion in her voice without an +answering pulse-beat, sat looking at her thoughtfully, tenderly. The +reflection that occupied his mind was with what extravagant joy he would +have received such an assurance only a few weeks ago. On any one of those +last days before his illness fastened upon him;--the Sunday he had gone +to Hickory Hill alone because Paula had found she must work with March +that day; the evening when he had made his last struggle against the +approaching delirium of fever in order to telephone for an ambulance to +get him out of that hated house. What a curious compound of nerve ends +and gland activities a man's dreams--that he lived by, or died for--were! + +She pulled him out of his reverie by a deliberate movement of resolution, +taking her hands away from her face, half rising and turning her chair so +that she faced him squarely. + +"I want to know in so many words," she said, "why you're glad that I'm +still bound to that Ravinia thing. You seem to want me to sing there +this summer, as much as you hated the idea of my doing it before. Well, +why? Or is it something you can't tell me? And if I sing and make a +success, shall you want me to go on with it, following up whatever +opening it offers; just as if--just as if you didn't count any more in my +life at all?" + +Before he could answer she added rather dryly, "Doctor Darby would kill +me for talking to you like this. You needn't answer if it's going to +hurt you." + +"No," he said, "it isn't hurting me a bit. But I'll answer one question +at a time, I think. The first thing that occurred to me when you spoke of +the Ravinia matter was that I didn't want you to break your word. You had +told them that they could count on you and I didn't want you, on my +account, to be put in a position where any one could accuse you of having +failed him. My own word was involved, for that matter. I told LaChaise I +wouldn't put any obstacles, in your way. Of course, I didn't contract +lobar pneumonia on purpose," he added with a smile. + +The intensity of her gaze did not relax at this, however. She was waiting +breathlessly. + +"The other question isn't quite so easy to answer," he went on, "but I +think I would wish you to--follow the path of your career wherever it +leads. I shall always count for as much as I can in your life, but +not--if I can help it--as an obstacle." + +"Why?" she asked. "What has made the perfectly enormous difference?" + +It was not at all an unanswerable question; nor one, indeed, that he +shrank from. But it wanted a little preliminary reflection. She +interrupted before he was ready to speak. + +"Of course, I really know. Have known all along. You haven't +forgiven me." + +He echoed that word with a note of helplessness. + +"No," she conceded. "That isn't it, exactly. I can't talk the way you and +Mary can. I suppose you have forgiven me, as far as that goes. That's the +worst of it. If you hadn't there'd be more to hope for. Or beg for. I'd +do that if it were any good. But this is something you can't help. You're +kind and sweet to me, but you've just stopped caring. For me. What used +to be there has just--gone snap. It's not your fault. I did it myself." + +"No," he said quickly. "That's where you're altogether wrong. You didn't +do it. You had nothing to do with the doing of it." + +She winced, visibly, at the implication that, whoever was responsible, +the thing was done. + +"Paula, dearest!" he cried, in acute concern. "Wait! There are things +that can't be dealt with in a breath. That's why I was trying to think a +little before I answered." + +Even now he had to marshal his thoughts for a moment before he could go +on. It was too ridiculous, that look of tragic desperation she wore while +she waited! He averted his eyes and began rather deliberately. + +"You are dearer to me now--at this moment, as we sit here--than ever +you've been before. I think that's the simple literal truth. This matter +of forgiveness--of your having done something to forfeit or to destroy +my--love for you... Oh, it's too wildly off the facts to be dealt with +rationally! I owe you my life. That's not a sentimental exaggeration. +Even Steinmetz says so. And you saved it for me at the end of a period of +weeks--months I guess--when I had been devoting most of my spare energies +to torturing you. Myself, incidentally, but there was nothing meritorious +about that. In an attempt to assert a--proprietary right in you that you +had never even pretended to give me. That I'd once promised you I never +would assert. The weight of obligation I'm under to you would be +absolutely crushing--if it weren't for one thing that relieves me of it +altogether. The knowledge that you love me. That you did it all for the +love of me." + +She moved no nearer him. These were words. There was no reassurance for +her in them. One irrepressible movement of his hands toward her, the mere +speaking of her name in a voice warmed by the old passion, would have +brought her, rapturous, to his knees. + +"There's no such thing as a successful pretense between us, I know," he +said. "So I'll talk plainly. I'm glad to. I know what it is you miss in +me. It's gone. Temporarily I suppose, but gone as if it had never been. +That's a--physiological fact, Paula." + +She flushed hotly at that and looked away from him. + +"I don't know exactly what a soul is," he went on. "But I do know that a +body--the whole of the body--is the temple of it. It impenetrates +everything; is made up of everything. Well, this illness of mine has, for +these weeks, made an old man of me. And I'm grateful to it for giving me +a chance to look ahead, before it's too late. I want to make the most of +it. Because you see, my dear, in ten years--or thereabouts--the course of +nature will have made of me what this pneumonia has given me a foretaste +of. Ten years. You will be--forty, then." + +She was gazing at him now, fascinated, in unwilling comprehension. "I +hate you to talk like that," she said. "I wish you wouldn't." + +"It's important," he told her crisply. "You'll see that in a minute, if +you will wait. Before very long--in a month or so, perhaps--I shall be, I +suppose, pretty much the same man I was--three months ago. Busy at my +profession again. In love with you again. All my old self-assurance back; +the more arrogant if it isn't quite the real thing. So now's the time, +when the fogs one moves about in have lifted and the horizon is sharp, to +take some new bearings. And set a new course by them. For both of us. + +"There is one fact sitting up like a lighthouse on a rock. I'm +twenty-four years older than you. Every five years that we live together +from now on will make that difference more important. When you're +forty-five--and you'll be just at the top of your powers by then--I shall +be one year short of seventy. At the end, you see, even of my +professional career. And that's only fifteen years away. Even with good +average luck, that's all I can count on. It's strange how one can live +along, oblivious to a simple sum in arithmetic like that." + +She had been on her feet moving distractedly about the room. Now she came +around behind his chair and gripped his body in her strong arms. + +"You shan't talk like that!" she said. "You shan't think like that! I +won't endure it. It's morbid. It's horrible." + +"Oh, no, it's not," he said easily. "The morbidity is in being afraid +to look at it. It was morbid to struggle frantically, the way I did all +the spring, trying to resist the irresistible thing that was drawing +you along your true path. It was a cancerous egotism of mine that was +trying to eat you up, live you up into myself. That, thank God, has +been cut out of me! I think it has. Don't misunderstand me, though. I'm +not going to relinquish anything of you that I can keep;--that I ever +had a chance to keep." + +He took her hands and gently--coolly--kissed them. + +"Then don't relinquish anything," she said. "It's all yours. Can't you +believe that, John?" + +He released her hands and sank back slackly in his chair. "Victory!" he +said, a note of inextinguishable irony in his voice. "A victory I'd have +given five years of my life for last March. Yet I could go on winning +them--a whole succession of them--and they could lead me to nothing but +disaster." + +She left him abruptly and the next moment he heard her fling herself down +upon his bed. When he rose and disengaged himself from his rug, she said, +over an irrepressible sob or two, that he wasn't to mind nor come to her. +She wasn't going to cry-not more than a minute. + +He came, nevertheless, settled himself on the edge of the bed and took +possession of her hands again. + +"I wouldn't have told you all this," he said--"for you don't need any +lessons in arithmetic, child--if I dared trust myself to remember, after +the other thing had come back. Now I'm committed--don't you see?--not to +play the fool, tragically or ludicrously, as the case might be, trying to +dispute the inevitable. And I shall contrive to keep a lot, my dear. More +than you think." + +Later, the evening of that same day, he asked her what was in the letter +that had provoked their talk. Did they want her back in Chicago for +rehearsals or consultations? Because if they did there was no reason in +the world why she should not go. At the rate at which he was gaining +strength there would not be the slightest reason--he gave her his +professional word of honor--why she should not go back in a day or two. + +"I should have to go back," she said, "if I were going to sing March's +opera. There is such a lot of work about a new production that there +would be no time to spare." + +"But," he asked, "isn't March's opera precisely what you are going to +sing?" + +"No," she said rebelliously. "It's not. There wasn't anything in the +contract about that. I'll carry out the contract this summer. I'll keep +my word and yours, since that is what you want me to do. But I won't sing +'Dolores' for anybody." + +He did not press her for the reason. + +After a little silence, she said, "Lucile thought I'd fallen in love with +him. So did Rush, I guess,--and poor old Nat. Did you, John?" + +"I tried to, hard enough," he confessed. + +She stared. "Tried to!" + +"That would have been the easier thing to fight," he said. "There's +nothing inevitable about a man,--any man. I'd have stood a chance at +least, of beating him, even though he had a twenty-year handicap or so. +But the other thing,--well, that was like the first bar of the Fifth +Symphony, you know; Fate knocking at the door. Clear terror that is until +one can get the courage to open the door and invite Fate in." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE END OF IT + + +About a week later--just at the beginning of June, this was--Paula did go +back to Chicago, leaving her husband to go on gaining the benefit, for +another ten days or so, of that wine-like mountain air. It was an +unwelcome conviction that he really wanted her to go, rather than any +crying need for her at Ravinia that decided her to leave him. The need +would not be urgent for at least another fortnight since it had been +decided between her and LaChaise that she should make her debut in +_Tosca_, an opera she had sung uncounted times. + +Since their momentous conversation in which John had attempted to revise +the fundamentals of their life together, they had not reverted to the +main theme of it; had clarified, merely, one or two of its more immediate +conclusions. Paula was to carry out in spirit as well as in letter the +terms of her Ravinia contract exactly as if it were still to be regarded +as the first step of her reopened career. What she should do about the +second step in case it offered itself to her was a bridge not to be +crossed until they came to it. + +John had professed himself content to let it remain at that, but she +divined that there was something hollow in his profession. It was +possible, of course, that his restlessness represented nothing more than +a new stage in his convalescence. It didn't seem possible that after the +candors of that talk he could still be keeping something back from her. +Yet that was an impression she very clearly got. Anyhow, her presence was +doing him no good, and on that unwelcome assurance, she bade him a +forlorn farewell and went home. + +It was a true intuition. John heaved a sigh of relief when she was +gone. In his present enfeebled state she was too much for him. The +electrical vitality of her overpowered him. Even before his illness he +had had moments--I think I have recorded one of them--when her ardent +strength paralyzed him with a sort of terror and these moments were more +frequent now. + +There was, too, a real effort involved in presenting ideas to her +(intellectual ideas, if they may be so distinguished from emotional +ones). He didn't know, now, whether she had fully understood what he had +been driving at that day; whether anything had really got through to her +beyond a melancholy realization that his love had cooled. He had always +been aware of this effort, but in the days of his strength he hadn't +minded making it. + +Now he was conscious of wishing for some one like Mary,--indeed, for Mary +herself. They talked the same language, absolutely. Their minds had the +same index of refraction, so that thoughts flashed back and forth between +them effortlessly and without distortion. He thought of her so often and +wished for her so much during the first two days of his solitude that it +seemed almost a case for the psychical research people when he got a +telegram from her. + +It read: "Aunt Lucile worried you left alone especially traveling. Shall +you mind or will Paula if I come down and bring you back, Mary." + +There was a situation made clear, at all events. He grinned over it as +he despatched his wire to her. "Perfectly unnecessary but come +straight along so that we can play together for a week or two before +starting home." + +Play together is just what they did. Enough of his strength soon came +back to make real walks possible and during the second week, with a +two-horse team and a side-bar buggy, they managed, without any ill +effect upon him, an excursion across the valley and up the opposite +mountainside to a log cabin road-house where they had lunch. + +Mary, a born horsewoman, did the driving herself, thus relieving them of +the impediment to real companionship which a hired driver would have +been. In an inconsecutive, light-hearted way difficult to report +intelligibly, they managed to tell each other a lot. She let him see, +with none of the rhetorical solemnities which a direct statement would +have involved, her new awareness of his professional eminence. A dozen +innuendoes, as light as dandelion feathers, conveyed it to him; swift +brush-strokes of gesture and inflection sketched the picture in; an +affectionate burlesque of awe completed it, so that he could laugh at her +for it as she had meant he should. + +She told him during their drive what the source of her illumination was; +described Anthony March's visit on that most desperate day of all, the +vividness of his concern over the outcome of the fight and his utter +unconcern about the effect of it upon his own fortunes. She had been +reading Kipling aloud, out at the farm, to the boys and Aunt Lucile and a +memory of it led her to make a comparison--heedless of its +absurdity--between the composer and Kirn's lama. "He isn't, anyhow, tied +to the 'wheel of things' any more than that old man was." + +"I'd like to have come down that day and heard him talk," John said. +"Because it's the real thing, with him. Not words. He wouldn't be a bad +person to go to," he added musingly, "if one had got himself into a +real _impasse_--or what looked like one. Paula has chucked his opera, +you know." + +She nodded, evidently not in the least surprised and, no more, perturbed +by this intelligence. "He won't mind that," she explained. "The only +thing he really needs, in the world, is to hear his music, but this, you +see, wasn't his any more. He had been trying to make it Paula's. He had +been working over it rather hopelessly, because he had promised, but it +was like letting him out of school when he found that she had forgotten +all about him;--didn't care if she never saw him again." + +She caught, without an explanatory word, the meaning of the glance her +father turned upon her, and went straight on. "Oh, it seems a lot, I +know, to have found out about him in one short talk, but there's +nothing--personal in that. He doesn't, I mean--save himself up for +special people. He's there for anybody. Like a public drinking fountain, +you know. That's why he would be such a wonderful person--to go to, as +you said. No one could possibly monopolize him." + +She added, after a silence, "It seems a shame, when he wants so little +that he can't have that. Can't hear, for example, that opera of his the +way he really wrote it." + +"We owe him something," her father said thoughtfully. "He got rather +rough justice from Paula, anyhow. I suppose a thing like that could, +perhaps, be managed--if one put his back into it." + +She understood instantly, as before, and quite without exegesis, the +twinge of pain that went across his face. "You _will_ have a back to +put into things again, one of these days. It wants only courage to wait +for it, quite patiently until it comes. You've plenty of that. That's +one of he things Mr. March told me about you," she added with the +playful purpose of surprising him again. "Only I happened to know that +for myself." + +"It's more than I can be sure of," he said. "I've been full of bravado +with Paula, telling her how soon I was going to be back in harness again; +cock-sure and domineering as ever, so that she'd better make hay while +the sun shone. But it was I, nevertheless, who made her go home so that +she could start to work--when the whistle blew. Some one was going to +have to support the family, I told her, and it didn't look as if it were +going to be me." + +This speech, though it ended in jest, had begun, she knew, in earnest. He +meant her to understand that, and left her to judge for herself where the +dividing line fell. She answered in a tone as light as his, "Paula could +do it easily enough." But she was not satisfied with the way he took it. +The mere quality of the silence must have told her something. She turned +upon him with sudden intensity and said, "Don't tell me you're +worrying--about three great healthy people like us. You have been, +though. Whatever put it into your mind to spend half a thought on that?" + +"Why, it was a letter from Martin Whitney," he said. "Oh, the best meant +thing in the world. Nothing but encouragement in it from beginning to +end, only it was so infernally encouraging, it set me off. No, let me +talk. You're quite the easiest person in the world to tell things to. +I've been remiss, there's no getting away from that. I've never taken +money-making very seriously, it came so easily. I've spent my earnings +the way my friends have spent their incomes. Well, if I'd died the other +day, there wouldn't have been much left. There would have been my life +insurance for Paula, and enough to pay my debts, including my engagements +for Rush, but beyond that, oh, a pittance merely. Of course with ten +years' health, back at my practise, even with five, I could improve the +situation a lot." + +She urged as emphatically as she dared--she wanted to avoid the +mistake of sounding encouraging--that the situation needed no +improvement. The income of fifty thousand dollars would take care of +Paula, and beyond that,--well, if there were ever two healthy young +animals in the world concerning whom cares and worries were +superfluous, they were herself and Rush. + +He told her thoughtfully that this was where she was; wrong. "Rush, to +begin with, isn't a healthy young animal. That's what I couldn't make +Martin Whitney understand. He's one of the war's sacrifices precisely as +much as if he had had his leg shot off. He needs support; will go on +needing it for two or three years, financial as well as moral. He mustn't +be allowed to fail. That's the essence of it. He's--spent, you see; +depleted. One speaks of it in figurative terms, but it's a physiological +thing--if we could get at it--that's behind the lassitude of these boys. +It all comes back to that. That they're restless, irresolute. That they +need the stimulus of excitement and can't endure the drag of routine. +They need a generous allowance, my dear,--even for an occasional failure +in self-command, those two boys out at Hickory Hill." + +She had nothing to say to that, though his pause gave her opportunity. A +sudden surmise as to the drift of that last sentence, silenced her. And +it was a surmise that leaped, in the next instant, to full conviction. He +was pleading Graham's cause with her! Why? Was it something that had been +as near his heart as that, all along? Or had some one--Rush--or even +Graham himself--engaged his advocacy? + +She said at last, rather breathlessly (it was necessary to say something +or he would perceive that his stratagem had betrayed itself): "Well, at +the gloomy worst, Rush is taken care of. And as for me, I'm not a war +sacrifice, anyhow. That's not a possible conception--even for a worried +convalescent. Did you ever _see_ anything as gorgeous as that tree, even +in an Urban stage setting?" + +"No," he said, "the war wasn't what you were sacrificed to." + +She held her breath until she saw he wasn't going on with that. But he +seemed willing to follow her lead to lighter matters, and for the rest +of their excursion they carried out the pretense that there was nothing +like a cloud in their sky. + +That evening, though, after she had bidden him good night, she changed +her mind and came back into his room. There had been something wistful +about his kiss that, determined her. + +"Which of them wrote to you about me?" she asked. + +"Both," he told her. "Of course I should have known you'd guess. Forgive +me for having tried to--manage you. I'll show you both their letters if +you like. It's a breach of confidence, of course, but I don't know that I +could do better." + +"I'll read Rush's," she said. "Not the other." + +She carried it over to the lamp, and for a while after she had taken in +its easily grasped intent she went on turning its pages back and forth +while she sought for an end of the tangled skein of her thoughts to +hold on by. + +Finally, "Do you want me to marry him, dad?" she asked. Then, before he +could answer she hurried on. "I mean, would it relieve you from some +nightmare worry about me if I did?--This has to be plain talk, doesn't +it, if it is to get us anywhere?" + +"That's a fair question of yours," he said. But he wasn't ready at once +with an answer. "It _would_ be such a relief, provided you really wanted +to marry him. That goes to the bottom of it, I think. My responsibility +is to make it possible for you to--follow your heart. To marry or not as +you wish. To marry a poor man if you wish. But if Graham is your choice +and all that holds you back from him is some remediable +misunderstanding--or failure to understand ..." + +"I don't know whether it's remediable or not," she said; and added, "I +told him I would marry him if I could. Did he tell you that?" + +It was a mistake to have quoted that expression to her father. He took +it just as Graham had. Of course! What else could he think? She sat with +clenched hands and a dry throat, listening while he tried to enlighten +what he took to be her innocent misunderstanding. + +They had never spoken, she realized, about matters of sex. For anything +he really knew to the contrary she might have been as ignorant as a +child. He was actually talking as one talks to a child;--kindly, +tolerantly, tenderly, but with an unconscious touch of patronage, like +one trying to explain away--misgivings about Santa Claus! There were +elements, inevitably, in a man's love for a woman, that a young girl +could not understand. Nothing but experience could bring that +understanding home to her. This was what in one way after another, he was +trying to convey. + +But the intuition which, in good times or bad, always betrayed their +emotions to each other, showed him that he was, somehow missing the mark. +Her silence through his tentative little pauses disconcerted him heavily. +He ran down at last like an unwound clock. + +It was only after a long intolerably oppressive silence that she found +her voice. "The misunderstanding isn't what you think," she said. "Nor +what Graham thinks. It's his misunderstanding, not mine. He thinks that I +am--a sort of innocent angel that he's not good enough for. And the fact +is that I'm not--not innocent enough for him. Not an angel at all. Not +even quite--good." + +But she got no further. The plea for comprehension, for an ear that would +not turn away from her plain story, never was made. In a smother of words +he halted her. Affectionately, with a gentleness that achieved absolute +finality. She was overwrought. She carried paradox too far. In her +innocence she used a form of speech that she didn't know the meaning of, +and should be careful to avoid. Her troubles, with patience, would work +themselves out in the end. Meanwhile let her as far as possible stop +thinking about them. + +But she had got, during the intaken breath before he began to speak, a +sensation,--as sharp and momentary as the landscape revealed in a +lightning flash,--of a sudden terror on his part; as of one finding +himself on the edge of an abyss of understanding. For that one glaring +instant before he had had time to turn his face away he had known what +she meant. But he never would look again. Never would know. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +FULL MEASURE + + +Ravinia is one of Chicago's idiosyncrasies, a ten-weeks' summer season of +grand opera with a full symphony orchestra given practically +out-of-doors. Its open pavilion seats from fifteen hundred to two +thousand people and on a warm Saturday night, you will find twice as many +more on the, "bleachers" that surround it or strolling about under the +trees in the park. The railroad runs special trains to it all through the +season from town, and crammed and groaning interurbans collect their toll +for miles from up and down the shore. + +It had begun as an amusement park with merry-go-rounds, Ferris-wheels and +such--to the scandalized indignation of numerous super-urban persons +whose summer places occupied most of the district roundabout. They took +the enterprise into their own hands, abolished the calliope, put a +symphony orchestra into the bandstand and, eventually, transformed the +shell into a stage and went in for opera; opera popularized with a blue +pencil so that no performance was ever more than two hours long, and at +the modest price of fifty cents. + +Its forces, recruited chiefly from among the younger stars at the +Metropolitan, give performances that want no apologetic allowance from +anybody. It has become an institution of which the town and especially +the North Shore is boastful. + +Paula foresaw no easy conquest here. Her social prestige, part of which +she enjoyed as John Wollaston's wife and part of which she had earned +during the last four years for herself, counted as much against her as it +did in her favor. It was evident from the way the announcements of her +prospective appearance at Ravinia had been elaborated in the society +columns of the newspapers that it would arouse a lot of curiosity. It +would be one of the topics that everybody, in the social-register sense +of the word, would be talking about and in order to talk authoritatively +everybody--four or five hundred people this is to say--would have to +attend at least one of her performances. + +Nothing less than a downright unmistakable triumph would convince them. +She was a professional in the grain and yet in this adventure she would +be under the curse of an amateur's status, a thing she hated as all +professionals do. + +It was evidently from an instinct to cut herself off as completely as +possible from these social connections of hers that she rented for the +summer, a furnished house in the village of Ravinia, within a mile or so +of the park. John was rather disconcerted over this when she told him +about it. She greeted him with it as an accomplished fact upon his +return to Chicago with Mary. She made a genuine effort to explain the +necessity, but explanations were not in Paula's line and she didn't +altogether succeed. + +She made it clear enough, though, that she didn't want to be fussed by +the attentions of friends or family, of her husband least of all. She +didn't want to be congratulated nor encouraged. She didn't want to be +asked to little suppers or luncheons nor to be made the objective of +personally conducted tourist parties back stage. She didn't want to be +called to the telephone, ever, except on matters of professional business +by her Ravinia colleagues. + +All of this, John pointed out, could be accomplished at home. He, +himself, could deal with the telephoners and the tourists. This was about +all apparently that he was going to be good for this summer; but a +watchdog's duties he could perform in a highly efficient manner. + +"But a home and a husband are the very first things I've got to forget +about," cried Paula. "Oh, can't you see!" + +Darkly and imperfectly, he did. The atmosphere of the home in which one +has been guarded and pampered as a priceless possession was--must +be--enervating, and to one who was screwing up her powers to their +highest pitch for a great effort like this, it would be +poisonous--malarial! He would have been clearer about it, though, but for +the misgiving that, consciously or not, Paula was punishing him for +having insisted that she carry her contract through. Or--if that were too +harsh a way of putting it,--that she was coquetting with him. Having told +her down there in the South that he didn't care for her in a loverlike +way, he might now have an opportunity of proving that he did--over +obstacles! + +It gave him a twinge, for a fact, but he managed to ask good-humoredly if +this meant that he was to be barred from the whole show, from +performances as well as from rehearsals and the Ravinia house. + +"I won't care," she said with a laugh of desperation, "after I've once +got my teeth in. But until then... Oh, I know it sounds horrible but I +don't want even to--feel you; not even in the fringe of it. + +"I'll tell you who I would like, though," she went on over a palpable +hesitation and with a flush of color rising to her cheeks. "I can't live +all alone up there of course. I could get along with just a maid, but it +would be easier and nicer if I could have some one for a--companion. And +the person I'd choose, if she'd do it, is Mary." + +He said, not quite knowing whether to be pleased or not, that they could +ask her about it at all events. They were rather counting on her out at +Hickory Hill but he didn't know that that need matter. Only wasn't +Mary--family, herself, a reminder of home? + +"Not a bit," said Paula, with a laugh. "Not but what she likes me well +enough," she went on, trying to account for her preference (these +Wollastons were always concerned about the whys of things) "but she +stands off a little and looks on; without holding her breath, either. And +then, well, she'd be a sort of reminder of you, after all." + +Put that way, he couldn't quarrel with it, though there was a +challenge about it that chilled him a little. Watched over by his own +daughter (this was what it came to) Paula would be beyond +suspicion--even of Lucile. + +Mary, when the scheme was put up to her was no less surprised than +John had been, but she was pleased clear through, and with a +clean-cutting executive skill he had hardly credited her with, she +thought out the details of the plan and revised the rest of their +summer arrangements to fit. + +The Dearborn Avenue house should be closed and her father should move out +to the farm. The apple house was now remodeled to a point where it would +accommodate him as well as Aunt Lucile very comfortably. The boys and the +servants could live around in tents and things. She'd want only one maid +for the cottage at Ravina and the small car which she'd drive herself. + +The sum of all the activities that Mary proposed for herself added up to +a really exacting job; housekeeper, personal maid, chauffeur, chaperon +and secretary. It was with a rather mixed lot of emotions that John +thought of delivering her over to be tied to Paula's chariot wheels like +that. One of the two women who loved him serving the other in a capacity +so nearly menial! The thought of it gave him an odd sort of thrill even +while he shrank from it. Certainly, he would not have assented to it, had +it not been so unmistakably what Mary herself wanted. Her reasons for +wanting it he couldn't feel that he had quite fathomed. + +There was, as a matter of fact, nothing fine-spun about them. It was a +job in the first place and gave her, therefore, she mordantly told +herself, an excuse for continuing to exist. It was an escape from Hickory +Hill. (Clear cowardice this was, she confessed. That situation would have +to be met and settled one way or the other before long; but her dread of +both the possible alternatives had mounted since her frustrated attempt +to confide in her father.) The third reason which she avowed to +everybody, was simple excited curiosity for a look into a new world. The +mystery and the glamour of it attracted her. Paula's proposal gave her +the opportunity to see what these strange persons were like when they +were not strutting their little while upon the stage. + +Paula, of course, was, fundamentally, one of them. It was remarkable how +that simple discovery interpreted her. When you saw her surrounded by +them, working and quarreling with them, talking that horrible polyglot of +French, Italian and English, which she slipped into so easily, you +realized how exotic the environment of the Dearborn Avenue house must +have been to her and how strong a thing her passion for John Wollaston, +to enable her to endure five years of it,--of finikin social +observances,--of Aunt Lucile's standards of propriety! + +Mary took real comfort in her companionship; found an immense release +from emotional pressure in it. One might quarrel furiously with Paula +(and it happened Mary very nearly did, as shall be related presently, +before they had been in the cottage three days), but one couldn't +possibly worry one's self about her, couldn't torture one's self feeling +things with Paula's nerves. That was the Wollaston trick. What frightful +tangles the thing that goes by the name of unselfishness, the attempt to +feel for others, could lead a small group like a family into! + +Another thing that helped was that during the fortnight of rehearsal +before the season opened, there wasn't time to think. They were pelted +by perfectly external events, a necessity for doing this, an appointment +to do that, an engagement somewhere else. It was like being caught out +in a driving rain. You scuttled along-snatched a momentary shelter where +you could. + +Even getting the clothes Paula needed would have filled the time of a +woman of leisure to the brim. A bridal trousseau would have been nothing +to it. But with Paula these activities had to be sandwiched in with daily +rehearsals,--long ones, too,--hours with Novelli while she memorized +half-forgotten parts, interviews with reporters, struggles with +photographers, everything that the diabolic ingenuity of the publicity +man could contrive. He, by the way, regarded Paula as his best bet and +lavished his efforts upon her in a way that stirred her colleagues +(rivals, of course), to a frenzied exasperation, over his sinister +partiality to this "society amateur." + +(They all but enjoyed a terrible revenge, for as poetic justice narrowly +missed having it, the extent of her advance publicity and the beauty of +her clothes proved to be the rocks she went aground on. Only a lucky wave +came along and floated her off again.) + +Mary's quarrel with Paula, though it never came off,--never for that +matter got through to Paula's consciousness, even as an approach to +one,--had, all the same, a chain of consequences and so deserves to be +recorded. The opera management was supposed to supply Paula with a piano +and they found one already installed in the Ravinia house when they moved +in, a small grand of a widely advertised make. Paula dug half a dozen +vicious arpeggios out of it and condemned it out of hand. Then in the +midst of a petulant outburst which had, nevertheless, a humorous savor +(the management would promise and pretend till kingdom come. They'd even +take real trouble to get out of complying with her simple request for a +new piano), she pulled herself up short and stared at Mary. + +"What idiots we are! I am, anyhow. I'd forgotten all about March. He can +make a piano out of anything. When he's tuned this, I won't want another. +I've got his telephone number somewhere. You don't happen to remember it, +do you?--Why? What makes you look like that?" + +For Mary was staring at her--speechless. Paula's affairs had driven her +own pretty well out of her mind. She had stopped thinking about Graham. +She'd given over worrying about Rush. But she had not forgotten Anthony +March. The alternative possibility that Paula might have gone on with his +opera, that he might have been, but for what her father spoke of as rough +justice, attending rehearsals of it, hearing that big orchestra making a +reality of its unheard melodies, had been much in her mind. She had +wondered whether it was not really in Paula's. Along with a regret for +his downcast hopes. He was, in a way, the ladder she had climbed by. +Hearing her sing those wonderful songs of his was what had led LaChaise +to offer her this opportunity. And Paula didn't know, Mary was sure, of +anything that mitigated his disappointment. To her, he was merely one who +had tried and, pitiably, failed. She must, it seemed, have felt sorry +about it and Mary had considerately avoided all reference to him. + +Now it appeared that Paula had blankly forgotten all about him. +Remembered him only when she wanted him to tune the piano. She callously +proposed to exact this service of him, and if possible, over the +telephone! + +"I suppose," Mary said, when she had found her voice, "that I look the +way I feel. Paula, you _wouldn't_ do that!" + +"Why not?" Paula demanded. And then with a laugh, "I wouldn't forget to +pay him this time. And it would be nice to see him again, too. Because I +really liked him a lot." + +"Well, if you do like him, you wouldn't, would you, want to do +anything--cruel to him? Anything that he might take as--a willful insult? +Because it could be taken like that, I should think." + +She spoke with a good deal of effort. Paula's surprise, the +incredulous way she had echoed the word cruel, the fact that there was +still an unshaken good humor in the look of curiosity that she +directed upon her stepdaughter, all but overwhelmed Mary with a sudden +wave of helpless anger. + +What could one do with a selfishness as insolent as that? What was +there to say? + +Paula got up, still looking at her in that puzzled sort of way, came over +to her chair, sat down on the arm of it and took her by the shoulders. + +"You're trembling!" she said. "I suspect I am working you too hard. You +mustn't let me do that, you know. John will never forgive me if I do. +Why, about March, did you mean because I wouldn't sing his opera? He knew +all the time I wouldn't unless he could get it right. And he knew he +wasn't getting it right. He wanted to give it up long before he did, only +I wouldn't let him. But as for being insulted, bless you, he isn't like +that. And perhaps if he came I could get him all the pianos out here to +keep in tune. There must be dozens!" + +At that Mary laughed in a recoil of genuine amusement. She could imagine +that Anthony March would laugh himself. In one particular Paula was +unquestionably right. He wouldn't feel insulted. He was just the last +person in the world to be accessible to such a petty emotion. + +She returned Paula's hug and extricated herself from the chair. + +"You needn't worry about me, at all events," she said. "I'm not tired a +bit. But could we worry a little about Mr. March? About his opera, I +mean? Don't you suppose we could get Mr. LaChaise to put it on? The way +he originally wrote it.--I mean for somebody else to sing." + +"Fournier could sing it in a rather interesting way," Paula remarked +speculatively. "Only I don't believe he'd sing in English. Certainly +there's nobody else." + +"Perhaps if he saw the score ..." Mary began. + +"Gracious!" Paula broke in, a little startled, not much. "I haven't an +idea where that score is. I may have sent it back to him, but I don't +believe I did." + +"No," Mary told her. "It's here. When I closed up the house, I brought it +along. He might be interested enough in it I should think," she +persisted, "if you and Mr. LaChaise told him how good it was,--to learn +it in English. Or it might, I suppose,--the whole thing I mean,--be +translated into French. There might, anyhow, prove to be something we +could do." + +"Good heavens, child!" Paula said, "we're up to the eyes now, all three +of us. Will be for weeks as far as that goes. We simply couldn't think of +it." Through a yawn she added, "Not that it wouldn't be a nice thing to +do if we had time." + +Paula's notion of getting March to come up and tune her piano was not +damped at all by the wet blanket of Mary's objection to it. From town +that day, Mary having driven her in for more fittings and photographers, +Paula telephoned to the Fullerton Avenue house and later told Mary in an +acutely dissatisfied manner that she had got simply nowhere with the +person with whom she had talked. "She pretends,--oh, it was his sister +or his mother, I suppose,--that they don't know anything whatever about +him. Haven't seen him for ever so long. Haven't an idea how to get word +to him. If only I had time to drive out there ... But I haven't a minute +of course." + +Mary observed that she didn't see what good it would do to be told in +person what Paula had just learned over the telephone. She could drive +out there herself if there was any point in it, during the hour when +Paula was engaged with her dressmaker. + +Paula jumped at this suggestion. She was one of those persons whom +telephones never quite convince. So Mary, rather glad of the errand, +though convinced of its futility so far as Paula's designs were +concerned, drove out to the Fullerton Avenue house and presently found +herself in a small neat parlor talking to a neat old lady who was not, +perhaps, as old as she looked, about Anthony March. + +For anything that bore upon the obtainability of his service for the +Ravinia piano the telephone conversation would have done as well. His +mother had seen him for only a short time, a little more than a week ago +and judged from what he then said that he was upon the point of going +away, though not for a long absence--a month, perhaps. She had not asked +where he meant to go and he had volunteered nothing. It was possible that +he did not know himself. + +Mary remained in doubt, for the first five minutes or so of her call, +whether the stiff guarded precision of this was a mark of hostility to +the whole Wollaston clan or whether it was nothing but undiluted New +England reserve. She ventured a tentative, "I suppose he didn't say +especially why he was going," and on getting a bare negative in reply, +went on, a little breathlessly:--"I didn't mean that impertinently;--only +all of us were very much interested in him and we liked him too well, +especially father and I, to be content to lose track of him. I hope he +wasn't ill;--didn't go away because of that." + +"He told me that he was not," Mrs. March answered. "Though if I might +have had my way with him, I would have put him to bed for a week. +However," she added, with a fine smile, "I never did have my way with him +and neither has his father had his. And I judge it to be as well that we +have not." + +No, there was no hostility about it. She perceived the genuineness in her +visitor's concern and was perhaps really touched by it. But even so she +was sparing of details. Anthony had never lived a life regulated by rule +and habit. He worked at his music much too hard when the call, as she +termed it, was upon him, and obviously quite forgot to take proper care +of himself. And then he went away, as on this occasion, to recuperate in +his own manner. + +Mary adventured again just as she was getting up to take her leave. "It +must want a good courage," she said, "to let him go like that; not to +keep trying, at least, to hold him back in sheltered ways." + +She got a nod of acknowledgment of the truth of this, but no words at +all. But she found herself, afterward, in possession of an impression so +clear that one would think it must have needed a long exchange of +unreserved confidences to have produced it. The man's mother loved him, +of course; one might take that for granted. And was proud of him; of +course--perhaps--again. But beyond all that, she rejoiced in him; in his +emancipation from the line and precept which had so tightly confined her; +in his very vagabondage. + +She was not much in his confidence, though. Mary had made that out from +the way she had received her own resume of the status of his opera. His +mother had known nothing of his hopes, neither when Paula raised them +up nor later when she cast them down. It was odd about that--and rather +pitiable. She would have welcomed her son's confidences, Mary was sure, +with so real a sympathy, if he could only have believed it. But the +crust of family tradition was too thick, she supposed, to make even the +attempt possible. + +This failure of his fully to understand the person traditionally the +nearest and dearest to him in all the world had, upon Mary's mind, the +effect of, somehow, solidifying him; making him more completely human to +her--where it might have been expected to work the other way. It proved +the last touch she needed to quicken the concern she had from the +beginning felt for him into an entirely real thing, a motivating +principle. If it was possible to get that opera of his produced, she was +going to do it. + +She stopped at the Dearborn Avenue house on her way down-town to get her +little portable typewriter and carry it out to Ravinia with her. In the +odd hours of the next few days she copied March's libretto in English, +triple spaced, out of his score and this, with a lead pencil, she took to +carrying around with her to Paula's rehearsals, to her dressing-room, +everywhere. A phrase at a time, syllable by syllable, she began putting +it into French. + +On the last Saturday night in June the Ravinia season opened with _Tosca_ +sung in Italian; Paula singing the title part and Fournier as "Scarpia." +A veteran American tenor, Wilbur Hastings, an old Ravinia favorite, sang +"Cavaradossi." Taken as a whole, the performance was quite as good as any +one has a right to expect any opening night to be. The big audience which +went away good-naturedly satisfied, had had its moments of really +stirring enthusiasm. Fournier scored a well deserved triumph with a +"Scarpia" that was characterized by a touch of really sinister +distinction. Hastings, incapable as he was of subtleties or refinements, +did as usual all the obvious things pretty well and got the welcome he +had so rightly counted upon. But Paula fell unmistakably short of winning +the smashing success she had so ardently hoped for. + +She did not, of course, fail. Wallace Hood, to take him for a sample of +her admiring friends, went home assuring himself that her success had +been all he or any of the rest of them could have wished. And he wrote +that same night a letter to John Wollaston out at Hickory Hill saying as +much. Her beauty, he told John, had been a revelation even to him and +there could be no doubt that the audience had been deeply moved by it. +Her acting also had taken him by surprise. It was a talent he had not +looked for in her and he was correspondingly delighted by this +manifestation of it. In the great scene with Fournier when he stated the +terms of his abominable bargain to her, Wallace had hardly been able to +realize it was Paula that he saw on the stage. + +When it came to her singing (he knew John would want his most impartial +honest judgment)--here where he had been surest of her, she came nearest +to disappointing him. It was a shame, of course, to subject a lovely +voice like hers to singing in the great vacancy of all outdoors, to say +nothing of forcing it into competition with a shouter and bellower like +Hastings. But he felt sure when she was a little better accustomed to her +surroundings, she would rise superior even to these drawbacks. + +This was somewhere near the facts, though stated with a strong friendly +bias. Paula was nervous, never really got into the stride of her acting +at all. The strong discrepancy between Fournier's methods and Hastings' +served perhaps to prevent her getting into step with either. And she sang +all but badly. There had been only one rehearsal in the pavilion and at +that she had been content merely to sketch her work in, singing off the +top of her voice. When she really opened up at the performance, the +unfamiliar acoustics of the place frightened her into forcing, with the +result that she was constantly singing sharp. + +Paula herself, though disappointed, didn't feel too badly about it, +knowing that all her difficulties were merely matters of adjustment, +until she read what the critics said about her in the papers the next +morning. What they said was not on the face of it, severe;--came, indeed, +to much the same thing as Wallace Hood's verdict. But the picture between +the lines which they unanimously presented, was of a spoiled beauty, +restless for the publicity that private life deprived her of, offering in +a winning manner to a gullible public, a gold brick. + +Paula was furiously angry over this, justifiably, too. Her work had +been professional even in its defects and deserved professional +judgment. The case was serious, too, for if that notion of her once got +fairly planted in the minds of her public, it would be almost +impossible to eradicate it. + +But Anthony March had not been mistaken when he spoke of her as a +potential tamer of wild beasts. Her anger was no mere gush of emotions, +to spend itself and leave her exhausted. It was a sort that hardened in +an adamantine resolution. The next chance she got, she'd show them! +Unluckily, she wasn't billed to sing again until toward the end of the +week. It happened, however, that the Sunday papers, taking away with one +hand, gave in a roundabout but effective fashion with the other. + +The opera billed for that night was _Pagliacci_. A young American +baritone with a phenomenal high A, was to sing "Tonio" and a new Spanish +soprano was cast for "Nedda." When this young woman saw the Sunday papers +she, too, went into a violent rage. Her knowledge of English was not +sufficient to enable her to draw any comfort from the subtle cruelties +which the critics had inflicted on Paula in the news section. But the +music and drama supplements which had been printed days before, devoted +as they were to the opening of the season, simply made Paula the whole +thing. The Spanish young lady's rage was of a different quality from +Paula's. She wept and stormed. She demanded like Herodias, the head of +that press agent on a charger. Simply that and nothing more. And when she +failed to get it, she went to bed. + +The management, disconcerted but by no means at the end of its resources, +decreed a change of the bill to _Lucia_. They were ready to go on with +_Lucia_ which had been billed for Tuesday night. All they needed was to +bring the scenery out from town in a truck. This they ordered done; but +at five o'clock, about two miles south of the park, the truck went +through a bridge culvert and rolled all the way to the bottom of a +ravine. The driver escaped with his life but the production of _Lucia_ +was smashed to splinters. + +Mary chanced upon this piece of information and brought it straight to +Paula. "Tell them to go ahead with _Pagliacci_, then," Paula said. "I'll +sing 'Nedda' myself. Get LaChaise on the phone and let me talk to him." + +She did sing it without any rehearsal at all. And she gave a performance +which for most of the persons who saw it, made her the, and the only, +"Nedda"; though--or perhaps, because--she didn't give the part quite its +traditional characterization; adapted it with the unscrupulousness of the +artist to her own purpose. + +Paula's "Nedda" was a sulky slattern, indifferent, lazy, smoldering with +passion,--dangerous. The sensuous quality of her beauty had never been +more apparent than it was in the soiled cheap mountebank fineries which +she had worn for so many performances of the part in Europe. And this +beauty, of course, did a lot of the work for her. Explained the tragedy +all by itself. And, indeed, tragedy hung visibly over her from the moment +of her first entrance upon the stage in the donkey cart. She was the sort +of woman men kill and are killed for. + +She played the part with an extreme economy of movement, with a kind of +feline stillness which made her occasional explosions into action, as +when she attacked Tonio with the whip, literally terrifying. She sang it +carelessly and therefore in a manner absolutely gorgeous. She swept them +all, critics as well as the immense audience, clean off their feet. + +Also, by way of a foot-note, the managerial announcement that Madame +Carresford had volunteered for the part at six o'clock, to rescue them +from the necessity of closing the park and was to sing it absolutely +without rehearsal, exploded for all time the notion that there was +anything of the amateur about her. + +"You can do anything," LaChaise told her as she came out into the wings. +And he kissed her on both cheeks rather solemnly, in the manner of one +conferring a decoration. In full measure pressed down and running over, +that was how Paula's success came to her. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE WAYFARER + + +By the time Paula had got back to her dressing-room after the long series +of tumultuous curtain calls was over, the rush of her friends to express +their congratulations in person had begun. After the _Tosca_, performance +she had been adamant about seeing anybody but to-night with a laugh she +said, "I don't care. For a few minutes. If they're people I really know." + +So Mary took her station beside the Rhadamanthus at the stockade gate--in +a proper opera-house, he would have been the stage door-keeper--to pick +out the sheep from the goat-like herd of the merely curious who, but for +firm measures, would have stormed the place. Those who came down again, +pushed out by the weight of new arrivals, lingered about the gate talking +things over with Mary. It amused her to see how radically their attitude +had changed. Such people as the Averys, the Cravens and the Byrnes, who +in a social way had known Paula well, seemed to regard her now as a +personage utterly remote, translated into another world altogether. And +when they asked about John Wollaston, as most of them did, there was an +undertone almost of commiseration about their inquiries, though on the +surface this didn't go beyond an expressed regret that he hadn't been +here to witness the triumph. + +Mary drove them all away at last, even the lingerers in Paula's +dressing-room, left her safely in the hands of her dresser and went out +into the automobile park to get her car. Coming up softly across the +grass and reaching in to turn on the lights, she was startled to discover +that there was a man in it. But before she had time more than to gasp, +she recognized him as her father. + +"I didn't want to push my way in with the mob," he explained, after +apologizing for having frightened her. "The car, when I spotted it, +seemed a safe place to wait. And the privacy of it," he added, "will be +grateful, too, since I'm not perfectly sure that Paula won't refuse +outright to see me." + +Mary smiled at this and said she hoped he hadn't missed the performance. + +"No," he told her somberly, "I didn't miss--any of it." Then on a +different note, "Now we'll see whether those dogs of critics won't change +their tune." + +"Paula herself changed the tune," Mary observed. Then, "She's longing to +see you, of course. And there's no reason why you should wait. No one's +with her now except her dresser." + +She led the way, without giving him a chance to demur, to the gate to the +stockade and turned him over to the gatekeeper. + +"Please take Doctor Wollaston up to his wife's dressing-room," she said. +And with a momentary pleasure in having evaded introducing him as Madame +Carresford's husband, she turned away and went back to the car. + +For the moment the spectacle of her father in the rôle of a young lover +touched her no more acutely than with a mild half-humorous melancholy. +She even paid the tribute of a passing smile to the queer reversal of +their rôles, her own and his. She was more like a mother brooding over +the first love-affair of an adolescent son. It was so young of him, +younger, she believed, than any act she herself could be capable of, to +have come to Paula's performance without letting her know and waited +shyly alone in the dark while the herd of her acquaintances crowded in +and monopolized her. Pathetically young, almost intolerably pathetic in +a man in his middle fifties. She wondered if he had come up for _Tosca_ +the night before and gone away without a word. + +She had spoken quite without authority in assuring him of Paula's +welcome. Paula had not, she thought, spoken of him once either in +connection with her disappointment the night before or with her triumph +to-night. Yet that he would get a lover's welcome she had very little +doubt. It was his moment certainly. Paula left alone up there at last, +sated with an overwhelming success, tired, relaxed... + +With an effort of will Mary settled herself a little more deeply in the +seat behind the wheel and lighted a cigarette. She hated having to wait, +having to be found waiting when they came down together. She wished she +could just--disappear. It wasn't possible, of course. + +It was not very long before they came down. "She says I may stay two +days," John told Mary as they squeezed into their seats in the little +roadster. "Then, relentlessly, she's going to turn me out." But his voice +was beyond disguise that of a lover who has prospered. + +Mary drove them in almost unbroken silence all the way, down the ravine +road and up through the woods to the house in the village. Then she went +on with the car to their garage which stood in a yard of a neighbor, two +or three doors away. She rejected with curt good-humor her father's offer +to help her with this job. It was what she always did by herself, she +said, and took a momentary perverse pleasure, which she despised herself +for, in the obvious fact that this troubled him. + +Back in the cottage living-room, ten minutes later perhaps, she found him +alone and heard then, the explanation of his having come. They had got +the Sunday papers out at Hickory Hill as usual in the middle of the +morning but had found no reference to the performance of _Tosca_ the +night before. John had spent a good part of the day fretting over the +absence of any news as to how Paula's venture had succeeded and puzzling +over the lack of it in the papers. Then the obvious explanation had +struck one of the boys, that the papers that came out to Hickory Hill on +Sunday were an early edition. + +He had had old Pete drive him straight into town, at that, and there he +had found the news-stand edition containing the criticisms. The +unfairness of them had disturbed him greatly. Orders or no orders, he +hadn't been able to endure the thought of leaving Paula to suffer under +the sting of a sneer like that without making at least an effort to +comfort her. He had driven out to Ravinia without any idea that she was +to sing again that night; had been told of it at the park where he had +stopped for the purpose of picking up some one who could conduct him to +her house. Learning that she was about to sing again, he had exerted all +his will power and waited until this second ordeal should be over. + +"It was as much one for me as it could have been for her," he concluded. +"I don't know what stage fright is, but vicarious stage fright is the +devil. I never was so terrified in my life. I hope nobody I knew saw me. +I took pains they shouldn't, for I must have looked like a ghost." + +"There's nothing the matter with your looks now," she told him. "Hickory +Hill must be just the place for you." + +"It would be," he assented, "if it were possible for me to be +whole-heartedly there. By the way, we've got a visitor. Anthony March." + +She felt herself flush at that with clear pleased surprise. "Oh, that's +as nice as possible," she said. "But how in the world did it happen? How +did you find him? Paula was trying to and couldn't." + +"Was she?" Her father's voice, she thought, flattened a little on the +question. "Why, he found us. He turned up on foot--Friday morning, it +must have been--with a knapsack on his shoulders; came to the farm-house +door and asked if he should tune the piano. Luckily, I happened to be +about and caught him before he could get away. He was combining a walking +trip, he said, with his own way of earning a living and I persuaded him +to stay for a few days and make us a visit." + +The last part of that sentence, Paula, coming down into the room from +up-stairs, heard. + +"Who?" she asked. "Who's the visitor you've been persuading?" + +It was just a good-natured way of showing her interest in anything that +her husband might happen to be talking about. But when he answered, +"Anthony March," she came into focus directly. + +"Thank goodness, you've found him!" she said. "I had about given him +up.--And I really need him." + +"I thought," said John, "that you had given him up. Are you going to do +his opera, after all?" + +"Opera!" said Paula blankly, as if she had never heard of such a thing. +"No, I want him to see if he can fix this beastly piano they've given me +so that it's fit to work with." + +And John, after a moment-laughed. + +It was a shattering sort of laugh to Mary. She stared at the man who +uttered it as if he were--what he had for the moment become--a stranger. +He was not, certainly, the man who, down in North Carolina had talked +about March with her, regretted the "rough justice" he had had from Paula +and considered the possibility of repairing it. That momentary blank look +of his had shown that he perceived the insensitive egotism of his wife's +attitude. Not even now that her success was an established thing had she +a regretful thought for the man who had hoped to share it with her. She +had forgotten those hopes. All she remembered now about Anthony March was +that he could tune pianos better than any one else. + +This Mary's father saw and yet he laughed. A cruel laugh. He had felt +for the moment a recurrence of the old jealousy. In his relief from it, +he, a reassured lover, triumphed in the humiliation of one he had +supposed his rival. + +Mary managed to hide her face from him--superfluously because he wasn't +looking at her--and thought up, desperately, a few more questions about +how they were getting on at Hickory Hill. + +But she went on feeling from moment to moment more horribly in the way, +and at last with a simulated yawn she said she was going to bed. +"This--vicarious success is rather tiring," she told her father; "almost +as bad as vicarious stage fright." And then to Paula, "Is there any +reason, if you're going to keep father here for two days, why I shouldn't +steal a holiday?" + +"Go away, do you mean?" Paula asked with a faint flush. "Why,--where +would you go?" + +"I could drive over to Hickory Hill," Mary said, "either by myself in the +little car or with Pete in the big one. Whichever you wouldn't rather +have here." + +"I think that's a capital idea," John said. "Oh, you'd better take the +big car with Pete. It would be rather a long drive for you all by +yourself in the little one." + +This was not the real reason, of course. He wouldn't want a chauffeur +under foot while he was honeymooning about with Paula. + +Owing to a late start and an errand which at the last moment Paula wanted +done in Chicago, it was getting on toward four o'clock when Pete drove +Mary up to the loading platform of the old apple house at Hickory Hill. +The farm Ford was standing there idling in a syncopated manner and +apparently on the point of departure somewhere. Where, was explained a +moment later by the emergence of Sylvia Stannard in her conventional farm +costume of shirt and breeches with a two-gallon jug in each hand. + +"Oh," she said, "then the big car can take Miss Wollaston over to Durham, +can't it?--so she won't have to ride in the Ford which she hates. How do +you do? I'm awfully glad you've come. We weren't expecting you, were we? +Was anybody, I mean?" + +Mary allowed herself a laugh at this young thing with her refreshing way +of saying first whatever first came into her head and letting this serve +as a greeting, said she was sure the big car and Pete were equal to +taking her aunt to the four-miles-distant village. + +"That's all right then. I won't have to wait for her," said Sylvia, +letting down her jugs into the tonneau of the Ford. "I'll run +straight along with this. They must be simply perishing for it. Isn't +it hot, though!" + +Mary wanted to know who they were and what they were perishing for. + +"Lemonade," said Sylvia, "for the boys out in the hay field. It's +perfectly gorgeous out there but hot enough to frizz your hair." + +"Where is the hay field?" Mary asked. "Is it very far?" + +"It's just over in the northeast eighty," said Sylvia, with a rather +conscious parade of her mastery of bucolic vernacular. "But you don't +want to walk. It would be awfully jolly if you would come along with me." + +"Wait two minutes until I've said hello to Aunt Lucile and I will," said +Mary, and turned to go into the house. + +"Don't step on any of the piano," Sylvia called after her. "It's spread +all over the place." + +They had made a good many changes in the apple house since Mary had gone +to Ravinia, but the thing that drew a little cry of surprise from her was +this old square piano. The case of it stood snugly in the corner of the +west wall. But the works were spread about the room in a manner which +made Sylvia's warning less far-fetched than it seemed. + +The feeling that caught Mary at sight of it was more than just surprise. +Its dismantled condition brought to her a half-scared but wholly happy +reassurance that Anthony March was really here. + +Her journey to Hickory Hill had been, so she had told herself at +intervals during the day, merely a flight from her father and Paula. +There was no real reason for thinking that she would find March at the +end of it. Week-end visits usually ended Monday morning, and it was +probable that he would have gone hours before she arrived. She was +conscious now of having commanded herself not to be silly when she was +fretting over the late start from Ravinia and Paula's errand in town. It +_would_ be nice to see him again! He was probably out in the hay field +with the others. + +She gave her aunt a rather absent-minded greeting and a highly condensed +summary of her news. Her father was well and was stopping on with Paula +for a day or two. + +"He's taken over my job," she concluded mischievously, "maid, chauffeur +and chaperon. Paula doesn't mind now that she's made such an enormous hit +and she doesn't sing again until Thursday. Pete will take you in the big +car to Durham." + +"Well, that's Heaven's mercy," exclaimed Miss Wollaston. "I don't like to +drive with Sylvia in any car and I don't like riding in a Ford no matter +who drives. But Sylvia driving a Ford--her own car's broken down +somehow--is simply frightful." + +"She's waiting for me now," said Mary, "to take me out to the hay field. +I must run before she grows any more impatient." + +And run was precisely what she did, down the slope to where Sylvia +awaited her, a lighter-hearted creature altogether than she had supposed +this morning that it was possible for her to be. + +She got an explanation of the piano from Sylvia. She had gone with Rush +and Mr. March to an auction sale late Saturday afternoon at a farm three +or four miles away. Just for a lark. They hadn't meant seriously to buy +anything. But this old piano, Mr. March having sworn that he would make +it play despite the fact that half the keys wouldn't go down at all and +the rest when they did made only the most awful noises, they had bought +for eleven dollars, and had fetched home in the truck on Sunday. + +"I think he's terribly nice," Sylvia confided. "You know him, don't you? +He's quite old, of course.--Well, over thirty he says; but he's +awfully--don't you know--well preserved. There are a whole lot of things +he can do." + +Mary laughed. "That is remarkable. How old are you, you nice young thing? +Going on six? Lookout! You'll smash the lemonade!" + +"We're going to surprise them," Sylvia announced when they had arrived, +miraculously without disaster, at the northeast eighty. They had careened +through the wagon gate and halted under an oak tree at the edge of the +field. "I'll go and tell them I've brought the lemonade, but I won't say +anything about you. You keep out of sight behind the tree. Then Graham +won't want to go and brush his hair." + +It startled Mary to realize that she had forgotten all about Graham. Not +even the sight of his sister had recalled the--highly special nature of +the state of things between them nor suggested the need for preparing an +attitude to greet him with. At all events she wouldn't follow Sylvia's +suggestion and pop out at him from behind a tree. + +He was, it happened, the first person the child encountered in her flight +across the field; the others, indistinguishable at that distance, were in +a group a little farther away. Mary walked out to meet him when she saw +him coming toward her and competently gave the encounter its tone by +beginning to talk to him--about how hot it was and how nice the hay +smelled and how good it seemed to be back here at Hickory Hill--while +they were still a good twenty paces apart. You couldn't strike any sort +of sentimental note very well when you had to begin at a shout. Then she +led him back to the lemonade, gave him a cigarette and answered at length +and with a good deal of spontaneous vivacity his obligatory questions +about Paula and the opening of the Ravinia season. + +She was in the full tide of this--and was, since she had sat down upon a +small boulder Graham had insisted she take possession of, screened by the +trunk of the tree--when Sylvia hailed her brother from, not very far away +with the statement that Rush wouldn't stop for anything or anybody until +once more around the field. It was March, then, who was audibly coming +along with her. Mary rose, broke off about Paula, and moved the single +step it needed to give her sight of him. + +She saw nothing else but him. She saw his head go back as from the actual +impact of the sight of her. She saw the look, unmistakable as a blast +from a trumpet, that flamed into his face. And then her world swam. Paula +wasn't singing now, "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" Nor could Paula +come upon him now, from anywhere, and take him by the shoulders and kiss +his cheek and lead him away with her. This moment was not +Paula's--whatever the other had been. + +And the rest, standing there looking on, hadn't seen the bolt fall! They +were talking as idly and easily as if this were nothing but a hot summer +afternoon in the hay field. + +"I told him," she heard Sylvia saying, "that there was another nice old +person he knew here with the lemonade, who thought I was only about +six.--Were you surprised when you saw who she was?--I'm going to take +him back to the apple house with us, now that Mary's come, so that he +can have the piano ready to dance by to-night." This last, apparently, +to Graham. + +She even heard herself join in,--the voice was hers anyhow--when Graham, +commenting upon the view across the field, remarked that it was so +intensely farm-like that it had almost the look of a stage setting. + +"It is like something," she said then. "It's like the first act of _Le +Chemineau_. We ought to have a keg of cider instead of two jugs of +lemonade and we should have brought it in a wheelbarrow instead of in +the Ford." + +"Well, we couldn't take Mr. March back in a wheelbarrow," Sylvia said, +"so I'm glad it isn't the first act of whatever-you-call-it. Because he's +simply got to fix the piano well enough for jazz." + +Mary couldn't remember that he spoke a word, but he got into the back +seat of the Ford with her when Sylvia slid under the wheel. + +"If you'll promise," Sylvia said to March at the end of the breathless +mile back to the apple house, "if you'll promise to go straight to work +at it and never stop until it'll play the _Livery Stable Blues_, then +I'll go back to the hay field and see that Rush gets some of the lemonade +before those laborers drink it all up. You'll see to him, won't you, +Mary? Stand right over him and be severe, so that we can dance to-night. +You aren't as excited about it as you ought to be. I think I'll come in +and start him." + +And this she did while the Ford executed a little jazz rhythm of its own +outside. She didn't stay more than a minute or two though. When she saw +him fairly occupied, tools in hand, over his task, she darted away again +with a last injunction to severity upon Mary. + +She had seen nothing. The two were left alone. + +Mary sat where she could watch his fine skilled hands at work. The +negligent precision with which they accomplished their varied tasks +occupied her, made it possible to continue for a while the silence she +needed until her world should have stopped swimming; until the blindness +of that revelation should have passed. + +She had been wrong about him again. He was not an Olympian. (But, of +course, Olympians themselves weren't, if it came to that; not always.) +He could never, she had been telling herself since that day when they +had had their one talk together, belong to any one. He did not--save +himself up for special people. He was just there, the same for +everybody, like, she had half humorously observed to her father, a +public drinking fountain. + +If that was the rule, she, Mary Wollaston, was the exception to it. Not +Paula with her opulent armory, but she who had listened with him, +clinging to him, while Paula sang; she, who had talked to him while Paula +fought for her husband's life; she, whom he had come upon in the shade of +the oak tree at the edge of the hay field; she who sat near him, silent +now. This was the meager total that outweighed those uncounted hours of +Paula's. Somehow she had acquired a special significance for him. + +Was she trying to evade saying that he had fallen in love with her. What +was the good--except that it sounded sweet--of using a phrase which could +be packed like a hand-bag with anything you chose to put into it? Graham +was in love with her. That boy in New York, whom she had found in a +panic of lonely terror lest he should prove a coward in the great ordeal +he was facing overseas had been for a few hours in love with her. What +would be the content of the phrase for a man like this? + +Was she in love with him? Her thoughts up to now had been deep, +submerged, almost formless, but this question came to the surface and +touched her lips with a smile. Well, and what did the phrase mean to her? + +All she could think of as she sat so still watching him, was those fine +hands of his, working as skillfully and swiftly as her father's ever +worked but at this humble task. She kept her eyes away for just a +little longer from his face. She wanted those hands. She wanted them +with an intensity that made it impossible at last to let the silence +endure any longer. + +"Paula..." she said, and stopped in sheer surprise that her voice had +come at all; then began again, "Paula wanted you to tune her piano. +At Ravinia. I was angry, at that, until she reminded me that you +wouldn't be." + +His hand laid down the small, odd shaped tool it held, but the next +moment picked it up again. + +"I shouldn't have minded tuning her piano," he told her. + +"I know," she said. "I knew as soon as I had had a minute in which +to--gather you up. And when I had done that, I helped her try to find +you. I had a special reason, a different one from Paula's, for hoping +that we could. And for my reason," she went on, trembling a little +and finding it harder to make her words come steadily, "it +isn't--yet, too late. + +"You see if you were there with her where she could see you every +day--there'd be a lot of pianos there she said; enough to keep you +going--she'd remember you again. She is like that. Lots of people are, I +suppose. When she doesn't see you, she forgets. But if she remembered how +much she liked you and how good your opera was,--the real one, the one +you wrote for yourself--she might do something about it.--To get it +played--so that you could hear it. Now that she's had a great success, +she could do almost anything quite easily, I think. Infinitely more than +I. I've been trying, but I haven't got very far." + +He laid down the tool once more and locked his hands together. "You have +been trying?" he repeated. The tension, like the grip of his hands, was +drawing up almost unbearably. + +"There's a French baritone there, Fournier, who could play your officer's +part. As you meant it to be played, I think. But he doesn't sing in +English. I thought it might be possible, if you didn't mind its being +sung in French, to translate it. That's one of the things I've +been--trying to do." + +And then with a gasp and a sob, "Oh, don't,--don't hurt them like that!" +she reached out and took the hands she wanted. + +He responded to the caress, as before, so quickly that one could +hardly have known where it began; only Mary did know. She looked up +then into his face, steadily, open-eyed, though she could not see much +for the blur. + +"This time," he said, laboriously,--"this time it isn't the song." + +She shook her head. + +"I couldn't have waited, like that," he told her, three breaths later, +"except for being afraid that if I tried to touch you, you wouldn't be +there at all. Like a fairy story;--or a dream. I have never been sure +that the other time wasn't." + +"It's real enough," she said. "You're sure now, aren't you?" + +His answer, the one she meant him to make, was to draw her up into a +deep embrace, his lips upon hers. + +"What does it mean?" he asked, when they had drawn back from it. + +She smiled at that. "You don't need ask. That's the Wollaston trick, to +ask for meanings and reasons." She added, a moment later, "It means +whatever it says to your heart." + +It was at her half-humorous suggestion that he went back, presently, to +work at the piano. She settled contentedly near him where with an +outstretched hand she could occasionally respond to his touch. They +hadn't, either of them, very much to say. + +Once the work was interrupted, when he asked, rather tensely, "Do you +want me to come to Ravinia?" + +She found herself at a loss for a categorical reply. She'd have thought +that a whole-hearted yes would have been the only thing she could say. + +"I don't want you--tortured any more with unheard melodies," she answered +after a moment's reflection. + +His nod, decisive as it was, struck her as equivocal. But she was too +happy to probe into anything this afternoon. There would be plenty of +time; unstinted hours. It was with no more than a mild regret that she +heard, under the windows, the return of the big car with Aunt Lucile. +This inextinguishable happiness expressed itself in the touch of impudent +mischief with which she slipped up close behind Anthony March and, in the +last possible instant before her aunt's entrance into the room, bent down +and kissed him; then flashed back to her decorously distant chair. + +It was funny how calm she was. This day that was closing down over the +hill behind the apple house couldn't be, it seemed, the same that had +dawned over the lake at Ravinia. The whole Ravinia episode, even as she +told Lucile and March about it, seemed remote, like something out of a +book; but became for that very reason, rather pleasant to dwell upon. +Sylvia came in pretty soon for a critical survey of what March had +accomplished with the piano, volunteered to help and attempted to. But +having pled some of Anthony's arrangements of loose parts, she was +sacked off the job and sent back to the hay field to bring the boys in +for supper. + +After supper the excitement over the piano increased. They all gathered +round March like people watching a conjurer's trick when he slid the +action into place and proved, chromatically, that every hammer would +strike and every key return. + +"But it isn't tuned at all," Sylvia wailed. "It will be hours before you +can play on it." + +"Minutes," March corrected with a grin. And they watched, amazed,--but +less so really than an ordinary piano tuner would have been,--at the way +he caught octaves, fifths and fourths, sixths and thirds up and down that +keyboard like a juggler keeping seven tennis balls in the air. + +"There you are," he said suddenly, before it seemed that he could be +half-way through and began playing a dance. + +"But you can play tunes!" cried Sylvia. "I thought you only did terribly +high-brow things. That's what Rush said." + +"I was pianist in the best jazz orchestra in Bordeaux," March told her. + +He stayed there at the piano quite contentedly for more than an hour. +Some of the musical jokes he indulged in (his sense of humor expressed +itself more easily and impudently in musical terms than in any other) +were rather over his auditors' heads. Parodies whose originals they +failed to recognize, experiments in the whole-tone scale that would have +interested disciples of Debussy, but his rhythms they understood and +recognized as faultless. + +And Mary danced. With Graham when she must, with Rush when she could. The +latter happened oftener than you would have supposed. + +"Those Wollastons can certainly dance," Sylvia remarked to her brother. +"I wonder they'll have anything to do with us. Let's just watch them for +a minute.--Here, we'll turn the piano around so Mr. March can see, too." + +It was queer, Mary reflected, how easy it was for her and also, she was +sure, for her lover, to acquiesce in a spending of the hours like that; +how little impatient she was of the presence of these others that kept +them apart. She gave no thought to any maneuver, practicable or +fantastic, for stealing away with him, not even when, as the party +broke up for the night it became evident that chance was not going so to +favor them. + +She realized afterward that there had been something factitious about her +tranquillity. What he had said in the moment before their first embrace +had been on that same note. He had been afraid to touch her for fear +that--as in a fairy story, or a dream,--she wouldn't be there. All that +afternoon and evening, despite an ineffable security in their miracle, +she had walked softly and so far as the future was concerned, avoided +trying to look. + +Something in his gaze when he said good night to her, gave her a +momentary foreboding, though she told herself on the way up to the tent +she was to share with Sylvia that this was nothing but the scare that +always comes along with a too complete happiness. + +But in the morning when her aunt told her that March had gone, she +realized that it had been more than that. + +It was in the presence of the others who had gathered in the apple house +for breakfast that she heard the news, and this was perhaps a mercy; for +the effort she had to make to keep from betraying herself rallied her +forces and prevented a rout. + +To the others his having gone like that seemed natural enough,--likably +characteristic of him, at any rate. In his note to Miss Wollaston he had +merely said that he realized that he must be off and wished to make the +most of the cool of the morning. He hoped she would understand and pardon +his not having spoken of his intention last night. + +"It's the crush Sylvia had on him that accounts for that," Graham +observed. "He was afraid of the row she'd make if he let on." + +Sylvia's riposte to this was the speculation that Mary had scared him +away, but one could see that her brother's explanation pleased her. + +"Anyhow," she concluded, "he was good while he lasted." + +What held Mary together was the obvious fact that none of them saw--no +more than they had seen--anything. Not one curious or questioning glance +was turned her way. A sense she was not until later able to find words +for, that she was guarding something, his quite as much as her own, from +profaning eyes, gave her the resolution it needed to carry on like that +until she could be alone. Naturally,--or at all events plausibly--alone. +She wouldn't run away from anybody. + +Toward eleven o'clock chance befriended her. She hid herself in the old +orchard, lay prone upon the warm grass, her cheek upon her folded +forearms, and let herself go. She did not cry even now. Grief was not +what she felt, still less resentment. + +She was lonely as she had never been before, and frightened by her +loneliness. All the familiar things of her life seemed far away, unreal. +She wanted a hand to hold;--his--oh, one of his!--until she could find +her way into a path again. + +She had known, she reflected,--somewhere in the depths of her she had +known--from the first moment of their meeting, that he would go away. +This was why she had been so careful not to look beyond the moments as +they came; not to tempt Nemesis by asking nor trying for too much. + +There happened to be, rather uncannily, a genuine proof that this was +true. While she had been still dazed with that first look of his, there +in the oak shade at the edge of the field, she had said that it was like +the first act of _Le Chemineau_. That had been speaking all but with the +tongue of prophecy. Deeply as the story had impressed her when she heard +it, she had spoken with no conscious sense of the likeness between that +wayfarer--whom neither love nor interest nor security could tempt away +from the open road which called him,--and Anthony March. It was an inner +self that knew and found a chance to speak. It was that same self who had +answered for her when he asked whether she wanted him to come to Ravinia. + +He had come to his decision then, with just that nod of the head. And +she, forlorn, was glad he had cast this temptation aside. That he was +plodding now sturdily along his highway. She flushed with shame at the +thought of him, ubiquitous among those egotists at Ravinia, enlisting +their interest, reminding Paula how much she liked him. + +Why had he not hated her for suggesting such a thing? He had loved her +for it, she knew, because he understood the longing to comfort and +protect him which lay behind it. But that sort of comfort was not for +him. The torture of the unheard melodies, instead. + +He did love her. This, utterly, she knew. His going away, even with no +farewell at all, cast no flaw upon the miraculous certainty of that. +Their one unreserved embrace remained the symbol of it. + +She pressed her hands to her face and with a long indrawn breath +surrendered to the memory of it. It was hers--for always. + +The family were sitting at dinner when she came down to the apple +house, and after a rather startled look at her, demanded to know where +she had been. + +"Asleep in the orchard," she said. "And not altogether awake yet." + +But she knew she must get away from them. The look she saw in Graham's +face would have decided that. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +A CASE OF NECESSITY + + +She told Rush when they left the table, that she had some shopping to do +in town for Paula and meant to go on the afternoon train. She was +expected back at Ravinia to-morrow anyhow. Beyond trying to persuade her +to let Pete drive her in he made no protest, but she could see that he +was troubled about it and she wasn't much surprised to find Wallace Hood +waiting on the station platform when her train got in. + +She didn't, very much, mind Wallace. There was no appearance of his being +there in the rôle of guardian because she wasn't considered safe to leave +to herself. You could always trust Wallace to do a thing like that +perfectly. + +It was a great piece of luck for him he told her. He had called up +Hickory Hill to congratulate John upon Paula's enormous success; had +learned from Rush of Mary's visit and that she was even then on the way +to Chicago. He had just dropped round at the station in the hope of being +able to pick her up for dinner. She had some shopping to do he understood +and he wouldn't detain her now. + +"Oh, nothing that matters a bit," said Mary. "It was an excuse merely, +for running away from Hickory Hill." + +There was something to be said for a man like Wallace as a confidant. He +was perfectly safe not to guess anything on his own account. He seemed +touched by her candor and hugged her arm against his side as they walked +along, a gesture of endearment such as he hadn't indulged in for half a +dozen years. + +"So if you have nothing better to do," she went on, "we can begin +our evening now. Though I suppose I had better find, first, a place +to sleep." + +"Frederica Whitney's in town for a day or two, just for a flying visit +to Martin. She'd be glad to take you in, I'm sure." + +"Oh, I think not," said Mary. "Not if I can get anything with four walls +at the Blackstone." + +She thought from his glance at her that he attached some special +significance to her unwillingness to go to the Whitney house and hastened +to assure him this was not the case. + +"Frederica's a dear. Only I just happen to feel like not being anybody's +guest to-night. Oh, and I didn't mean you by that either." + +"It's nice to be nobody in that sense," he said. + +His next suggestion was that he get his car, start north up the shore +with her, have dinner at one of the taverns along the road and deliver +her in good season for a night's sleep in the cottage at Ravinia. + +But this suggestion was declined rather more curtly. + +"To-morrow is as soon as I want to go there," she said. "Pete's going +over then to get father so I shall go on duty. But meanwhile I'll let him +enjoy his holiday in peace." + +He made no further demur to telephoning over to the Blackstone. + +On his coming back presently with the news that he had a room for her, +she said, "Then we've nothing on our minds, have we? Except finding a +place for dinner that's quiet and--not too romantic. I _am_ glad you came +to meet me." + +She was quite sincere about this. It would have been ghastly she +reflected, to have spent the evening alone in a hotel bedroom with her +own thoughts, if those she had entertained on the train coming in were a +fair sample. + +He was being just as nice to her as possible. By his old-fashioned +standards, no hotel was a proper place for a young girl to spend a night +in alone. Yet beyond offering two alternative suggestions, he forbore +trying to dissuade her. So when he chose the Saddle and Cycle as their +anchorage for the evening, she endorsed his choice with the best +appearance of enthusiasm she could muster, though she'd rather have gone +to a place where three out of four of the other diners wouldn't in all +probability be known to her. + +Arriving, however, in the unclassified hour between tea and dinner, they +found they had the place pretty much to themselves and settled down in a +secluded angle of the veranda for a leisurely visit. They began on Paula, +of course, her retrieved failure and her sensational success. How sorry +Wallace was not to have been there for her "Nedda." (He didn't go in much +for Sunday entertainments of any sort, Mary remembered.) Well, it had +been just as splendid as everybody said it was. That was one thing, at +any rate, that had been put beyond discussion. Even the pundits were, for +the moment anyhow, silenced. + +He was curious as to how the intimate details of this strange life she +had a chance to observe, struck her. How she liked Paula's colleagues; to +what extent the glamour evaporated when one was behind the scenes. + +She satisfied him as well as she could, though her opportunities, she +said, were a good deal narrower than he took them to be. She had, +herself, so much to do as Paula's factotem that there wasn't much leisure +for loafing about. And this launched her into a humorously exaggerated +account of what was involved in being secretary, chauffeur and chaperon +to a successful opera star. But she pulled up when she saw he was taking +it seriously. + +"It's shocking she should work you like that," he said in a burst of +undisguised indignation. "Of course, it's precisely what Paula would do. +She has very little common consideration, I'm afraid, for anybody." + +Mary could not remember having heard him speak like that, in all the +years she'd known him, of anybody; she was sure he never had so spoken of +any one who bore the name of Wollaston. Taken aback as she was she +changed her tune altogether and tried to reassure him. + +"But that's what I'm there for, Wallace dear! To be worked. And you've +no idea how I like having something to do which amounts, in a small way, +to a job." + +"It's too hard for you, though," he persisted. "It isn't what you were +trained for. And it's rather, as I said,--shocking. If it was all +understood from the first, then so much the worse for the understanding. +I hope your father, when he went up there, didn't discover what your +duties were supposed to be." + +"No," Mary said rather dryly, "I don't believe he did." + +"Well," he said thoughtfully, at the end of a short silence, "I am +profoundly thankful that she's made so--solid a success." + +Up to this moment none of their talk had been quite real to Mary. She had +betrayed no inattention to him and when it had come her turn to carry on +the conversational stream she had done so adequately and even with a +certain vivacity. But it had meant no more than an occupation; something +that passed the time and held her potential thoughts at bay. + +This last observation of his, though, struck a different note. He had +done full justice to his pleasure in Paula's success at the very +beginning of their talk. Now he meant something by it. Leaning forward a +little for a keener look at him, she asked what it was that he meant. + +He was a little surprised to be brought to book like that, but he made +hardly an effort to fence with her. "I was glad, I meant, for purely +non-sentimental reasons. Her success may prove, I suppose, a practical +solution of some difficulties." + +"Practical?" she echoed. "You don't mean,--yes, I suppose you do +mean,--money difficulties. Do you mean that Paula's going to be invited +to support the family now?" She finished with a little laugh and he +winced at it. "Father said something like that to me one day while I was +down south with him," she explained. "Only he said it as a joke,--a sort +of joke. That's why I laughed." + +"He talked to you then about his affairs?" Wallace asked. "May I ... Do +you mind telling me what he said?" + +"Of course not, if I can remember. He'd been remiss, he said, about +making money. He said that if he had died, then when he was so ill, there +wouldn't have been, beyond his life insurance which was for Paula, much +more than enough to pay his debts. Practically nothing for Rush and me is +what that came to. I pointed out to him that we could take care of +ourselves, and he said that anyway as soon as he could get back into +practise, he'd begin to make a lot of money and save. It must be a good +deal worse,--the whole situation I mean--than I took it to be, for you to +mean that seriously about Paula." + +She had managed an appearance of composure but in truth she was badly +shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she +respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old +friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the +look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's +solvency, was terrifying. She hid her hands under the table so that he +shouldn't see they were trembling. She wanted the truth from him now, +rather than vaguely comforting generalties, and if she betrayed her real +feelings, these latter were what she would drive him back upon. + +"Can you tell me," she asked after a pause, "exactly how bad it is?" + +He couldn't furnish details. He told her though that there couldn't be +any doubt her father's affairs were more involved than his summary of +them had made them appear. "He isn't a very good bookkeeper, of +course,--never was; and he has never taken remonstrances very seriously. +Why, about all I know is that Martin Whitney is worried. He tried to +dissuade John from going in anywhere near so heavily on the Hickory Hill +project.--And that, of course, was before we had any reason to suppose +that his ability to earn money was going to be ..." + +It was apparent that he discarded the word that came to his tongue here +and cast about for another; "interfered with," was what he finally hit +upon. "Then he's your aunt's trustee and I believe that complicates the +situation, though just how much I don't know. Rush didn't get a letter +from Martin this morning, did he?" + +"I don't know," Mary said numbly. + +"I thought perhaps," he explained, "that might be the reason why you +didn't want to go to their house tonight. Rush doesn't quite understand +Martin's position nor do justice to it. Martin wants to have a really +thorough talk with him I know, as soon as possible." + +"Wallace ..." Mary asked, after another silence, "what was the word +you didn't say when you spoke of father's earning power +being--interfered with? Was it--cut off? Do you mean that father +isn't--ever going to be well?" + +Startled as he was, he did not attempt a total denial; answered her, +though with an effort, candidly. + +"It's not hopeless, at all," he assured her. "It really is not. If he'll +rest, live an outdoor life for the next year or two, he has a good chance +to become a well man again. It's probable that he will,--practically so. +But if he attempts to take up his practise in the autumn it will simply +be, so Darby declares, suicide." + +"That means tuberculosis, I suppose," she said. + +He nodded; then involuntarily he reached his hands out toward her, a +gesture rare with him and eloquent equally of sympathy and consternation. +He hadn't in the least meant to tell her all that--nor indeed any of it. +Her hands met his with a warm momentary pressure and then withdrew. He +had, for a fact, pretty well forgotten where they were. + +"If you knew," she said, "how kind you've been not to try to--spare me. +No, don't bother. I'm not going to cry. Just give me a minute..." + +It was less than that before she asked, in a tone reassuringly steady, +"Does father know, himself?" + +"He's been warned, but he's skeptical. Steinmetz says there's nothing +surprising about that. It's his all but universal experience with men of +his own profession. Of course this summer out at Hickory Hill is so much +to the good. And if he can get sufficiently interested to stay there the +year round, why, there's no knowing. The investment in that farm may +prove the wisest one he ever made." + +"If it were only possible,"--she was quoting what her father had said to +her the other night at Ravinia,--"for him to be whole-heartedly there! +And he could be--for it's a place one can't help loving and he and Rush +are wonderful companions--he could be whole-heartedly there if it weren't +for Paula." + +It was precisely at this point, he indicated to her, that Paula could +come in by relieving him of the necessity of getting back into practise. +Martin would look out for the fixed indebtedness on the farm. He would +probably be willing, in case John made it his home and put his own mature +judgment at the disposal of the two young partners, to finance still +further increases in the investment. But for the ordinary expenses of +living during the next year or two, Paula should cease being a burden and +become a support. "Do you think," he finished by asking, "that she has +any idea what the situation really is?" + +Mary replied to this question a little absently. "Father insisted that +she carry out the Ravinia contract. She told me so herself and seemed, I +don't know why, just a little resentful about it. But I'm sure she can't +have any idea that there was a need for money at the back of it. It has +irritated her rather whenever she has caught me economizing up there. And +father will never tell her any more pointedly than he has, you can be +sure. Some one of us will have to do it." + +"You're on very good terms with her, aren't you?" Wallace asked. He +added instantly, though with an effort, "I'm willing to tell her if you +wish me to." + +She smiled very faintly at that for she knew how terrifying such a +prospect would be to him. "Whoever told Paula," she said, "she'd +eventually attribute it, I think, back to me. So I may as well, and +rather better, do it directly." + +The tension slackened between them for a while after that. The talk +became casual. Wallace, it was easy to see, was enormously relieved. Mary +had been put in unreserved possession of the facts and had endured them +better than he could possibly have hoped. He began chatting about the +farm again, not now as an incubus but as a hopeful possibility. Both the +boys had real mettle in them and might be expected to buckle down and +show it. Rush would forget the disillusionment of his holiday hopes when +the necessities of the case were really brought home to him. And as for +Graham ... + +Wallace broke off short there, flushed, and made a rather panicky effort +to retrieve the slip. He was in the family enough to be a part of the +Graham conspiracy. Poor Graham, distracted by her innocent inability to +make up her mind to marry him! He would be all right as soon as her +maidenly hesitations should have come to an end, and she'd made him the +happiest man in the world with the almost inevitable yes. + +She had gone rather white by the end of a long silence. Finally: + +"Wallace," she began in a tone so tense that he waited breathlessly for +her to go on, "do you remember I asked you once, the day I came home from +New York, if you couldn't find me a job? I know you didn't think I meant +it and I did not altogether--then. But I mean it now. I need +it--desperately.--Wallace, I can't ever marry Graham. I know I can't. And +I can't go on being dependent on father while he's dependent on Paula." + +He caught at a straw. "Paula is really very fond of you," he said. + +"Yes, in a way," Mary agreed; "though she sometimes has regarded me a +little dubiously. But if she ever saw me--coming between her and father, +or father turning ever so little away from her--toward me, whether it was +any of my doing or not, she'd--hate me with her whole heart. It may not +be very logical but it's true." + +Then she brought him back from the digression. "Anyhow, it's on my own +account, not Paula's--nor even father's--that I want a job. Father will +feel about it, of course, as you do and so will Rush and--and the rest. +And I don't want it to hurt anybody more than necessary. I'd rather stay +here but I suppose on their account I'd better go away. And you know so +many people--in so many places. There's your sister in Omaha. I remember +how much trouble you said she had finding a nursery governess. I'd be +pretty good at that I think. I could teach French and--I'd be nice to +children." + +For a moment she wildly thought she had won him. She saw the tears come +into his eyes. + +"Anything I have in the world, my dear, or anything I can command is +yours. On any terms you like." + +But there he disposed of the tears and got himself together, as if he'd +remembered some warning. She could imagine Rush over the telephone, "Of +course, she's terribly run down with that damned war work of hers; not +quite her real self, you know." + +She saw him summon a resolute smile and heard the familiar note of +encouragement in his voice. "We'll think about it," he told her. "After +all, things aren't, probably, as black as they look. And sometimes when +they look darkest it's only the sign that they're about to change their +faces altogether. Anyhow, we've stared at them long enough to-night, +haven't we? And all I meant was to take you out for a jolly evening! +Don't you think we might save it, even yet? Is there anything at the +theatres you'd like to see?" + +"Some musical show?" she asked. "Yes, I'd like that very much. +Thank you." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE DRAMATIST + + +Mary returned to Ravinia--went on duty, as she put it to Wallace--the +following afternoon rather taut-drawn in her determination to have things +out with Paula at once. But the mere attitude and atmosphere of the +place, as before, let her down a little. + +It was restful to have her days filled up with trivial necessary duties; +an hour's errand running in the small car; a pair of soiled satin +slippers to clean with naptha; a stack of notes to answer from such +unknown and infatuate admirers as managed to escape the classification +feebleminded and were entitled therefore to have the fact recognized +(this at a little desk in the corner while Novelli at the piano and Paula +ranging about the room, ran over her part in half-voice in the opera she +had rehearsed yesterday with the orchestra and was to sing to-night), a +run to the park for a visit to Paula's dressing-room in the pavilion in +order to make sure, in conference with her dresser, that all was in order +for to-night; a return to the cottage in time to heat Paula's milk (their +maid of all work couldn't be trusted not to boil it); then at seven, +driving Paula to the park for the performance, spending the evening in +her dressing-room or in the wings chatting sometimes with other members +of the force whom she found it possible to get acquainted with; +occasional incursions into the front of the house to note how something +went or, more simply, just to hear something she liked; driving Paula +home again at last, undressing her; having supper with her--the most +substantial meal of the day--talking it over with her; and so, like Mr. +Pepys--to bed. + +It might shock Wallace Hood, a schedule like that, but there were days +when to Mary it was a clear God-send. + +She decided within the first twenty-four hours to wait for some sort of +lead from Paula before plunging into a discussion of her father's +affairs. It would take the edge off if the thing weren't too glaringly +premeditated. Paula just now was doing all she could. Mary opened all her +mail and would know if any offer came in that involved future plans. She +accepted the respite gratefully. + +She had a use to put it to. For the first two or three days after her +return, she had not been able to turn to anything that associated itself +with Anthony March without such an emotional disturbance as prevented her +from thinking at all. The mere physical effect of those sheets of score +paper was, until she could manage to control it, such as to make any +continuance of the labor of translating his opera, impossible. + +By a persistent effort of will she presently got herself in hand however +and went on not only with her translation but with the other moves in her +campaign to get _The Outcry_ produced. Her first thought was that +something might be accomplished directly through LaChaise. Her simple +plan had been to make friends with him so that when she urged the +arguments for producing this work, they'd be--well--lubricated by his +liking for her. + +She began saying things to him on a rather more personal note, things +with a touch of challenge in them. There was no gradual response to this +but suddenly--a week or ten days after her return from Hickory Hill this +was--he seemed to perceive her drift. He turned a look upon her, the +oddest sort of look, startled, inquiring, lighted up with a happy though +rather incredible surmise. It was an exclamatory look which one might +interpret as saying, "What's this! Do you really mean it!" + +Mary got no further than that. She didn't mean it, of course, a serious +love-affair with LaChaise, and she tried for a while to feel rather +indignant against an attitude toward women which had only two categories; +did she offer amorous possibilities or not. An attitude that had no half +lights in it, no delicate tints of chivalry nor romance. LaChaise would +do nothing for the sake of her blue eyes. He had no interest whatever in +that indeterminate, unstable emotional compound that goes, between men +and women, by the name of friendship. + +She tried to call this beastly and feel indignant about it, but somehow +that emotion didn't respond. She had more real sympathy for and +understanding of an attitude like that than she had for one like +Graham's. It was simpler and more natural. It involved you in no such +labyrinths of farfetched absurdities and exasperating cross-purposes as +Graham's did. + +It was characteristically,--wasn't it?--a Latin attitude; or would it be +fairer to say that its antithesis as exemplified by Graham was a northern +specialty? She extracted quite a bit of amusement from observing some of +the results of individual failures to understand this fundamental +difference, all the more after she had Jimmy Wallace to share +observations with. He was a dramatic critic, but he consented to take a +fatherly, or better avuncular, interest in the Ravinia season during the +month of his musical colleague's vacation. + +The special episode they focused upon was Violet Williamson's flirtation +with Fournier. She was a pretty woman, still comfortably on the east side +of forty, socially one of the inner ring, spoiled, rather, by an +enthusiastic husband but not, thanks to her own good sense, very +seriously. James Wallace was an old and very special friend of hers and +she commandeered his services as soon as he appeared at Ravinia, in her +campaign for possession of the French baritone. + +Mary had reflected over this and talked it out pretty thoroughly with +Jimmy before it occurred to her that she might be able to turn it to her +own account--or rather to her lover's. For that matter, why not, while +she had him under her hand, recruit Jimmy as an aid in the campaign? + +"Do you mind being used for ulterior purposes?" she asked him. + +He intimated that he did not if they were amusing, as any of Mary's were +pretty sure to be. + +"I'm interested in an opera," she told him, "or rather, I'm very much +interested in a man who has written one. Father and I have agreed that +he's a great person and everybody seems willing to admit that he's a +musical genius. Paula considered the opera, but gave it up after she had +kept him working over it for weeks because the soprano part wasn't big +enough. It would be just the thing for Fournier." + +Jimmy raised the language difficulty. "The book's in English, I +suppose," he said. + +"It's been translated into French," Mary said, and then admitted +authorship by adding, "after a fashion; as well as an amateur like me +could do it." She didn't mind a bit how much Jimmy knew. Not that he +wasn't capable of very acute surmises but that whatever he brought up he +wouldn't have the flutters over. + +"Does Fournier like it himself?" he wanted to know. "Does he see the +personal possibilities in it, I mean?" + +"I haven't shown it to him yet," Mary said. "I want him to hear about it +in just the right way first. If Paula would only say just the right +thing! She means to but she forgets. LaChaise would back her up, I think, +if she took the lead. Otherwise ... well, he isn't looking for trouble, +I suppose, and of course, it would mean a lot." + +"Somebody has to put his back into an enterprise of that sort," +Jimmy observed. + +"I can't, directly," she said, "not with LaChaise nor with Mr. Eckstein. +But you see," she went on, "if Violet happened to hear, from somebody who +was in the way of getting inside information, about a small opera that +had a sensational part for a baritone, she'd work it and make her husband +too, and since he's one of the real backers and a friend of Mr. +Eckstein's, they'd be likely to accomplish something." + +"Lead me to it," said Jimmy. "Give me your inside information and leave +Violet to me." + +He got a little overflow from the fulness of her heart at that that would +have rewarded him amply for a more arduous and less amusing prospect than +he was committed to. It was always touch and go whether this summer +plunge into musical criticism wouldn't bore him frightfully. Pretentious +solemnities of any kind were hard for him to tolerate and an opera season +is, of course, stuffed with these, even a democratized blue-penciled +out-of-doors affair like this. It was a great relief to find him a mind +as free from sentimental resonances as Mary Wollaston's swimming about in +it. They saw eye to eye over a lot of things. + +They were in whole-hearted agreement for example about a certain +impresario, Maxfield Ware, who created a sensation among the company and +staff by turning up ostentatiously unaccounted for from New York and +looking intensely enigmatical whenever any one asked him any questions. +He was a sufficiently well-known figure in that world for surmises to +spring up like round-eyed dandelions wherever he trod. + +It wasn't long before everybody knew, despite the concealments which his +ponderous diplomacy never cast aside, that his objective was Paula. She +divined this before he had made a single overt move in her direction and +pointed it out to Mary with a genuine pleasure sounding through the tone +of careless amusement she chose to adopt. + +"You wouldn't have anything to do with a person like that, would you?" +Mary was startled into exclaiming. "Of course, if he were genuinely what +he pretends to be and the things he boasts were true...." + +"Oh, he's genuine enough," said Paula. "A quarter to a half as good as he +pretends and that's as well as the whole of that lot will average. Though +he isn't the sort you and John would take to, for a fact." + +It was not the first time Mary had found herself bracketed with her +father in just this way. It wasn't a sneering way, hardly hostile. But +Mary by the second or third repetition began reading an important +significance into it. Paula in her instinctive fashion was beginning to +weigh alternatives, one life against the other, a thing it wasn't likely +she had ever attempted before. + +There was a tension between John and Paula which Mary saw mounting daily +over the question of his next visit to Ravinia. Paula wanted him, was +getting restless, moody, as nearly as it was possible for her to be +ill-natured over his abstention. Yet it was evident enough that she had +not invited him to come; furthermore, that she meant not to invite him. +Once Mary would have put this down to mere coquetry but this explanation +failed now to satisfy altogether. There was something that lay deeper +than that. Some sort of strain between them dating back, she surmised, to +the talk her father had referred to down in North Carolina in the jocular +assertion that he had told Paula she would have to begin now supporting +the family. Had the same topic come up again during his visit to Ravinia? + +The perception of this strain in their relation increased Mary's +reluctance to bring the topic up herself, in default of a lead from +Paula, out of nowhere. It almost seemed as if Paula consciously avoided +giving her such a lead, sheered away whenever she found they were +"getting warm" in that direction. + +There were hours when the undertaking she had committed herself to with +Wallace Hood seemed fantastic. Between two persons like her father and +Paula a meddler could make such an incalculable amount of mischief. All +the current maxims of conduct would support her in a refusal to +interfere. It was exclusively their affair, wasn't it? Why not let them +settle it in their own way? + +Yet there were other hours when she put her procrastinations down to +sheer cowardice. This occurred whenever she got a letter from her aunt at +Hickory Hill. + +Miss Wollaston was a dutiful but exceedingly cautious correspondent, but +beneath the surface of her brisk little bulletins were many significant +implications. Rush had made two or three trips to town for consultations +with Martin Whitney ... Doctor Steinmetz, presence unaccounted for, had +been a guest one day at lunch... Graham's father had come out one +Saturday and after he had been exhaustively shown over the place the men +had talked until all hours.... The building program was to be curtailed +for the present; to be resumed, perhaps when prices weren't so high nor +labor so hard to get.... The new Holstein calves had come. Mary had been +told, hadn't she, of the decision to constitute the herd in this manner +instead of buying all milking cows.... Sylvia, declaring that Rush and +Graham had got too solemn to live with, had finally obeyed her mother +and gone home to the Stannards' summer place at Lake Geneva. + +Mary read these letters to Paula as they came in the hope of provoking +some question that would make it possible to tell John Wollaston's wife +the tale of his necessities, but nothing of the sort happened. Paula did +observe (a little uneasily?) apropos of Steinmetz' visit: + +"John says he's taken quite a fancy to him. He told me he was going to +get him to come out if he could." + +The other casts brought up nothing whatever. + +As it happened Mary paid dear for her procrastination. Paula sent her +into town one day with a long list of errands, a transparently factitious +list, which, taken in connection with an unusual interest she displayed +in the item of lunch, made it more than sufficiently plain to Mary that +for the day she wasn't wanted at Ravinia. + +She concealed, successfully she thought, the shock she felt at these new +tactics of Paula's, studied the list and said she thought she should be +able to return on the three o'clock train. She made a point however of +not coming back until the four-fifteen. It was nearly six before she got +back to the cottage, but the contented lazy tone in which Paula from +up-stairs answered her hail, made it plain that her tardiness had not +been remarked. However Paula had spent her day, the upshot of it was +satisfactory. + +"Shall I come up?" Mary asked. + +"Come along," Paula answered. "I'm not asleep or anything and besides I +want to talk to you." + +"I think I got everything you want," Mary said from Paula's doorway, "or +if not exactly, what will do just about as well." + +Paula, stretched out on the bed rather more than half undressed, with the +contented languor of a well fed lioness yet with some passion or other +smoldering in her eyes, made no pretense at being interested in Mary's +success in executing her commissions. + +"I had Max to lunch to-day," she said. "I knew you hated him and then it +was complicated enough anyway. I suppose it might have been better if I'd +told you so right out instead of making up all those things for you to do +in town, but I couldn't quite find the words to put it in somehow and I +had to have it out with him. He's been nagging at me for a week and he's +going away to-morrow. He's given me until then to think it over." + +There was no use trying to hurry Paula. Mary took off her hat, lighted a +cigarette and settled herself in the room's only comfortable chair before +she asked, "Think what over?" + +"Oh, the whole thing," said Paula. "What he's been harping on for the +last week.--He _is_ a loathsome sort of beast," she conceded after a +little pause. "But he's right about this. Absolutely." + +Was her father ever fretted, Mary wondered, by this sort of thing? Did +his nerves draw tight, and his muscles, too, waiting for the idea behind +these perambulations to emerge? + +"I can imagine a lot of things that Mr. Maxfield Ware would be right +about," she observed. "Which one is this?" + +"About me," said Paula. "About what I'd have to do if I wanted to get +anywhere. He thinks I've a good chance to get into the very first class, +along with Garden and Farrar and so on. And unless I can do that, there's +no good going on. I'd never be happy as a second rater. Well, that's +true. And my only chance of getting to the top, he says, is in being +managed just right. I guess that's true, too. He says that if I take this +Metropolitan contract that LaChaise has been talking about, go down to +New York as one of their 'promising young American sopranos' to sing on +off-nights and fill in and make myself generally useful, I simply won't +have a chance. They wouldn't get excited about me whatever happened. +They'd go on patronizing me and yawning in my face no matter how good I +was. I'd do just as well, he says, so far as my career is concerned, to +stay right here in Chicago and get Campanini to give me two or three +appearances a season;--make a sort of amateur night of it for the gold +coast to buzz about. I'd have a lot easier time that way and it would +come to the same thing in the end. And he says that unless I want to go +in for his scheme, that's what I'd better do. Well, and he's right. I can +see that, plainly enough." + +Mary refrained from asking what Max's scheme was. She'd learn, no doubt, +in her stepmother's own good time. She nodded a tentative assent to Max's +general premises and waited. + +"He certainly was frank enough," Paula went on after a while. "He wants +to make a real killing he says. Something he's never quite brought off +before. He says the reason he's always failed before is that he's had to +go and mix a love-affair up with it somehow. He's either fallen in love +with the woman or she with him or if it was a man he was managing, they +both went mad over the same woman. Something always happened anyhow to +make a mess of it. But he says he isn't interested in me in the least in +that way and that he can see plainly enough that I'm not in him. But +imagine five years with him!" + +She broke off with a shudder, not a real shudder though. The sort one +makes over a purely imaginary prospect. Some expression of her feeling +must have betrayed itself in Mary's face, for Paula, happening to look at +her just then, sat up abruptly. + +"Oh, I know," she said. "It's all very well, but that's the sort of +person you have to go in with and that's the sort of scheme you have to +go into if you're going to get anywhere. Something of the sort anyhow,--I +never heard of one exactly like this. But this is what he proposes: we're +each to put up twenty thousand dollars. That's easy enough as far as I'm +concerned because what I put up isn't to be spent at all. It's just to be +turned over to somebody--some banker like Martin Whitney--as a guarantee +that I won't break my contract. He says he wouldn't take on anybody in my +position without a guarantee like that. He's to spend the money he puts +up for publicity and other things but he's to get paid back out of what I +earn. He's to be my manager absolutely. I'm to go wherever he says; carry +out any contracts he makes for me. He's to pay my expenses and guarantee +me ten thousand a year beyond that. If he doesn't pay me that much, then +it's he that breaks the contract. And of course, he can't make me do +anything that would ruin my voice or my health. He says he's going to +work me like a dog. That's what he thinks I need. He says he can get me +in with the Chicago company for their road tour before their regular +season opens here. He won't let me sing either in Chicago or New York +until I've landed, but he wants me to go to New York this winter and +coach with Scotti, if we can get him. Then go to Mexico City in the +spring and then down to Buenos Aires for their winter season there. +That's July and August, of course, when it's summer up here. By that time +he thinks we'll be ready for Europe; London or Paris. He's rather in +favor of London. He knows all the ropes and he'll buy the people that +have to be bought and square the people that have to be squared and work +the publicity. He says he's the best publicity man in the world and I +guess he knows. Then after a year or two over there, he thinks we'll be +ready to come back to the Metropolitan and clean up." + +"And what," asked Mary, "is his share of the clean-up to be?" + +"Oh, a half," said Paula; "we'd be equal partners. That's fair enough, I +suppose. I sat there all through lunch while he was talking, hating him; +hating his big blue chin, and his necktie and his great shiny +finger-nails and the way he ate, and feeling, of course, perfectly +frightfully unhappy. I told him I'd let him know what I would do sometime +before to-morrow noon, and as soon as I could I got rid of him. And then +I came up here and cried and cried. And that's something I haven't done +for a long while. I felt as if he was a big spider that had been running +about all over me tying me up in his web. And as if I was a fly and +couldn't get out. There is something spidery about him, you know. The way +he goes back and forth and the way he's so patient and indirect about it +all. It seemed like the end of the world to me before he finished, as if +I never was going to see John again. Oh, I cried my eyes out. Well, and +then about an hour ago I came to. I realized that I hadn't signed his +horrible contract and that I needn't. And that when this beastly season +was over,--and it isn't going to last much longer, thank goodness,--I +could go home to John and lock up the piano and never look at a score +again. It was like coming out of a nightmare." + +Mary dared not stop to think. She took the plunge. + +"There's something about father you've got to be told. I promised Wallace +Hood weeks ago that I'd tell you. I guess he and Martin Whitney think you +know about it by now." + +"Something I've got to be told about John?" Paula echoed incredulously. +"Why, I was talking with him over the telephone not ten minutes before +you came in." + +"Oh, I know. It's nothing like that," Mary said. "But they say he has +tuberculosis. Not desperately, not so that he can't get well if he takes +care of it. If he lives out-of-doors and doesn't worry or try to work. +But if he takes up his practise again this fall, they say,--Doctor +Steinmetz says,--that it will be--committing suicide. That's one thing. +And the other is that he's practically bankrupt. Anyhow, that for a year +or two, until he can get back into practise, he'll need help. That's why +Wallace and Mr. Whitney wanted you told about it." + +There hadn't been a movement nor a sound from Paula. Mary, at the end of +that speech was breathless and rather frightened. + +Finally Paula asked, "Does he know about it?--his health I mean." + +"He's been told," Mary answered, "but he doesn't believe it. They nearly +always are skeptical, Doctor Steinmetz says." + +"He's probably right to be. He's a better doctor than six of Steinmetz +will ever be." + +Another pause; then, once more from Paula, "Did he tell you about the +other thing,--about his money troubles,--when you were down in North +Carolina with him?" + +Mary flushed at the hostile ring there was to that. "He told me a +little," she said, "but not much more, I thought, than he had already +told you." + +"Told me?" Paula swung herself off the bed and on to her feet in one +movement. "He told me nothing." + +"He urged you to carry out your Ravinia contract, didn't he?" Mary asked, +as steadily as she could. + +Paula stood over her staring. "Oh," she exclaimed, and, a moment later +she repeated the ejaculation in a drier tone and with a downward +inflection. She added presently, "I'm not clever the way you are at +taking hints. That's the thing it will be just as well for you both to +remember." She began bruskly putting on her dressing-gown. "I'm going +down-stairs to telephone to Max," she explained. "He's got the paper all +drawn up, not the final contract but an agreement to sign one of the sort +I told you about. I'm going to tell him that if he will bring it back +with him now, I'll sign it." + +Mary stood between her and the door. "Don't you think it would be--fairer +to wait?" she asked; "before you signed a thing like that. Until at +least, you were no longer angry with me for having told you too much or +with father because he had told you too little." + +Paula pulled up at that and stood looking at her stepdaughter with a +thoughtful expression that was almost a smile. "I am angry," she +admitted, "or I was, and just exactly about that. It's queer the way you +Wollastons, you and your father, anyhow, are always--getting through to +things like that. What you say is fair enough. I guess you're always +fair. Can't help being, somehow. But I can't put off telephoning to Max. +You see I called up John at Hickory Hill an hour ago. I told him I had +made up my mind to stop singing. I told him I didn't want any career. +That I just wanted to--belong to him. And I asked him to come to me as +fast as he could. He's on the way now. So it's important, you see, that +Max should get here first." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +TWO WOMEN AND JOHN + + +Paula seemed calm enough after that one explosion but she moved along +toward the accomplishment of her purpose, to get herself thoroughly +committed to Max before John's arrival, with the momentum of a liner +leaving its pier. Mary made two or three more attempts at dissuasion but +their manifest futility kept her from getting any real power into them. +She was, to tell the truth, in a panic over the prospect of that +evening;--her father arriving triumphant in Paula's supposed surrender to +find Maxfield Ware with his five years' contract in his pocket. And the +responsibility for the disaster would be attributed to herself; was +indeed so attributable with a kind of theatrical completeness seldom, to +be found in life. It didn't often happen that any one was as entirely to +blame for a calamity to some one else as Mary was for this _volte-face_ +of Paula's. + +She did not run away altogether. Paula, indeed, didn't know that she had +fled at all, for Maxfield Ware's tardiness about coming back the second +time supplied her with a pretext. + +It was nearly eight o'clock before he came and Paula, who was momentarily +expecting John's arrival by then, was in an agony of impatience to sign +his papers and get him out of the house again. Ware may have divined her +wish and loitered out of mischievous curiosity as to the cause of it. Or +he may, merely, have been prolonging an experience which he found +agreeable. Anyhow, he wouldn't be hurried and he wouldn't go. But Paula +finally turned a look of despairing appeal upon Mary who thereupon +announced her intention of going to to-night's performance in the park. +She would drive, of course, and would be glad to take Mr. Ware along. +Or, for that matter, she would set him down first wherever he might want +to go. He smiled upon her with the fatuous smile of one who finds he has +made an unexpected conquest and said he would be delighted to accompany +Miss Wollaston anywhere. + +She took him, driving pretty fast, to the Moraine Hotel and was glad the +distance was not greater, for after various heavy-handed and unquenchable +preliminaries he kissed her as nearly on the mouth as possible, clinging +to a half-lit cigar the while, just before she whipped around into the +hotel drive. She avoided a collision with one of the stone posts narrowly +enough to startle him into releasing her,--he hadn't realized the turn +was so close--and stopped at the lighted carriage door with a jerk that +left him no option but to get out at once. + +She nodded a curt good night and drove back to the park; went to one of +the dressing-rooms and washed her face. Then she came around in front to +hear Edith Mason sing _Romeo and Juliet_. She didn't get just the effect +she anticipated from this lovely performance because Polacco, who is Miss +Mason's husband, came and sat down beside her--there was nothing spidery +about him, thank goodness--and in a running and vivacious commentary +expressed his lively contempt for this opera of Gounod's. At its best it +was bad _Faust_. Its least intolerable melodies were quotations from +_Faust_,--an assertion which he proved from time to time by singing, and +not very softly either, the original themes to the wrath of all who sat +within a twenty-five foot radius of them. + +Mary felt grateful to him for giving her something that was not +maddening to think about and after the performance went with him and his +wife to supper so that it was well after midnight before she returned to +the cottage. + +It was an ineffable relief to find it dark. Her habit on warm nights was +to sleep on the gloucester swing in the screened veranda and she made it +her bed to-night, though beyond a short uneasy doze of two, she didn't +sleep at all. + +At half past eight or so, just after she had sat down to breakfast, +she heard her father coming down the stairs. She tried to call to him +but could command no voice and so waited, frozen, until he appeared in +the doorway. + +"I thought I heard you stirring down here and that it perhaps meant +breakfast. Paula won't be down, I suppose, for hours. She fell asleep +about four o'clock and has been sleeping quietly ever since." + +This was exactly like Paula, of course. She was the vortex of the +whole tempest, but when she had thoroughly exhausted the emotional +possibilities of it she sank into peaceful slumber like a baby after +a hard cry. + +No wonder she was too much for these two Wollastons who sat now with dry +throats and tremulous hands over the mockery of breakfast! Mary, although +she knew, asked her father whether he wanted his coffee clear or with +cream in it and having thus broken the spell, went on with a gasp: + +"I'm glad Paula isn't coming down. It gives you a better chance to tell +me just how you feel about my having interfered. I did run away last +night. You guessed that, I suppose. But it wasn't to evade it altogether. +My--whipping, you know." + +It had an odd effect on both of them, this reference to her childhood; +her hand moved round the table rim and covered his which rested on the +edge of it. + +"Did your mother ever punish you?" he asked. "Corporeally? It's my +recollection that she did not. I was always the executioner. I doubt now +if that was quite fair." + +"Perhaps not," she asserted dubiously. "In general it isn't fair of +course. It probably wasn't in the case of Rush. But with me,--I don't +think I could have borne it to have mother beat me. It would have seemed +an insufferable affront. I'd have hated her for it. But there was a sort +of satisfaction in having you do it." + +After another moment of silence she smiled and added, "I suppose a +Freudian would carry off an admission like that to his cave and gnaw over +it for hours." + +He stared at her, shocked, incredulous. "What do you know about Freud?" +he demanded. + +"One couldn't live for two years within a hundred yards of Washington +Square without knowing at least as much about it as that," she told +him,--and was glad of the entrance of the maid with another installment +of +the breakfast. There was no more talk between them during the meal. But +at the end of it she faced him resolutely. + +"We must have this out, dad. And isn't now as good a time as any?" + +He followed her out into the veranda but the sounds from the dining-room, +where the maid had come in to clear away the breakfast, disturbed him so +Mary suggested a walk. + +"Get your hat and we'll go over to the lake. I know a nice place not far, +an open field right at the edge of the bluff with one big tree to make it +shady. At this hour of the morning we are sure to have it all to +ourselves." + +He said as they walked along, "I've no reproaches for you. Not this +morning. I've thought over a lot of ground since four o'clock." + +He said nothing more to the point until they reached the spot which Mary +had selected as their destination--it lived up handsomely to all her +promises--and settled themselves under the shade of the big tree. + +"I suppose," he added then, "that I ought to forgive Whitney and Hood. +Their intentions were the best and kindest, of course. But I find that +harder to do." + +He sat back against the trunk of the tree, facing out over the lake; +she disposed herself cross-legged on the grass near by just within +reaching distance. She offered him her cigarette case but he declined. +Of late years, since his marriage to Paula, he had smoked very little. +As a substitute, now, he picked up a forked bit of branch, and began +whittling it. + +"I'm as much to blame as they are," she said, presently. "More, really. +Because, if I hadn't procrastinated-o-ut of cowardice, mostly,--until +yesterday, when she was half-way over the edge, it might never have come +to Maxfield Ware at all. After the situation had dramatized itself like +that, there was only one thing she could do. Of course, they didn't +foresee that five years' contract, any more than I did." + +He nodded assent, though rather absently to this. "I'm not much +interested in the abstract ethics of it," he said. "It's disputable, of +course, how far any one can be justified in making a major interference +in another's life; one that deprives him of the power of choice. That's +what you have done to me--the three of you. If the premises are right, +and the outcome prosperous, there's something to be said for it. But in +this case ..." + +"They aren't mistaken, are they, dad? Wallace and Mr. Whitney?--Or Doctor +Steinmetz?" + +"Why, it's reasonable to suppose that Whitney understands my financial +condition better than I do. I mean that. It's not a sneer. But what he +and Hood don't allow for is that I've never tried to make money. +They've no idea what my earning power would be if I were to turn to and +make that a prime consideration. A year of it would take me out of the +woods, I think." + +She waited, breathless, for him to deal with the third name. She was +pretty well at one with Paula in the relative valuation she put upon her +father's opinion and that of the throat and lung specialist. + +"Oh, as for Steinmetz," John Wollaston said, after a pause, querulously, +"he's a good observer. There's nothing to be said against him as a +laboratory man. But he has the vice of all German scientists; he doesn't +understand imponderables. Never a flash of intuition about him. He +managed to intimidate Darby into agreeing with him. Neither of them takes +my recuperative powers into account." + +He seemed to feel that this wasn't a very strong line to take and the +next moment he conceded as much. + +"But suppose they were right," he flashed round at her. "Am I not still +entitled to my choice? I've lived the greater part of my life. I've +pulled my weight in the boat. It should be for me to choose whether I +spend the life I have left in two years or in twenty. If they want to +call that suicide, let them. I've no religion that's real enough to make +a valid argument against my right to extinguish myself if I choose." + +She wasn't shocked. It was characteristic of their talks together, this +free range among ethical abstractions, especially on his part. + +"You act on the other theory though," she pointed out to him. "Think of +the people you've patched together just so that they can live at most +another wretched year or two." + +"That's a different thing," he said. "Or rather it comes to the same +thing. The question of shortening one's life is one that nobody has a +right to decide except for himself." + +Then he asked abruptly. "What sort of person is Maxfield Ware?" + +She attempted no palliations here. + +"He kissed me last night," she said, "taking his cigar out of his mouth +for the purpose. He's not a sort of person I can endure or manage. Paula +hates him as much as I do, but she can manage him. He'd never try to +kiss her like that." + +"Oh, God!" cried John. "It's intolerable." He flung away his stick, got +to his feet and walked to the edge of the bluff. "Think of her working, +traveling,--living almost,--with a man like that! You say she can manage +him; that she can prevent him from trying to make love to her. Well, what +does that mean, if you're right, but that she--understands him; his talk; +his ideas; his point of view. You can't make yourself intelligible to a +man like that; she can. It's defilement to meet his mind anywhere--any +angle of it. She's given him carte blanche, she says, to manage the +publicity for her. Do you realize what that means? He's licensed to try +to make the public believe anything that he thinks would heighten their +interest in her. That she dresses indecently; that she's a frivolous +extravagant fool; that she has lovers. You know how that game is played." + +Mary did know. She ran over a list of the great names and opposite every +one of them there sprang into her mind the particular bit of vulgar +réclame that had been in its day some press agent's masterpiece. She was +able further to see that Paula would regard the moves of this game with a +large-minded tolerance which would be incomprehensible to John. After +all, that was the way to take it. If you were a real luminary, not just a +blank white surface, all the mud that Mr. Maxfield Ware could splash +wouldn't matter. You burnt it off. None of those great names was soiled. + +She tried to say something like this to her father, but didn't feel sure +that she quite had his attention. He did quiet down again however and +resumed his seat at the foot of the tree. Presently he said: + +"She's doing it for me. Because my incompetence has forced it upon her. +She'd have taken the other thing; had really chosen it." Then without a +pause, but with a new intensity he shot in a question. "That's true, +isn't it? She meant what she said over the telephone?" As Mary hesitated +over her answer he added rather grimly, "You can be quite candid about +it. I don't know which answer I want." + +"She meant every word she said over the telephone," Mary assured him. +"You couldn't doubt that if you had seen her as I did afterward." + +She didn't pretend though that this was the complete answer. The +reflective tone in which she spoke made it clear that there was more to +it than that. + +"Go on," John said, "tell me the rest of it. I think, perhaps, you +understand her better than I do." + +Mary took her time about going on and she began a little doubtfully. "I +always begin by being unjust to Paula," she said. "That's my instinct, I +suppose, reproaching her for not doing what she would do if she were +like me. But afterward when I think her out, I believe I understand her +pretty well." + +"Paula exaggerates," she went on after another reflective pause. "She +must see things large in order to move among them in a large way. Her +gestures, those of her mind I mean, are--sweeping. If she weren't so +good-natured, our--hair-splitting ways would annoy her. Then it's +necessary for her to feel that she's--conquering something." + +That last word was barely audible and the quality of the silence which +followed it drew John Wollaston's gaze which had been straying over the +lake, around to the speaker. She had been occupying her hands while she +talked, collecting tiny twigs and acorn cups that happened to be within +reach but now she was tensely still and paler than her wont, he thought. + +"You needn't be afraid to say what's in your mind," he assured her. + +"It wasn't that," she told him. "I realized that I had been quoting +somebody else. Anthony March said once of Paula that if she had not been +an artist she might have been a _dompteuse_." + +John settled himself more comfortably against his tree trunk. A contact +like this with his daughter's mind must have been inexpressibly +comforting to him after a night like the one he had just spent. Its +rectitude; its sensitiveness; the mere feel and texture of it, put his +jangling nerves in tune. + +"Is Ware the wild beast she has an inclination to tame in this +instance?" he asked. + +"He's nothing but a symbol of it," Mary said. Then she managed to get the +thing a little clearer. "What she'd have done if she'd been like us and +what we'd have had her do--Mr. Whitney and Wallace and I,--would have +been to make a sort of compromise between her position as your wife and a +career as Paula Carresford. We'd have had her sign a contract to sing a +few times this winter with the Metropolitan or the Chicago company, go on +a concert tour perhaps for a few weeks, even give singing lessons or sing +in a church choir. That would probably have been Mr. Whitney's idea. +Rather more than enough to pay her way and at the same time leave as much +of her to you as possible. + +"But that's the last thing in the world it would be possible for Paula to +do. She must see a great career on one side,--see herself as Geraldine +Farrar's successor,--and on the other side she must see a perfect +unflawed life with you. So that whichever she chooses she will have a +sense of making the greatest possible sacrifice. She couldn't have said +to you what she did over the telephone if Mr. Ware hadn't convinced her +that a great career was open to her and she couldn't have signed his +contract if it had not involved sacrificing you." + +She propped herself back against her hands with a sigh of fatigue. +"There's some of the hair-splitting Paula talks about," she observed. + +"It may be fine spun," her father said thoughtfully, "but it seems to me +to hold together. Isn't there any more of it?" + +"Well, it was balanced like that, you see," Mary went on; "set for the +climax, like the springs in a French play, when I came along at just the +moment and with just the word, to topple it over. Being Paula, she +couldn't help doing exactly what she did. So, however it comes out, I +shall be the one person she won't be able to forgive." + +She knew from the startled look he turned upon her that this last shot +had come uncannily close. She fancied she must almost literally have +echoed Paula's words. If she needed any further confirmation she would +have found it in the rather panicky way in which he set about trying to +convince her that she was mistaken, if not in the fact at least in the +permanence of it. + +She insisted no further, made indeed no further attempt at all to carry +the theme along and though she listened and made appropriate replies when +they were called for, she let her wordless thought drift away to a dream +that it was Anthony March who shared this shade and sunshine with her and +that veiled blue horizon yonder. It was easier to do since her father had +drifted into a reverie of his own. They need not have lingered for they +had sufficiently talked away all possible grounds of misunderstanding, +even if they had not reconciled their disagreement. + +It occurred to her to suggest that they go back, but she dismissed the +impulse with no more than a glancing thought. It was his burden, not +hers, that remained to be shouldered at the cottage and it might be left +to him to choose his own time for taking it up. Paula seldom came down +much before noon anyhow. + +As for John Wollaston, he was very tired. Paula's volcanic moments always +exhausted him. He never could derationalize his emotions, cut himself +free; and while he felt just as intensely as she did, he had to carry the +whole superstructure of himself along on those tempestuous voyages. In +the mood Paula had left him in this morning, there was nothing in the +world that could have satisfied and restored him as did his daughter's +companionship. The peace of this wordless prolongation of their talk +together was something he lacked, for a long while, the will to break. + +It was not far short of noon when they came back into the veranda +together. He had walked the last hundred yards, after a look at his +watch, pretty fast and after a glance into both the down-stairs rooms, he +called up-stairs to his wife in a voice that had an edge of sudden +anxiety in it. Then getting no response, he went up, two at a time. + +Mary dropped down, limp with a sudden premonition, upon the gloucester +swing in the veranda. The maid of all work, who had heard his call, came +from the kitchen just as he was returning down the stairs. Mrs. Wollaston +had gone away, she said. Pete had reported with the big car at eleven +o'clock and Paula, who apparently had been waiting for him, had driven +off at once having left word that she would not be back for lunch. + +"All right," John said curtly. "You may go." + +He was so white when he rejoined Mary in the veranda that she sprang up +with an involuntary cry and would have had him lie down, where she had +been sitting. But the fine steely ring in his voice stopped her short. + +"Have you any idea," he asked, "where she has gone or what she has gone +to do? She came down," he went on without waiting for her answer,--"and +looked for me. Waited for me. And thanks to that--walk we took, I wasn't +here. Well, can you guess what she's done?" + +"It's only a guess," Mary said, "but she may have gone to see +Martin Whitney." + +"Martin Whitney?" he echoed blankly. "What for? What does she want of +him?" + +"She spoke of him," Mary said, "in connection with the money, the twenty +thousand dollars..." + +He broke in upon her again with a mere blank frantic echo of her words +and once more Mary steadied herself to explain. + +"Her agreement with Mr. Ware required her to put up twenty thousand +dollars in some banker's hands as a guarantee that she would not break +the contract. She mentioned Martin Whitney as the natural person to +hold it. So I guessed that she might have gone to consult him about +it;--or even to ask him to lend it to her. As she said, it wouldn't +have to be spent." + +"That's the essence of the contract then. It's nothing without that. +Until she gets the money and puts it up. Yet you told me nothing of it +until this moment. If you had done so--instead of inviting me to go for a +walk--and giving her a chance to get away..." + +He couldn't be allowed to go on. "Do you mean that you think I did +that--for the purpose?" she asked steadily. + +He flushed and turned away. "No, of course I don't. I'm half mad +over this." + +He walked abruptly into the house and a moment later she heard him at the +telephone. She stayed where she was, unable to think; stunned rather than +hurt over the way he had sprung upon her. + +He seemed a little quieter when he came out a few minutes later. +"Whitney left half an hour ago for Lake Geneva," he said. "So she's +missed him if that's where she went. There's nothing to do but wait." + +He was very nervous however. Whenever the telephone rang, as it did of +course pretty often, he answered it himself, and each time his +disappointment that it was not Paula asking for him, broke down more or +less the calm he tried to impose upon himself. He essayed what amends +good manners enabled him to make to Mary for his outrageous attack upon +her. It went no deeper than that. The discovery that Paula was gone and +simultaneously that he need not have lost her obliterated--or rather +reversed--the morning's mood completely. + +It was after lunch that he said, dryly, "I upset your life for you, half +a dozen years ago. Unfairly. Inexcusably. I've always been ashamed of it. +But it lends a sort of poetic justice to this." + +She made no immediate reply, but not long afterward she asked if she +might not go away without waiting for Paula's return. "It would be too +difficult, don't you think?--for the three of us, in a small house +like this." + +He agreed with manifest relief. He asked if it was not too late to drive +that afternoon to Hickory Hill, but she said she'd prefer to go by train +anyhow. That was possible she thought. + +He did not ask, in so many words, if this was where she meant to go. +There was no other place for her that he could think of. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE SUBSTITUTE + + +It was a good guess of Mary's that Paula had gone to borrow the twenty +thousand dollars but it was to Wallace Hood, not to Martin Whitney, that +she went for it; and thereby illustrated once more how much more +effective instinct is than intelligence. + +Martin, rich and generous as he was, originator as he was of the edict +that Paula must go to work, would never have been stampeded as Wallace +was in a talk that lasted less than half an hour, into producing +securities to the amount that Paula needed and offering them up in escrow +for the life of Maxfield Ware's contract. + +Wallace was only moderately well off and he was by nature, cautious. His +investments were always of the most conservative sort. This from habit +as well as nature because his job--the only one he had ever had--was +that of estate agent. But Paula's instinct told her that he wouldn't +find it possible to refuse. I think it told her too, though this was a +voice that did not make itself fairly heard to her conscious ear, that +he would be made very fluttered and unhappy by it whether he granted her +request or not. + +What he would hate, she perceived, was the suddenness of the demand and +the irrevocable committal to those five years; the blow it was to those +domesticities and proprieties he loved so much. The fact that he would be +made sponsor for those unchartered excursions to Mexico, to South +America, and so on, under the direction of a libidinous looking +cosmopolite like Maxfield Ware. + +Why she wanted to put Wallace into the flutters she couldn't have told. +She was, as I say, not quite aware that she did. But he had been running +up a score in very minute items that was all of five years old. The fact +that all these items went by the name of services, helpful little acts of +kindness, made the irritation they caused her all the more acute. + +I don't agree with Lucile Wollaston's diagnosis, that Paula could not +abide Wallace merely because he refused to lose his head over her, but +there was a grain of truth in it. What she unconsciously resented was the +fundamental unreality of his attitude to her. Actually, he did not like +her, but the relation he had selected as appropriate to the first Mrs. +Wollaston's successor was one of innocent devotion and he stuck, +indefatigably, to the pose. So the chance to put his serviceability to +the proof in consternating circumstances like these, afforded her a +subtle satisfaction. He'd brought it upon himself, hadn't he? At least it +was he and no other who had put Mary up to the part she had played. + +None of this, of course, came to the surface at all in the scene between +them. She was gentler than was her wont with him, very appealing, subdued +nearer to his own scale of manners than he had ever seen her before. But +she did not, for a fact, allow him much time to think. + +He asked her, with a touch of embarrassment, whether John was fully in +her confidence concerning this startling project, and if she had won his +assent to it. + +"He knows all about it," she said--and with no consciousness of a +_suppressio veri_ here. "We hardly talked of anything else all last +night. I didn't get to sleep till four. He doesn't like it, but then you +couldn't expect he would. For that matter neither do I. Oh, you don't +know how I hate it! But I think he sees it has to be. Anyhow, he didn't +try very hard to keep me from going on with it--And Mary, of course, is +perfectly satisfied." + +Even his not very alert ear caught something equivocal in those last +sentences, and he looked at her sharply. + +"Oh, I'm worn to ribbons over it!" she exclaimed, and this touch of +apology served for the tearing edge there had been in her voice. "I +couldn't let him see how I feel about it. It would be a sort of relief to +have it settled. That's why I came straight to you to-day." + +He tried, but rather feebly, to temporize. We mustn't let haste drive us +farther than we really wanted to go. The matter of drawing the formal +contract, for instance, must be attended with all possible legal +safe-guards, especially when we were dealing with a person whose honor +was perhaps dubitable. + +"I thought we might go round to see Rodney Aldrich about it, now," she +said. "He's about the best there is in that line, isn't he? Why don't you +telephone to his office and find out if he's there." + +This seemed as good a straw as any to clutch at. The chance of catching +as busy a man as Aldrich with a leisure half hour was very slim. The +recording angel who guarded his wicket gate would probably give them an +appointment for some day next week, and this would leave time for a +confirmatory talk with John. But, unluckily, Rodney was there and would +be glad to see Mrs. Wollaston as soon as she could be brought round. + +"Then, that's all right," Paula said with a sigh of relief. "So if you +really believe I'll keep my word and don't mind putting up the money for +me, it's as good as settled." + +There was one more question on his tongue. "Does John know that you have +come to me for it?" But this, somehow, he could not force himself to ask. +Implicitly she had already answered it--hadn't she? + +"Of course I believe, in you, in everything, my dear Paula. And I'm very +much--touched, that you should have come to me. And my only hope is that +it may turn out to have been altogether for the best." + +And there was that. + +It was not until late that night that his misgivings as to the part Mary +might have played in this drama really awoke, but when they did he +marveled that they had not occurred to him earlier. He recalled that Mary +had prophesied during their talk at the Saddle and Cycle that Paula would +attribute to her the suggestion--whoever might make it--that an operatic +career for John's wife was desirable and necessary for financial reasons. +She had said too, in that serious measured way of hers, "If Paula ever +saw me coming between her and father, whether it was my doing or not, she +would hate me with her whole heart." + +Had that prediction been justified? There were half a dozen phrases that +Paula had allowed herself to use this afternoon, which added up to a +reasonable certainty that it was altogether justified. It was not easy +for him to admit to himself that he didn't like Paula; that he knew her +and had long known her for a person incapable of following any lead save +that of her own primitive straightforward desires. + +His self-communings reached down deeper into him than they had done for +many a long year. He convicted himself, before his vigil was over, of +flagrant cowardice in having allowed Mary to undertake the burden of that +revelation. What harm would it have done any one, even himself, beyond an +hour's discomfort, to have drawn down Paula's lightnings on his own head? +Her enmity, even though it were permanent, could not seriously have +changed the tenor of his ways. + +But to Mary, such a thing could easily be a first-class disaster. Could +John be relied upon to come whole-heartedly to her defense. No, he could +not. Indeed--this was the thought that made Wallace gasp as from a dash +of cold water in the face--John's anger at this interference with his +affairs and at the innocent agent of it was likely to be as hot as his +wife's. Momentarily anyhow. What a perfectly horrible situation to have +forced the girl into;--that fragile sensitive young thing! + +And now above all other times, when, for some reason not fully known to +him, she was finding her own life an almost impossibly difficult thing to +manage. He remembered the day she had come back from New York; how she +had flushed and gone pale and asked him in a moment of suddenly tense +emotion if he couldn't find her a job. It had been that very night, +hadn't it?--when Paula had given that recital of Anthony March's +songs--that she had disappeared out of the midst of things and never come +back during the whole evening. When one considered her courage a flight +like that told a good deal. + +Then there had been that something a little short of an engagement with +Graham Stannard, which must have distressed her horribly;--any one with a +spirit as candid as hers and with as honest a hatred of all that was +equivocal. The family had seemed to think that it would all come out +right in the end somehow, yet the last time she had talked with him she +had said, cutting straight through the disguise his thought had hidden +itself behind, "I know I can't ever marry Graham." + +And it was a young girl harassed with perplexities like these, whom he +had permitted in his stead to beard the lioness. Well, if there was +anything in the world, any conceivable thing, that he could do to repair +the consequences of his fault, he would do it. If that lovers' +misunderstanding with Graham could, after all, be cleared away it would +be the happy, the completely desirable solution of the problem. But if it +could not ... A day-dream that it was he who stood in Graham Stannard's +shoes, offering her harbor and rest and a life-long loyalty, formed the +bridge over which he finally fell asleep. + +She called him to the telephone the next morning while he was at +breakfast; just to tell him she was in town, she said, and to ask him if +he had heard anything from his sister in Omaha as to whether she wanted a +nursery governess. He had to admit, of course, that he had not even +written to her, and felt guiltier and more miserable than ever. + +"Do write to-day, though, won't you?" she urged. "And give me the best +character you can. Because I am going to get some sort of job just as +soon as possible." + +In reply to the inarticulate noise of protest he made at this she went +on, "Our family has simply exploded. I fled for my life last night. So +you see I'm really in earnest about going to work now." + +"I want to come and see you at once," he said. "Where are you?" + +"At home," she answered, "but I'm going out this minute for the day. If +you'd like a picnic tea here at half past five, though, come and I'll +tell you what I've been doing." + +He asked if this meant that she was staying all by herself in the +Dearborn Avenue house without even a servant, and at his lively horror +over this she laughed with an amusement which sounded genuine enough to +reassure him somewhat. She ended the conversation by telling him that she +had left her father with the impression that she was going straight to +Hickory Hill. She was writing Aunt Lucile a note saying she meant to stay +in town for a few days. "But if you get any frantic telephone calls in +the meantime, tell them I'm all right." + +He wondered a good deal, as his hours marched past in their accustomed +uneventful manner, what she could be doing with hers. It was an odd +locution for her to have employed that she was "going out for the day." +He couldn't square it with any sort of social activity. The thing that +kept plaguing his mind despite his impatient attempts to dismiss it as +nonsense, was the possibility that she was actually looking for that job +she'd talked about. Answering advertisements! + +Toward four, when he had stopped trying to do anything but wait for his +appointment with her, Rush and Graham came in, precipitately, and asked +for a private talk with him. He took them into his inner office, relieved +a little at the arrival of reenforcements but disappointed too. + +"If you're anxious about Mary," he began by saying, "I can assure you +that she is all right. She's at the Dearborn Avenue house, or was last +night and will be again later this afternoon. I talked to her on the +phone this morning." + +"Thank God!" said Rush. + +Graham dropped into a chair with a gesture of relief even more +expressive. + +Rush explained the cause of their alarm. Old Pete had driven in to +Hickory Hill around two o'clock with a letter, addressed to Mary, from +Paula, and on being asked to explain offered the disquieting information +that she had left Ravinia for the farm, the afternoon before. They had +driven straight to town and to Wallace as the likeliest source of +information. + +In the emotional back-lash from his profound disquiet about his sister, +suddenly reassured that there was nothing--well, tragic to be +apprehended, Rush allowed himself an outburst of brotherly indignation. +He'd like to know what the devil Mary meant by giving them a fright like +that. Why hadn't she telephoned last night? Nothing was easier than +that. Or more to the point still, why hadn't she come straight out to +the farm as she had told her father she meant to do, instead of spending +the night in town? + +Wallace would have let him go on, since it gave him a little time he +wanted for deciding what line to take. But Graham, it seemed, +couldn't stand it. + +"Shut up, Rush!" he commanded. (You are to remember that he was three +years his partner's senior.) "Mary never did an--inconsiderate thing in +her life. If she seems to have forgotten about us, you can be dead sure +there's a reason." + +"I agree with Stannard," Wallace put in, "that she wants to be dealt +with--gently. She must have been having a rather rotten time." + +He hadn't yet made up his mind how far to take them into his confidence +as to what he knew and guessed, but Rush made an end of his hesitation. + +"Tell us, for heaven's sake, what it's all about.--Oh, you needn't +mind Graham. He's as much in it as any of us. I suppose you know how +he stands." + +Wallace was conscious of an acute wish that they had not turned up until +he'd had a chance to see Mary, but somehow he felt he couldn't go behind +an assurance like that. So he told them what he had pieced together. + +Rush grunted and blushed and said he'd be damned, but it was not a +theme--this contention between his father and his stepmother--that he +could dwell upon. He got hold at last of something that he could be +articulate about, and demanded to know why, in these circumstances, Mary +hadn't come straight to them at Hickory Hill instead of camping out, for +the night, all by herself in the Dearborn Avenue house. + +"She has an idea she must find a job for herself," Wallace said, feeling +awkwardly guilty as if he had betrayed her; but the way Rush leaped upon +him, demanding in one breath what the deuce he meant and what sort of job +he was talking about, made it impossible to pull up. + +He recounted the request Mary had made of him, concerning his sister in +Omaha, and, last of all, stated his own misgiving--nothing but the merest +guess of course--that she had been putting in this day answering +advertisements. "She said she'd give me a picnic tea at five-thirty and +tell me what she'd been doing." + +"Well, it'll be no picnic for her," Rush exploded angrily. "I'll see her +at five-thirty myself. She must be plumb out of her head if she thinks +she'll be allowed to do a thing like that." + +Once more, before Wallace could speak, it was Graham who intervened. "I +want you to leave this to me," he said gravely. "I don't know whether I +can settle it or not, but I'd like to try." He turned to Wallace. +"Would you mind, sir, letting me go to tea with her at half past five +in your place?" + +It is possible that, but for Wallace's day-dream of himself offering +Mary the shelter and the care she so obviously needed, he might have +persisted in seeing her first and assuring her that he was to be +regarded as an ally whatever she decided to do. Her voice as she had +said, "I know I can never marry Graham" echoed forlornly in his mind's +ear. But a doubt faint and vague as it was, of his own disinterestedness +held him back. Graham was young; he was in love with her. That gave him +right of way, didn't it? + +So he assented. It was agreed that Rush should dine with Wallace at his +apartment. Graham, if he had any news for them should communicate it by +telephone. Instantly! + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE + + +The instinct to conceal certain moods of depression and distress together +with the histrionic power to make the concealment possible may be a +serious peril to a woman of Mary Wollaston's temperament. She had managed +at the telephone that morning to deceive Wallace pretty completely. Even +her laugh had failed to give her away. + +She was altogether too near for safety to the point of exhaustion. She +had endured her second night without sleep. She had not really eaten an +adequate meal since her lunch in town the day Paula had engineered her +out of the way for that talk with Maxfield Ware. + +There was nothing morbid in her resolution to find, at the earliest +possible moment, some way of making herself independent of her father's +support. Having pointed out Paula's duty as a bread winner she could not +neglect her own, however dreary the method might be, or humble the +results. In any mood, of course, the setting out in search of employment +would have been painful and little short of terrifying to one brought up +the way Mary had been. + +A night's sleep though and a proper breakfast would have kept the thing +from being a nightmare. As it was, she felt, setting out with her +clipping from the help-wanted columns of a morning paper, a good deal +like the sole survivor of some shipwreck, washed up upon an unknown +coast, venturing inland to discover whether the inhabitants were +cannibals. Even the constellations in her sky were strange. + +Where, then, was Anthony March? Nowhere above her horizon, to-day at all +events. The memory of him had been with her much of the two last +sleepless nights. She had told over the tale of her moments with him +again and again. (Did any one, she might have wondered, ever love as +deeply with so small a treasury of golden hours for memory to draw upon?) +But she could not, somehow, relate him at all to her present or her +future. Her love for him was an out-going rather than an in-coming thing. +At least, her thoughts had put the emphasis upon that side of it; upon +the longing to comfort and protect him, to be the satisfaction to all his +wants. Not--passionately not--to cling heavily about his neck, drag at +his feet, steal his wayfarer's liberty,--no, not the smallest moment of +it! This present helplessness of hers then, which heightened her need for +him, served also to bolt the doors of her thoughts against him. + +Her recollection of the next few hours, though it contained some +vignettes so sharp and deeply bitten in as to be, she fancied, +ineffaceable, was in the main confused. She must have called upon ten or +a dozen advertisers in various suburban districts of the city (she +avoided addresses that were too near home and names where she suspected +hers might be known). Her composite impression was of flat thin voices +which she could imagine in excitement becoming shrill; of curious +appraising stares; of a vast amount of garrulous irrelevancy; of a note +of injury that one who could profess so little equipment beyond good will +should so disappoint the expectation her first appearance had aroused. +The background was a room--it seemed to have been in every case the +same--expensively overfurnished, inexpressive, ill-fitting its uses, like +a badly chosen ready-made coat. The day was not without its humors, or +what would have been humors if her spirit could have rebounded to them. +Chiefly, the violent antagonism she found aroused in two or three cases +by the color of her hair. + +The residuum of her pilgrimages was three addresses where she might call +about the middle of next week, in person or by telephone, to learn the +advertiser's decision. Well it would convince Wallace Hood that she was +in earnest. That was something. + +Wallace's coming to tea became, as the day wore on, more and more +something to look forward to. All the things about him which in more +resilient hours she had found irritating or absurd, his neutrality, his +appropriateness, his steady unimaginative way of going always one step +at a time, seemed now precisely his greatest merits. The thought of tea +in his company even aroused a faint appetite for food in her and lent +zest to her preparations for it. When she stopped at the neighborhood +caterer's shop for supplies she bought some tea cakes in addition to the +sandwiches she had ordered in the morning. She had managed to get home +in good enough season to restore the drawing-room somewhat to its +inhabited appearance, to set out her tea table, put on her kettle, and +then go up-stairs and change her dress for something that was not wilted +by the day's unusual heat. She was ready then to present before Wallace +an _ensemble_ which should match pretty well her tone at the telephone +this morning. + +But when she answered the ring she supposed was his and flinging open the +door saw Graham Stannard there instead, she got a jarring shock which her +overstrung nerves were in no condition to endure. + +"I persuaded Mr. Hood to let me come to tea in his place," he said. +"It was rather cheeky of me to ask him, I'm afraid. I hope you will +forgive me." + +The arrest of all her processes of thought at sight of him lasted only +the barest instant. Then her mind flashed backward through a surmise +which embraced the whole series of events. An alarm at Hickory Hill over +her failure to arrive (which somehow they had been led to expect), a +dash by Graham (Rush not available, perhaps), into town for news. To +Wallace Hood, of course. And Wallace had betrayed her. In the interest of +romantic sentiment. The happy ending given its chance. A rich young +adoring husband instead of a job as nursery governess in Omaha! + +It took no longer for all that to go through her mind than Graham needed +for his little explanatory speech on the door-step. There he stood +waiting for her answer. The only choice she had was between shutting the +door in his face without a word, or graciously inviting him to come in +and propose to her--for the last time, at all events. It was not, of +course, a choice at all. + +"I'm afraid it's a terribly hot day for tea," she said, moving back from +the doorway to make room for him to come in. "Wallace likes it, though. I +might make you something cold if only I had ice, but of course there +isn't any in the house. It's nice and cool, though, isn't it; from having +been shut up so long?" + +Anything,--any frantic thing that could be spun into words to cover the +fact that she had no welcome for him at all, not even the most wan little +beam of friendly tenderness. She had seen the hurt look come into his +eyes, incipient panic at the flash of anger which had not been meant for +him. She must float him inside, somehow, and anchor him to the tea table. +There she could get herself together and deal with him--decently. + +He came along, tractably enough, sat in the chair that was to have +been Wallace's, and talked for a while of the tea, and how hot it was +this afternoon, and how beautifully cool in here. It was hot, too, out +at Hickory Hill but one thought little of it. The air was drier for +one thing. He and Rush had commented on the difference as they drove +in to-day. + +"Oh, Rush came in with you, did he?" she observed. + +He flushed and stammered over the admission and it was easy to guess why. +The fact that her brother, as well as Wallace, was lurking in the +background somewhere waiting for results gave an official cast to his +call that was rather--asinine. She came to the rescue. + +"I suppose he and Wallace had something they wanted to talk about," she +commented easily, and he made haste to assent. + +She steadied herself with a breath. "Did Wallace tell you," she asked, +"about our explosion at Ravinia over Paula's new contract? And how +furious both father and Paula are with me about it? And how I'm out +looking for a job? He didn't say anything about his sister, did he; +whether he'd written to her to-day or not?" + +"Not whether he'd written. But he told us the rest. How you wanted to go +to work. As a nursery governess." + +He paused there but she did not break in upon it. She had given him all +the lead he needed. With the deliberate care that a suddenly tremulous +hand made necessary he put down his teacup and spoke as if addressing it. + +"I think you're the bravest--most wonderful person in the world. Of +course, I've known that always. Not just since I came back last spring. +But this, that Mr. Hood told us this afternoon, somehow--caps the climax. +I can't tell you how it--got me, to think of your being ready to do--a +thing like that." + +The last thing she would have done voluntarily was to put any obstacles +in his way. Her program, on the contrary was to help him along all she +could to his declaration, make a refusal that should be as gentle as was +consistent with complete finality, and then get rid of him before +anything regrettably--messy ensued. But to have her courage rhapsodized +over like this was a thing she could not endure. + +"It's nothing," she said rather dryly, "beyond what most girls do +nowadays as a matter of course. I'm being rather cowardly about it, I +think--on account of some silly ideas I've been more or less brought up +with perhaps, but..." + +"What if they do?" he broke in; "thousands of them at the stores and in +the offices. It's bad enough for them--for any sort of woman. But it's +different with you. It's horrible. You aren't like them." + +She tried to check herself but couldn't. "What's the difference? I'm +healthy and half-educated and fairly young. I have the same sort, pretty +much, of thoughts and feelings. I don't believe I like being clean and +warm and well-fed and amused and admired any better than the average girl +does. I ought to have found a job months ago, instead of letting Rush +bring me home from New York. Or else gone to work when I came home. But +every one was so horrified..." + +"They were right to be," he interrupted. "It is a horrible idea. Because +you aren't like the others. You _haven't_ the same sort of thoughts and +feelings. A person doesn't have to be in love with you to see that. Your +father and Rush and Mr. Hood all see it. And as for me--well, I couldn't +endure it, that's all. Oh, I know, you can act like anybody else; laugh +and dance and talk nonsense and make a person forget sometimes. But the +other thing is there all the while--shining through--oh, it can't be +talked about!--like a light. Of--of something a decent man _wants_ to be +guided by, whatever he does. And for you to go out into the world with +that, where there can't be any protection at all ... I can't stand it, +Mary. That's why I came to-day instead of Mr. Hood." + +She went very white during that speech and tears came up into her eyes. +Tears of helpless exasperation. It was such a cruelly inhuman thing to +impose an ideal like that upon a woman. It was so smug, so utterly +satisfactory to all romantic sentimentalists. Wallace would approve every +word of it. Wallace had sent him to say just this;--was waiting now to be +told the good news of his success. + +The fact is worth recalling, perhaps, that away back in her childhood +Wallace had sometimes reduced her to much this sort of frantic +exasperation by his impregnable assumption that she was the white-souled +little angel she looked. Sitting here in this very room he had goaded her +into committing freakish misdemeanors. + +She was resisting now an impulse of much the same sort, though the +parallel did not, of course, occur to her. It was just a sort of +inexplicable panic which she was reining in with all her might by telling +herself how fond she really was of Graham and how terrible a thing it +would be if she hurt him unnecessarily. She dared not attempt to speak so +she merely waited. She was sitting relaxed, her head lowered, her chin +supported by one hand. This stillness and relaxation she always resorted +to in making any supreme demand upon her self-control. + +He looked at her rather helplessly once or twice during the silence. Then +arose and moved about restlessly. + +"I know you don't love me. I've gone on hoping you could after I suppose +I might have seen it wasn't possible. You've tried to and you can't. I +don't know if one as white as you could love any man--that way. Well, I'm +not going to ask any more for that. I want to ask, instead, that we be +friends. I haven't spoiled the possibility of that, have I?" + +She was taken utterly by surprise. It didn't seem possible that she had +even heard aright and the face he turned to, as he asked that last +question, was of one pitiably bewildered, yet lighted too by a gleam of +gratitude. + +"You really mean that, Graham?" she asked in a very ragged voice. "Is +that what you came to-day to tell me?" + +"I mean it altogether," he said earnestly. "I mean it without +any--reservations at all. You must believe that because it's the--basis +for everything else." + +She repeated "everything else?" in clear interrogation; then dropped back +rather suddenly into her former attitude. Everything else! What else was +there to friendship but itself? + +He turned back to the window. "I've come to ask you to, marry me, Mary, +just the same. I couldn't be any good as a friend, couldn't take care of +you and try to make you happy, unless in the eyes of the world I was your +husband. But I wouldn't ask,--I promise you I wouldn't ask +anything,--anything at all. You do understand, don't you? You'd be just +as--sacred to me ..." + +Then he cried out in consternation at the sight of her, "Mary! +What is it?" + +The tension had become too great, that was all. Her self-control, +slackened by the momentarily held belief that it was not needed, +had snapped. + +"I understand well enough," she said. "You would say good night at my +bedroom door and good morning at the breakfast table. I've read of +arrangements like that in rather nasty-minded novels, but I didn't +suppose they existed anywhere else. I can't think of an existence more +degradingly sensual than that;--to go on for days and months and years +being 'sacred' to a man; never satisfying the desires your nearness +tortured him with--to say nothing of what you did with your own! + +"But that such a thing should be offered to me because I'm too good to +love a man honestly.... You see, I'm none of the things you think I am, +Graham. Nor that you want me to be. Not white, not innocent. Not a 'good' +woman even, let alone an angel. That's what makes it so--preposterous." + +He had been staring at her, speechless, horrified. But at this it was as +if he understood. "I ought not to have worried you to-day," he said, +suddenly gentle. "I know how terribly overwrought you are. I meant--I +only meant to make things easier. I'm going away now. I'll send Rush to +you. He'll come at once. Do you mind being alone till then?" + +She answered slowly and with an appearance of patient +reasonableness, "It's not that. It's not what Rush calls +shell-shock. There is many a shabby little experimental flirt who +has managed to keep intact an-innocence which I don't possess. That +is the simple-physiological truth." + +Then, after a silence, with a gasp, "I'm not mad. But I think I shall be +if you go on looking at me like that. Won't you please go?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE TERROR + + +Graham Stannard made his well-meant but disastrous proposal to Mary at +half past five or so on a Friday afternoon. It was a little more than +twenty-four hours later, just after dark on Saturday evening, that she +came in, unheralded, more incredibly like a vision than ever, upon +Anthony March in his secret lair above the grocery. + +He was sitting at his work-table scoring a passage in the third act of +_The Dumb Princess_ for the wood-wind choir when her knock, faint as it +was, breaking in upon the rhythm of his theme, caused his pen to leap +away from the paper and his heart to skip a beat. But had it actually +been a knock upon his door? Such an event was unlikely enough. + +He uttered a tentative and rather incredulous "Come in" as one just +awakened speaks, humoring the illusion of a dream. + +But the door opened and the Dumb Princess stood there, pallid, wistful, +just as she had looked before her true lover climbed the precarious ivy +to her tower and tore away the spell that veiled her. + +March sat debating with himself,--or so it seemed to him afterward; it +was a matter of mere seconds, of course,--why, since she was a vision, +did she not look as she had on one of the occasions when he had seen her. +The night of the Whitman songs; the blazing afternoon in the hay field. + +She was different to-night, and very clearly defined, in a plain +little frock of dark blue--yet not quite what one ordinarily meant by +dark blue--cut out in an unsoftened square around the neck, and a +small hat of straw, the color of the warmer sort of bronze. These +austerities of garb, dissociated utterly with all his memories, gave +her a poignancy that was almost unbearable. Why had the vision of her +come to him like that? + +She smiled then and spoke. "It is really I. I've come with a +message for you." + +Until she spoke he could do nothing but stare as one would at an +hallucinatory vision; but her voice, the first articulate syllable of it, +brought him to his feet and drew him across the room to where she stood. +He was almost suffocated by a sudden convulsion of the heart, half +exultation, half terror. The exultation was accountable enough. The high +Gods had given him another chance. Why he should be terrified he did not +at the time know, but he was--from that very first moment. + +He came to her slowly, not knowing what he was to do or say. All his +mental powers were for the moment quite in abeyance. But when he got +within hand's reach of her it was given to him to take both of hers and +stoop and kiss them. He'd have knelt to her had his knees ever been +habituated to prayer. Then he led her to his big hollow-backed easy chair +which stood in the dormer where the breeze came in, changed its position +a little and waited until, with a faintly audible sigh, she had let +herself sink into it. + +How tired she was! He had become aware of that the moment he touched her +hands. Whatever her experience during the last days or weeks had been, it +had brought her to the end of her powers. + +He felt another pang of that unaccountable terror as he turned away, and +he put up an unaddressed prayer for spiritual guidance. It was a new +humility for him. He moved his own chair a little nearer, but not close, +and seated himself. + +"I can conceive of no message,"--they were the first words he had +spoken, and his voice was not easily manageable,--"no message that would +be more than nothing compared with the fact that you have come." Rising +again, he went on, "Won't you let me take your hat? Then the back of that +chair won't be in the way." + +It was certainly a point in his favor that she took it off and gave it to +him without demur. That meant that there would be time; yet her very +docility frightened him. She seemed quite relaxed now that her head could +lie back against the leather cushion, and her gaze traveled about the +dingy littered room with a kind of tender inquisitiveness as if she were +memorizing its contents. + +He gazed at her until a gush of tears blinded his eyes and he turned, +blinking them away, to the untidy quires of score paper which he had +tried to choose instead. It could not be that it was too late to alter +that choice. The terror, for a moment, became articulate. She believed +that it was too late. That was why she had come. + +She spoke reflectively. "It would be called an accident, I suppose, that +I came. I wrote to you but there was more to the message than would go +easily in a note so I took it myself to your house. There was just a +chance, I thought, that I'd find you there. I didn't find you, but I +found Miss MacArthur. That was the only thing about it that could be +called accidental. Your mother and sister were worried about you. They +said it had been much longer than such periods usually were since they +had heard from you. So I left my note and was coming away. Miss +MacArthur said she would come with me and offered to drive me back to +town. When we got into her car she said she thought she knew where you +were and would take me to you. She did not say anything more nor ask any +questions until she had stopped outside here at the curb, when she +looked up and saw the lighted windows and said you were surely here. +Then she pointed out the place in the dark where the stairs were and +told me how to find your door. She waited, though, to make sure before +she drove away. I heard her go." + +He had no word to say in the little pause she made there. He felt the +pulse beating in his temples and clutched with tremulous hands the wooden +arms of his chair. Until she had mentioned Jennie MacArthur's name it had +not occurred to him to wonder how she had been enabled to come to him. It +could only have been through Jennie, of course. Jennie was the only +person who knew. But why had Jennie disclosed his secret (her own at the +same time, he was sure; she never would have expected Mary's clear eyes +even to try to evade the unescapable inference)--why had she revealed to +Mary, whom she had never seen before, a fact which she had guarded with +so impregnable a loyalty all these many years? + +The only possible answer was that Jennie had divined, under the girl's +well-bred poise, the desperation which was now terrifying him. It was no +nightmare then of his own overwrought imagination. Jennie had perceived +the emergency--the actual life-or-death emergency--and with courageous +inspiration had done, unhesitatingly, the one thing that could possibly +meet the case. She had given him his chance. Jennie! + +He arrived at that terminus just as Mary finished speaking. In the pause +that followed she did not at first look at him. Her gaze had come to rest +upon that abortive musical typewriter of his. Not quite in focus upon it, +but as if in some corner of her mind she was wondering what it might be. +But as the pause spun itself out, her glance, seeking his face, moved +quickly enough to catch the look of consternation that it wore. She read +it--misread it luckily--and her own lighted amazingly with a beam of pure +amusement. + +"I suppose it is rather overwhelming," she said; "a conjunction like +that. I mean, that it should have been she who brought me here. But +really, unless one accepts all the traditional motives and explanations +that one finds in books, it shouldn't be surprising that she should +undertake a friendly service for some one else she saw was fond of you, +too. Not when one considers the wonderful person she is." + +If his sheer adoration of her were enough to save her then she was safe, +whatever the peril. But he doubted if it would be enough. + +"Jennie and I were lovers once," he said. "But that came to an end for +both of us a good while ago. Two or three years. And the last time she +came to this room--one day in April it was--I told her about you and +about _The Dumb Princess_." He laid his hand upon the stack of +manuscript. "This. I had come home from that night at your father's house +when you and I heard that song together, with my head full of it. I went +nearly mad fighting it out of my head while I tried to make over that +other opera for Paula." + +"_The Dumb Princess_...?" + +He nodded. "You see you hardly spoke that night, only at the end to say +we mustn't talk. So I came away thinking of some one under a spell. A +princess, the fairy sort of princess who could not speak until her true +lover came to her. But instead of that I tried to go on working at that +Belgian horror and stuck at it until it was unendurable. And then, when I +came to the house to tell Paula so, it was you who came to me again, the +first time since that night." + +There had come a faintly visible color into her cheeks and once more she +smiled, reflectively. "That's what you meant then," she mused. "I +couldn't make it out. You said just before you went away, 'That's why it +was so incredible when you came down the stairs instead.'" + +She had remembered that! + +"I ran away," he confessed, "the moment I had said it, for fear of +betraying myself. And I went to work on _The Dumb Princess_ that day." + +"You've done all that, a whole opera, since the fourteenth of May?" + +"I worked on it," he said, "until I had to stop for the little vacation +that--that ended at Hickory Hill. And I came straight back to it from +there. I've been working at it all the time since. Now, except for the +scoring in the second part of the third act, it's finished. I thought it +was the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. Just to get +it written down on paper, the thing which that moment with you up in that +little anteroom started. I've pretty well done it. As far as the music +itself is concerned, I think I have done it." + +He paused there and pressed his lips together. Then he went on speaking, +stiffly, one word at a time. "And I was saying to myself when you knocked +that I would tear it up, every sheet of it, and set it alight in the +stove yonder if it would take me back to that hour we had together at +Hickory Hill." + +The tenderness of her voice when she replied (it had some of the +characteristic qualities of his beloved woodwinds) did not preclude a +bead of humor, almost mischief, from gilding the salient points of +its modeling. + +"I know," she said. "I can guess what that feeling must be; the perfect +emptiness and despair of having a great work done. I suspect there aren't +many great masterpieces that one couldn't have bought cheap by offering +the mess of pottage at the right moment. Oh, no, I didn't mean a sneer +when I said cheap. I really understand. That very next morning out in the +orchard, thinking over it, I managed to be glad you'd gone--alone. Your +own way, rather than back with me to Ravinia. But--I'm glad I came +to-night and I'm glad I know about--_The Dumb Princess_." + +Watching her as her unfocused reminiscent gaze made it easy for him to +do, he saw her go suddenly pale, saw the perspiration bead out on her +forehead as if some thought her mind had found itself confronting +actually sickened her. He waited an instant, breathless in an agony of +doubt whether to notice or to go on pretending to ignore. After a moment +the wave passed. + +"I know that was a figure of speech," she resumed,--her voice was +deadened a little in timbre but its inflections were as light as before. +"But I wish--I'd really be ever so much--happier--if you'd give me a +promise; a perfectly serious, solemn,"--she hesitated for a word and +smiled,--"death-bed promise, that you never will burn up _The Dumb +Princess_. At least until she's all published and produced. And I wish +that as soon as you've got a copy made, you'd put this manuscript in a +really safe place." + +He turned away from her, baffled, bewildered. She had evaded the issue he +had tried to confront her with. She had taken the passionate declaration +of his wish to retrieve the great error of his life as a passing emotion +familiar to all creative artists at certain stages in their work. It was +a natural, almost inevitable, way of looking at it! He sat for a moment +gazing abstractedly at his littered table, clutching the edges of it with +both hands, resisting a momentary vertigo of his own. + +She left her chair and came and stood beside him. She picked up one of +the quires of manuscript, opened it and gazed a while at the many-staved +score. He was aware of a catch in her breathing, like an inaudible sob, +but presently she spoke, quite steadily. + +"I wish I could sit here to-night and read this. I wish it made even +unheard melodies to me. I'm not dumb but I am deaf to this. _There's_ a +spell beyond your powers to lift, my dear." + +She laid her hand lightly upon his shoulder and at her touch his +taut-drawn muscles relaxed into a tremulous weakness. After a +little silence: + +"Now give me my promise," she said. + +He did not immediately answer and the hand upon his shoulder took hold. +Under its compulsion, "I'll promise anything you ask," he said. + +She spoke slowly as if measuring her words. "Never to destroy this work +of yours that you call _The Dumb Princess_ whatever may conceivably +happen, however discouraged you may be about it." + +"Very well," he said, "I won't." + +"Say it as a promise," she commanded. "Quite explicitly." + +So he repeated a form of words which satisfied her. She held him tight in +both hands for an instant. Then swiftly went back to her chair. + +"Don't think me too foolish," she apologized. "I haven't been sleeping +much of late and I couldn't have slept to-night with a misgiving like +that to wonder about." + +His own misgiving obscurely deepened. He did not know whether it was the +reason she had offered for exacting that promise from him or the mere +tone of her voice which was lighter and more brittle than he felt it +should have been. She must have read the troubled look in his face for +she said at once and on a warmer note: + +"Oh, my dear, don't! Don't let my vagaries trouble you. Let me tell you +the message I came with. It's about the other opera. They want to put it +on at once up at Ravinia. With Fournier as the officer and that little +Spanish soprano as 'Dolores.' Just as you wrote it without any of the +terrible things you tried to put in for Paula. It will have to be sung +in French of course, because neither of them sings English. They want you +there just as soon as you can come, to sign the contract and help with +the rehearsals." + +Once more with an utterly unexpected shift she left him floundering, +speechless. + +He had forgotten _The Outcry_ except for his nightmare efforts to revamp +it for Paula; had charged it off his books altogether. What Mary had told +him at Hickory Hill about her labors in its behalf had signified simply, +how rapturously delicious it was that she should have been so concerned +for him. The possibility of a successful outcome to her efforts hadn't +occurred to him. + +She said, smiling with an amused tenderness over his confusion, "I +haven't been too officious, have I?" + +He knew he was being mocked at and he managed to smile but he had +to blink and press his hand to his eyes again before he could see +her clearly. + +"It's not astonishing that you can work miracles," he said. "The wonder +would be if you could not." + +"There was nothing in the least miraculous about this," she declared. "It +wasn't done by folding my wings and weaving mystic circles with a wand. +Besides making that translation,--oh, terribly bad, I'm afraid,--into +French, I've cajoled and intrigued industriously for weeks like one of +those patient wicked little spiders of Henri Fabre's. I found a silly +flirtation between Fournier and a married woman I knew and I encouraged +it, helped it along and made it useful. I've used everybody I could lay +my hands on." + +What an instrument of ineffable delight that voice of hers was,--its +chalumeau tenderness just relieved with the sparkle of irony. But he was +smitten now with the memory of his own refusal to go to Ravinia so that +Paula would remember him again. He blurted out something of his +contrition over this but she stopped him. + +"It was only because I wanted you there. I would not for any conceivable +advantage in the world have let you--oh, even touch these devices that +I've been concerned with. But I've reveled in them myself. In doing them +for you, even though I could not see that they were getting anywhere. + +"Everything seemed quite at a standstill when I left Ravinia Thursday, +but on Thursday night the Williamsons dined with Mr. Eckstein and went to +the park with him; and they all went home with father and Paula +afterward, Fournier and LaChaise, too; and everything happened at once. I +got a note from Paula this morning written yesterday, asking where my +translation was, but not telling me anything. And as she wasn't at home +when I telephoned to answer her question I didn't know until to-night. + +"But about six o'clock James Wallace telephoned from the park and told +me all about it. He wanted you found and sent to Ravinia at once. Having +wasted half the season and more, they're now quite frantic over the +thought of losing a minute. And Jimmy says immensely enthusiastic. So, +all you have to do now is to go up there and lord it over them. You'll +hear it sung; you'll hear the orchestra play it. You will make a +beginning toward coming into your own, my dear. Because even if you +don't care for it as you did, it will be a step toward--the princess, +won't it?" + +She dropped back against the cushion as from weariness, and sudden tears +brimmed into her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. He came to her at that +in spite of the gesture that would have held him away. + +"You must believe--it's nothing--but happiness," she gasped. + +He sat down upon the arm of the chair and a little timidly took her in +his hands, caressed her eyes and her wet face until at last she met his +lips in a long kiss and sank back quieted. + +He stayed on the chair arm however and their hands remained clasped +through a recollecting silence. She said presently: + +"There are two or three practical things for you to remember. You mustn't +be irritated with Violet Williamson. She has let herself become a little +more sentimental about Fournier than I think in the beginning she meant +to be and you may find her under foot more than you like. You mustn't +mind that. And you'll find a very friendly helper in James Wallace. There +is something a little caustic about his wit, and he suspects musicians on +principle; but he will like you and he's thoroughly committed to _The +Outcry_. He is a very good French scholar and over difficulties with the +translation, where passages have to be changed, he'll be a present help." + +He took her face in both his hands and turned it up to him. "Mary," he +demanded when their eyes met, "why are you saying good-by to me?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE WHOLE STORY + + +The shot told. The harried, desperate look of panic with which she gazed +at him and tried, tugging at his hands, to turn away, revealed to him +that he had leaped upon the truth. Part of it anyhow. He closed his +eyes, for an instant, for another unaddressed prayer that he might not +falter nor let himself be turned aside until he had sounded the full +depth of it. + +When he looked at her again she had recovered her poise. "It was silly," +she said, "to think that I could hide that from you. I am going +away--to-morrow. For quite a long while." + +"Are you going away--physically? In the ordinary literal sense, I mean; +or is it that you are just--going away from me?" + +Once more it was as if a trap had been sprung upon her. But this time he +ignored the gasp and the sudden cold slackness of the hands he held and +went on speaking with hardly a pause. + +"I asked that question, put it that way, thinking perhaps I understood +and that I could make it easier for you to tell me." He broke off, there, +for an instant to get his voice under control. Then he asked, steadily, +"Are you going to marry Graham Stannard?" + +She gasped again, but when he looked up at her there was nothing in her +face but an incredulous astonishment. + +So there was one alternative shorn away; one that he had not conceived as +more than a very faint possibility. It was not into matrimony that her +long journey was to take her. He pulled himself up with a jerk to +answer--and it must be done smoothly and comfortably--the question she +had just asked him. How in the world had he ever come to think of a thing +like that? + +"Why, it was in the air at Hickory Hill those days before you came. +And then Sylvia was explicit about it, as something every one was +hoping for." + +"Was that why you went away?" she asked with an intent look into his +face. "Because he had a--prior claim, and it wouldn't be fair to--poach +upon his preserves?" + +He gave an ironic monosyllable laugh. "I tried, for the next few days to +bamboozle myself into adopting that explanation but I couldn't. The truth +was, of course, that I ran away simply because I was frightened. Sheer +panic terror of the thing that had taken hold of me. The thought of +meeting you that next morning was--unendurable." + +She too uttered a little laugh but it sounded like one of pure happiness. +She buried her face in his hands and touched each palm with her lips. "I +couldn't have borne it if you'd said the other thing," she told him. "But +I might have trusted you not to. Because you're not a sentimentalist. +You're almost the only person I know who is not." + +She added a moment later, with a sudden tightening of her grip upon his +hands, "Have you, too, discovered that sentimentality is the crudest +thing in the world? It is. It is perfectly ruthless. It makes more +tragedies than malice. Ludicrous tragedies--which are less endurable than +the other sort. Unless one were enough of an Olympian so that he could +laugh." She relaxed again and made a nestling movement toward him. "I +thought for a while of you that way." + +He managed to speak as if the idea amused him. "As an Olympian? No, if +I had a mountain it wouldn't be that one. But I like the valleys +better, anyhow." + +"I know," she said contentedly. Then her voice darkened. "I'm just at +the beginning of you--now..." The sentence ended unnaturally, though he +had done nothing to interrupt it. + +Deliberately he startled her. "What time does your train go, to-morrow?" +he asked. "Or haven't you selected one? You haven't even told me where it +is you are going." + +Through his hands which held her he felt the shock, the momentary agony +of the effort to recover the threatened balance, the resolute relaxation +of the muscles and the steadying breath she drew. + +"Oh, there are plenty of trains," she said. "You mustn't bother.--Why, +Wallace Hood has a sister living in Omaha. (Wallace Hood, not James +Wallace. It would be terrible if you confused them.) She's been trying +for months to find a nursery governess. And I've been trying--perhaps you +didn't know; the family have been very unpleasant about it--to find a +job.--Oh, for the most realistic of reasons, among others. Well, it +occurred to me the other day that Wallace's sister and I might be looking +for each other." + +There she paused, but only for a moment. Then she added, very explicitly, +"So I'm going to Omaha to-morrow." + +Even her lying she had to do honestly. She preferred, he saw, that he +should remember she had lied to having him recall that she had tricked +him by an evasion. + +One need not invoke clairvoyance to account for his incandescent +certainty that she had lied. The mere unconscious synthesis of the things +she had said and left unsaid along the earlier stages of their talk, +would have amounted to a demonstration. Her moment of panic over his +discovery that she was saying good-by, her irrespressible shudder at the +question whether she was going away in the ordinary literal sense of the +phrase; finally, her pitiful attempt to avoid, in answer to his last +question, a categorical untruth and then her acceptance of it as, after +all, preferable to the other. But it was by no such pedestrian process +as this that he reached the truth. + +He knew, now, why he had been terrified from the moment she came into the +room. He knew why she had wrung that promise from him--a death-bed +promise she had dared with a smile to call it--that he would not, +whatever happened, destroy _The Dumb Princess_. It would be a likely +enough thing for him to do, she had perceived, when he learned the truth. +She could not--sleep, she had told him, until that surmise was laid. + +There were, as she had said, plenty of trains to that unknown destination +of hers, but he thought that that word sleep offered the true clue. She +was a physician's daughter; there must be, somewhere in that house, a +chest or cupboard that would supply what she needed. They'd find her in +her own bed, in that room he had once cast a glance into on his way +up-stairs to Paula. + +The conviction grew upon him that she had her plans completely laid; yes, +and her preparations accomplished. That quiet leisureliness of hers would +not have been humanly possible if either her resolution or the means for +executing it had remained in doubt. It was likely that she had whatever +it was--a narcotic, probably; morphine; she wouldn't, conceivably, resort +to any of the corrosives--upon her person at this moment. In that little +silken bag which hung from her wrist. + +He clenched the finger-nails into the palms of his hands. This thing was +a nightmare. He had fallen asleep over his table; had only to wake +himself.--It would not do to play with an idea like that. Nor with the +possibility that he had misread her mind. He knew. He was not mistaken. +Let him never glance aside from that. + +For one moment he thought wildly of trying to call in help from outside, +of frustrating her design by sheer force. But that could not be done. As +between them, he would be reckoned the madman. Her project might be +deferred by that means, perhaps. It could not be prevented. + +It was that terrible self-possession of hers that gave the last turn to +the screw. She could not be dealt with as one frantic, beside herself, to +be wooed and quieted back into a state of sanity. She was at this moment +as sane as he. She was not to be held back, either, by a mere assurance +of his love for her. She had never, it appeared, lacked that assurance. +But her life, warmed even as it was by their love, presented itself to +her somehow as something that it was not possible to go on with. + +This was very strange. All of its externals that were visible to him +made up, one would have said, a pattern singularly gracious and +untroubled. Buried in it somewhere there must be some toxic focus that +poisoned everything. He must meet her on her own ground. He must show +her another remedy than the desperate one she was now resolved upon. And +before he could find the remedy he must discover the virus. The only +clue he had was the thing she said about sentimentalists, and the +tragedies they caused. More tragedies than malice was responsible for. +He thought she was probably right about that. It was some such tragedy +anyhow, ludicrous, unendurable, that had driven her to this acquiescence +in defeat. + +He said, in as even a tone as he could manage, "I asked about trains +because I wondered whether there was anything to hurry you to-night. +Packing to do or such a matter; or whether we mightn't have a really +leisurely visit. I haven't much idea what time it is except that I don't +think I've eaten anything since around the middle of the day. Have you? +If you'd stay and have supper with me ... But I suppose you're expected +somewhere else." + +She smiled ironically at this, then laughed at herself. "It happens +rather funnily that I haven't been so little expected or looked after, +since I came home from New York, as I am to-night. I'm not--in a hurry at +all. I'll stay as long as you like." + +"Is that a promise?" he asked. "As long as I liked would be a long +while." + +"I'll stay," she said, "as long as I can see I'm making you happy. When I +find myself beginning to be a--torment to you, I shall--vanish." + +He was almost overmastered by the temptation to forget everything except +his love for her; to let himself be persuaded that his ghastly surmise +was a product of his own fatigue and sleepless nights. Even supposing +there were a basis for it, could he not keep her safe by just holding her +fast in his arms? + +He dashed the thought out of his mind. She would surrender to his +embrace, how eagerly he already knew. For a matter of moments, for a few +swift hours she might forget. She had perhaps come to him meaning to +forget for a while in just that way. But no embrace could be eternal. +He'd have to let her go at last and nothing would be changed save that +she would have a memory of him to take with her into her long sleep. + +No, love must wait. That obscure unendurable nightmare tragedy of hers +must be brought out into the light first and shorn of its horrors. + +So he managed for the moment a lighter note. He would not let her help in +the preparation of the meager little meal which was all that his +immediate resources ran to. He hadn't quite realized how exiguous it was +going to be when he spoke of it as supper. It was nothing but a slice of +Swiss cheese, a fresh carton of biscuits and a flagon of so-called +Chianti illicitly procured from the Italian grocery downstairs. + +He cleared his work table and anchored her in the easy chair at the +same time by putting into her lap the bulky manuscript of _The Dumb +Princess_, and it was this they talked about while he laid the cloth--a +clean towel--and set out his scanty array of dishes. He feared when they +drew up to the table that she was not going to be able to eat at all, +and he was convinced that she was even more in need of food than he. But +the wine, thin and acidulous as it was, helped, and he saw to it that +for a while she had no chance to talk. He told her the story of _The +Dumb Princess_ in detail and dwelt a little upon the half formulated +symbolism of it. + +When at last he paused, she said, "I think I know why the princess was +dumb. Because when she tried to speak no one wanted to hear what she had +to say. They insisted on keeping her an image merely, so that they could +go on attributing to her just the thoughts they wished her to think and +just the desires they wanted her to feel. That's the spell that has made +many a woman dumb upon all the essentials." + +He gripped his hands together between his knees, leaned a little forward, +drew a steadying breath and said, "There's something I wish you'd do for +me just while we're sitting quietly like this. It has been so momentary, +this life of ours together,--the times I mean when we've been bodily +together. The whole of it could be reckoned quite easily in minutes. +There has been more packed into them, of course, than into many a lover's +months and years, but one effect it has had on me has been to make you, +when you aren't here physically with me, like this, where by merely +reaching out I can touch you, a little--visionary to me. I confuse you +with the Dumb Princess over there whom you made me create. I get +misgivings that you're just a sort of wraith. Well, if you're going away +and we aren't to be within--touching distance of each other again for a +long while--perhaps months, I want more of you, that my memory can hold +on by. The real every-day person that you are instead, as you say, of the +image I've had to make of you. So I wish you'd tell me as nearly as you +can remember everything that you've done--everything that has happened to +you--to-day." + +That last word was like the touch of a spur. She shuddered as she cried, +"Not to-day!" + +He did not press for a reason and the next moment she went on in her +natural manner again. "That's a strange thing for you to wish. At least +the strangeness of it strikes me after some of the things that have been +happening lately. Yet I don't believe it happens often that a lover asks +as specifically as that to be--disillusioned. And that is what you would +be. Because the complete story of a day,--any day,--with no +suppressions, nothing tucked decently away out of sight, would be a +pretty searching test." + +"That's why I asked for it," he said, "I'd like to be disillusioned; just +as completely as possible." + +"That's because you're so sure you wouldn't be." The raggedness of her +voice betrayed a strong emotion. With a leap of the pulse he told himself +that it was as if she were crying out against some unforeseen hope. "You +think it would merely be that lovely little image of yours--the Dumb +Princess, coming to life." + +"I'd rather have the reality," he told her, "whatever it is. I think I +can make you see that that must be true. The person I love is you who are +sitting there across the table from me. I don't believe that any one in +the world was ever more completely and utterly adored than you are being +adored at this moment. I love the things I know you by. The things I've +come to recognize as yours. I know some of your qualities that way; your +sensitiveness, your uprightness, your fastidious honesty that makes you +hate evasions and substitutes,--everything you mean when you say +sentimentality. And I know your resolution that carries you along even +when you are afraid,--when your sensitiveness makes you afraid. I admire +all those qualities, but it isn't their intrinsic worth that makes me +love them. I love them because they're the things I know you by. I can't +be mistaken about them because I've felt them. Just as I've felt your +hands and your mouth and your hair. Well, then, whatever your days have +been, one day after another, they have in the end produced you sitting +there as you sit now. Whatever your--ingredients are they're your +ingredients. The total works out to you. Whereas my illusions work out to +nothing better than my little image of the Dumb Princess." + +"Would it surprise you," she asked, "to know that I could be cruel? I +mean exactly what the word means. Like a little boy who tears the legs +off a beetle. Can you imagine me hurting some one frightfully, whom I +needn't have hurt at all? Some one who was trying in his own way to be +kind to me?" + +He smiled. "I can imagine your being cruel to a sentimentalist," he said. +"Not deliberately, of course. Only after you had been hounded, like a +little white cat, into a corner. By some one who wanted you for an image, +merely, that he himself could attribute all the appropriate thoughts and +desires to. I can imagine you turning, at last, and rending him;--limb +from limb, if you like." + +She gazed at him, wide-eyed, for a long moment; then she drooped forward +over the table and cradled her head in her arms. With his hands he tried +to comfort her but he felt that they were clumsy and ineffectual. + +"I've hurt you horribly," he said, when he could command his voice. +"Probing in like that." + +This must be the unendurable tragedy she had referred to a while ago. +She was speaking, voicelessly and he bent down to listen. + +"... if you knew the comfort! I suppose I ought to be frightened--at your +guessing like that, but it seems natural, to-night, that you should.--You +know who it was, don't you?" + +"Yes," he told her confidently. "It happened just to-day, didn't it?" + +"It was yesterday he asked me to marry him," she said. "That wasn't +hounding. He had a right to, I mean. I thought I would marry him, once. I +told him I would if I could. I meant, I would if I could make him +understand what I really was. He thought I meant something altogether +different, something that his image of me might have meant quite nicely. +Yesterday when he asked me again, I flew into a fury and told him what I +am really like. I needn't have done it. I could have told him that the +reason I wouldn't marry him was because I was in love with you. That +would have been true--in a way. I mean, it wasn't the reason in the +beginning; nor even after I was in love with you--so long as you didn't +know. But I never thought of telling him that. I just wanted to--smash +that image of his. And I did. I knew it was cruel when I did it, but not +how terrible until this morning when Rush got a letter from him." + +She had to stop there to master a sob. He went around the table and took +her in his arms. "Come over to the big chair," he said, "where I +can--hold you. I can't let you go on like this. You can tell me the rest +of it there." + +She released herself from his hands by taking them in her own and +pressing them for a moment tight. Then she let them go. + +"I couldn't," she said. "I couldn't be comforted like that while I was +telling you about him." + +He understood instantly. "That's like you," he commented. "You're always +like yourself, thank God." He walked away to the chair he had invited her +to and stood behind it, gripping its padded leather back. "He wrote your +brother a letter then." He had spoken, he thought, quietly and evenly +enough, but the indignation he felt must have betrayed itself in his +voice for she answered instantly: + +"You mustn't be angry about that. He had to write to Rush, you see. Rush +had been in his confidence about it all the while. Rush knew his hopes +and his explanations. Rush knew of his coming yesterday, was waiting up +at Wallace Hood's apartment for his news. Now, do you see how horrible it +was? He couldn't tell Rush what I had said to him. There was nothing he +could tell him. He couldn't even face him. He did the only thing I'd left +for him to do." + +March asked, "What has he done?" + +"We don't know, exactly. Just gone away, I suppose. The letter was +written about midnight from the University Club. He said he wasn't coming +back to Hickory Hill. That he couldn't possibly come back. He'd arrange +things, somehow, later. He told Rush not to try to find him nor make any +sort of fuss, and to be very kind to me; not to question nor worry me." + +She broke off there and looked intently up at him. In her eyes he thought +he saw incredulity fighting against a dawning hope. "I wonder," she went +breathlessly on, "if you can understand this, too. Can you see that, for +him, the unbearable thing about it--was that it was ludicrous? The +contrast between what he had believed me to be and--what I am?" + +He interrupted sharply, with a frown of irritation, "Don't put it +like that!" + +"Well, then," she amended, "the contrast between his explanation of the +way I had been treating him, and the true one?" + +"That is a thing I think I can understand," he said. "It was a sort +of--awakening of Don Quixote. To a fine sensitive boy nothing could give +a sharper wrench than that.--I'm moving in the dark," he added. Yet he +knew he was drawing near the light. The secret he had set out to discover +was not very far away. + +"You see well enough," she said. "Better than Rush, though I tried to +explain it to him. He'd caught a surmise of the truth, too, I think, in +New York, when he came back from France and brought me home. But he +wouldn't look. Father wouldn't, either, once when I tried to tell him +about it. It was too horrible to be thought,--let alone believed.--I +don't quite see how I can have gone on believing it myself." + +The look he saw in her eyes made him wonder how she could. He managed to +hold his own gaze steady. It gave him a sense of somehow supporting her. + +"But you," she said,--"you, of all people in the world, don't seem to +feel that way about it. You were there--waiting for me--before I even +tried to tell you. Oh, you do understand, don't you?" + +"I think," he told her--and the smile that came with the words was +spontaneous enough, though it did feel rather tremulous--"I think I +could almost repeat the sentence you demolished young Stannard with in +your own words. But can't you see why it doesn't demolish me? It's +because I love you." + +"So did he. So do father and Rush." + +"Not you. Not quite you. Don't you see? It's just the thing I was trying +to tell you a while ago. What they insist on loving is--oh, partly you, +of course, but partly a sort of--projection of themselves that they call +you, dress you out in, try to compel you to fit. One can fight hard to +preserve an outlying bit of one's self like that. But there would be a +limit I should think. How your brother, with a letter like that in his +hands, could refuse to look at what you were trying to make him see ..." + +"He had a theory, that began when we were in New York together as a sort +of joke, that I was a case of shell-shock. So whenever there has been +anything really uncomfortable to face, he has always had that to fall +back upon." + +A momentary outburst of anger escaped him. "You've been tortured!" he +cried furiously. He reined in at once, however. "You've never, then," he +went on quietly, "been able to tell the story to any one. I'm sure you +didn't tell it to Graham Stannard. You didn't even try to." + +She shook her head. The pitifulness of her, sitting there so spent, so +white, blurred his vision again with sudden tears. But after he had +disposed of them, he managed a smile and sat down comfortably in his +easy chair. + +"You couldn't find a better person than me to tell it to," he said. + +"You know already," she protested. "At least, you know what it comes to." + +"I know the brute fact," he admitted, "but that and the whole truth are +seldom quite the same thing." + +He saw the way her hands locked and twisted together and remembered with +a heart-arresting pang, her half-choked cry, "Don't! Don't hurt them like +that!" when his own had agonized in such a grip. But no caress of his +could help her now. He held himself still in his chair and waited. + +"The whole truth of this story isn't any--prettier than the brute fact. +There weren't any extenuating circumstances." + +Then she sat erect and faced him. He was amazed to see a flush of color +come creeping into her cheeks. Her eyes brightened, the brows drew down a +little, her voice steadied itself and the words came swiftly. + +"I think I must make sure you understand that it isn't the sort of story +that you usually find enveloping that particular brute fact. I wasn't +deceived nor betrayed by anybody. There isn't anybody you can take as a +villain. Just a nice, rather inarticulate boy, whom I met at a dance the +evening before he went overseas." + +She broke off there to ask him shortly, "When was it that you went over?" + +"Not until September," he said, "when it looked like a very long chance +if we ever got to the front at all. Of course, you know, we didn't. But +this was a lot earlier, wasn't it?" + +"The seventeenth of April," she said. "We'll never forget those weeks, +any of us, who were in New York doing what we called war work, but it's +hard not to feel that we weren't different persons somehow. I don't mean +that to sound like making excuses. We were more our real selves perhaps +than we will ever be again. Anyhow, we worked harder all day long, and +never felt tired, and in the evening most of the people I knew went out a +lot, to dinners and dances. + +"We could always make ourselves believe, of course, that we were doing +that to cheer up the men who were going to France--and were very likely +never coming back. Like the English women one read about. The only thing +that used to trouble me in those days was a perfectly scorching +self-contempt that used to come when I realized that I was enjoying it +all; enjoying the emotional thrill of it. I knew I was getting off cheap. + +"I suppose I needn't have told you all that. You'd have understood it +anyhow. But that was how I felt when I went to that dance. As if it would +be a relief to do something--costly. + +"It was a uniform dance as far as the men were concerned. We made +ourselves, of course, as--attractive as we knew how. Somebody introduced +this boy to me with just the look that said, 'Do be kind to him,' and +that's what I set out, very resolutely and virtuously, to be. He couldn't +talk much beyond monosyllables and he couldn't dance,--even with me. I +mean, I've danced so much ..." + +"I've seen you dance, my dear," he reminded her, and saw how, with a +deep-drawn breath, the memory of that night at Hickory Hill came +back to her. + +"Don't," she gasped. "Let me go on." But it was the better part of a +minute before she could. + +"We sat out two or three dances together and then, when I might decently +enough have passed him on to some one else with that same sort of +explanatory look--I didn't. Partly because of the feeling I have told you +about and partly because I was attracted to him. He was big and young and +good-looking, and his voice--oh, one can't explain those things. It +wasn't pure altruism. That's what you must see. And then he got up +suddenly and said, 'Good-by.' It was early, you know, and I asked him why +he was going. He said he wanted to get out of there. Rather savagely. + +"I got up too and said I felt the same way about it. So he asked if he +might 'see me home.' The dance was in the East Sixties. There had been a +shower but it was clear then and warm. There weren't any taxis about +and, anyhow, he didn't seem to think of looking for one, and we went +over and took a Lexington Avenue car. When we turned at Twenty-third +Street I said we'd get out and walk. He'd said hardly anything, but we +had sat rather close in the car and he had been holding a fold of my +cloak between his fingers. + +"We went on down Lexington to Gramercy Park. There was shrubbery in +flower inside the iron fence and some of the trees had been leafing out +that day and the air was very still and sweet. We both stopped for a +minute without saying anything and I slipped my hand farther through his +arm and took his. + +"He gave a sort of sob and said, 'You wouldn't do that if you knew about +me.' I said, 'You'd better tell me and see.' + +"We walked on again, around the park and across Twentieth Street and down +Fifth Avenue. When we got to my door he hadn't told me. + +"My flat was just the second story of an old made-over house. There was +no one about, I mean, to stare or wonder, and I asked him to come in. +When we were inside I looked at my watch and asked him what time he had +to report. He said not until seven o'clock in the morning. He was going +over detached. There was nothing but a hotel to go back to. + +"If I'd asked him that question out on the sidewalk, and got that answer, +I don't know whether I'd have asked him in or not. + +"He just stood looking at me for a minute after telling me he hadn't +anywhere to report that night. Then he turned away and sat down on the +edge of my couch and bent his face down on his hands and began to talk. +He told me what was the matter with him. Of course, the same thing must +have tormented thousands of them,--the terror of being afraid. He felt +pretty sure he was a coward. + +"Mostly, I think, that fear was pretty sensibly dealt with in this war. +It got talked out openly. But he must have been a terribly lonely +person. He came from Iowa, but somehow he got sent to one of the southern +cantonments, and had his officer's training, such as it was, down there. +Then he was sent along to fill in somewhere else. I don't remember all +the details. He'd come to New York alone. The men he had gone to the +dance with he had only met that afternoon. + +"I tried to help him. I told him how some of the officers in the French +and English armies, who had the highest decorations for courage, had +suffered most horribly, in advance, from fear. I could tell him two or +three that I knew about personally; men who had told their own stories to +me. Well, that helped a little, roused him out of his daze, gave him a +little gleam of hope perhaps. But it wasn't much; words can't be, +sometimes. + +"He wanted more than that. He wanted me. He didn't want to go back alone +to that hotel. So I kept him. Early in the morning, about six o'clock, I +cooked his breakfast and ate it with him and kissed him good-by." + +She made a sudden savage gesture of impatience. "I didn't mean to make it +sound like that. That sounds noble and self-sacrificial and sickening. I +suppose because that's the half of the truth that is easiest to tell. I +_did_ want to make an end of perpetually getting off cheap. I did have a +sort of feeling of establishing my good faith with myself. I wanted to +comfort him and make him happy. But it's also true that I'd been +attracted to him from the very first minute, and that it thrilled me when +I first touched his hand, there by the park railing, and afterward when +he took me in his arms." + +Since his last interruption he had sat motionless, even breathing small +in the extremity of his effort not to hinder. But now he rose and without +speaking, came to her and bending down, kissed her forehead, her eyes, +her mouth. Then he seated himself on the table close beside her and took +possession, thoughtfully, of one of her hands. + +"Did you ever hear anything more of him?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "I don't think he remarked my name at all when we +were introduced," she said, "nor asked what it was afterward. I think it +must all have seemed afterward a little unreal to him. The girls he'd +known at home don't smoke cigarettes nor drink champagne--nor wear their +dresses as low as we do. He couldn't once have thought of people like +father and Rush and Aunt Lucile as belonging to me. I remembered his name +and used to look to see if it was there when I read the casualty lists, +but I never did see it again.--No, that's the whole story; just what I +have told you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +DAYBREAK + + +There followed the conclusion of the story, an interval of ease. It gave +March, to begin with, a new access of courage, almost of confidence, to +note that she did not fade white again and that the sick look of horror, +banished from her eyes by the mere intensity of her determination to +convey the whole truth to him, did not return to them. She substituted +her other hand for the one he held in order to shift her position a +little and lean against his knees. + +Her mind had not detached itself from the story as she made evident by +the reflective way in which she went on thinking aloud about it; dwelling +on some of the curious consequences of the adventure. It was +surprising--she wondered if it indicated anything really abnormal in +her--the way she had felt about it afterward. + +She'd felt nothing in the least like shame. Certainly not at first. On +the contrary, she'd taken a deep soul-satisfying pride in it, a kind of +warm sense of readiness for anything. + +She told him with a little clutch of embarrassment and resolution, about +another incident that happened somewhat later, attributing an importance +to it which he conceded while he reflected with a smile that most people, +men and women virtuous or otherwise, would have regarded as ridiculously +disproportionate. The incident concerned a man whom she didn't much like, +she said, but found somehow, fascinating. He had been paying her +attentions of a rather experimental sort for weeks, maneuvering, +arranging. He knew she lived by herself and had been angling for an +invitation to come to see her, alone. Finally, he telephoned her office +one day and asked point-blank if he mightn't come to tea that afternoon. +She said he might without telling him that she was expecting Christabel +Baldwin at the same time. An hour later, a restless hour it had been, she +had telephoned Christabel and put her off so that when her other guest +came he found just what he had expected. In the manner of one sure of his +welcome and intent on wasting no time, he had begun making love to her +(she apologized for the employment of that phrase but said she knew no +other that was usable). She admitted that she had never had any real +doubt that this was what he had meant to do and conceded him the right to +think that she had invited it. But she found it, nevertheless, +unendurable. She felt unspeakably degraded by it and presently flew into +a rage and turned the man out of the house, feeling, she added, as much +ashamed of that part of the performance as of anything else. + +This encounter, she told March, made a profound change in her feeling +about the other episode--closed a door upon it. Nothing like that could +happen to her again. She simply stopped thinking about it after that, +buried it and it had stayed buried comfortably for the better part of a +year, until Rush came home from France. At least she wasn't aware that it +had troubled her. The twinges of discomfort she'd felt whenever she'd +faced the prospect of coming home, she had attributed to another cause +altogether. + +"Paula," he observed. "That's easy enough to see." + +"Oh, you are a comfort," she said; "only not Paula by herself. Paula and +father and I, in a sort of awkward triangle, all doing our best and all +nagging one another. That has got terribly worse in the last few days." + +She seemed to find no difficulty at all in informing him fully about this +home situation; needed only a question or surmise dropped here and there +to develop the whole story. + +It wasn't a chronological narrative. Her mind drifted like a soaring +kingfisher over the whole area between her childhood and the events of +this very morning, swooping down here or there to pick up some incident +wherever a gleam of memory attracted her. + +Her spirit was finding compensation for the agonies of the past hours in +a complete detachment. Nothing she told him, no matter how close home it +came, seemed to involve any painful emotion. Her body, pressed so close +against his that he could have felt the faintest muscle quiver, conveyed +no message to him but the relaxation of complete security. + +About himself there was a curious duality. One of him was lulled +irresistibly into sharing her mood of serene detachment. The other, +recognizing the transitoriness of hers, knowing that when this interlude +came to an end, as come it must, the storm would break upon them once +more, was casting about desperately for the means of saving her. + +He had come to see the situation with her own eyes, fairly felt the +clutch of it upon his own heart. She or some impish power acting through +her agency had certainly made a mess of things. Her father's happiness +destroyed; Rush's partnership broken; and the whole Hickory Hill project +ruined unless some one could be found to buy into it in Graham's place; +Graham humiliated, utterly cast adrift, irreparably hurt. And the +prospect for the future.... + +She had told him of her tramp about the streets yesterday with her +newspaper clipping and he was able to feel the full terror of it; and, +beyond the terror, the gray emptiness. + +There was only one way out of the tangle and this was to marry the man +she loved and knew loved her. Well, he knew with merciless certainty what +her answer would be when he asked her--begged her--to do that. He had +provided her with the answer himself, with his sophomoric talk about +traveling light and refusing to wear harness. And he'd worse than +talked. His flight from her at Hickory Hill was enough to show that these +weren't mere empty phrases. And yet her life depended to-night upon his +ability to persuade her, in the face of those phrases and that fact, to +marry him. So he sat very still, wondering how soon she would divine +these undercurrents of his thought, listening while she talked to him. + +The hours were slipping away, too. A glance at the watch braceleted upon +the wrist he held startled him and he covered it with his hand. Had they +already, he wondered, begun a search for her? Her words supplied +presently the answer to that question. She was talking, with a dry sort +of humor, about the commotions of that day. + +He could not be sure he was getting it quite straight, for she was +commenting upon events rather than narrating them. Apparently she had +telephoned to her brother at Hood's apartment immediately after young +Stannard left the house the evening or afternoon before, telling him not +to bother about her, as she was going straight to bed. Let him go to a +show and be careful not to wake her when he came in. She'd done this and +gone to sleep at once, not waking until she'd heard him getting ready +for bed in the adjoining room. But after that she hadn't been able to +get off again. + +March reflected, with a shudder, what a ghastly procession of hours those +must have been. Had it been then, he wondered, that, looking for some +harmless thing to help her sleep, she had come upon the deadlier stuff? + +Her encounter with her brother at breakfast, which she had prepared, was +their first, it seemed, since her visit to Hickory Hill and Rush had been +shocked at her wan, lifeless appearance. He'd guessed, of course, that +his friend's suit hadn't prospered and now took the line, which no doubt +seemed to him the most tactful and comforting one available, that she was +too ill to attempt any final decision on such a subject just now and +that things would look different when better health had driven morbid +thoughts away. + +Her vehemence in trying to convince him that she had acted finally in the +matter, that Graham now acquiesced fully in her decision and no longer +wanted to marry her, and that Rush _must_ let him alone--not even try to +talk with him about it--had only made him the more confident in his +diagnosis. + +It must have been pat in the middle of this scene that Graham's +midnight-written letter arrived. Rush's attitude toward his partner's +flight--after the first moments of mere incredulity--had been one of +contemptuous irritation, the natural attitude for any young man who sees +a comrade taking no more of a matter than a disappointment in love with +an evident lack of fortitude. This was heightened, too, by a rapidly +developed sense of personal grievance. What the devil did Graham think +was going to happen to him with Hickory Hill left on his hands like that? +There was more than enough work for the two of them. And then the +financial aspect of it! Mr. Stannard, who had just been brought to the +point of loosening up and letting them have a little more money, would of +course leave Rush to his fate. If he didn't call his loans and sell him +out! Ruin them altogether! Graham must simply be found and dragged back +before his father learned of his flight. + +He couldn't have been paying his sister much attention while he ran on +like that! Unwisely, perhaps, but inevitably, Mary attempted to defend +the fugitive--in the only way she thought of as possible; namely, by +showing her brother what the true situation was. + +She didn't try to tell March what she said. The thing which, with a +forlorn smile, she dwelt upon, was the terrified vehemence with which +Rush had stopped her at his first inkling of what she was trying to make +him see. She was simply out of her head. A bad case, he pronounced, of +neurasthenia. Her having set out yesterday to find a job should have made +that plain enough. What she needed was a nurse and a doctor--and he meant +to provide both within the next few hours. He then compromised by saying +that the nurse he had in mind was for the moment Aunt Lucile and the +doctor their father. + +With an alternation of truculence and cajolery, he had got her to lie +down and to promise not to talk--that was the important thing--and this +accomplished he devoted half an hour to the composition of a note to Miss +Wollaston (whom it was difficult to tell anything to over the telephone, +particularly with long distance rural connections) which he despatched, +in charge of Pete, in the big car. Pete would get back with her by three +at the latest. + +Rush then had a long talk by telephone with his father at Ravinia. Mary +didn't know, of course, what they had said, beyond that John had promised +to come down immediately after lunch, but she got the idea that the +professional medical attitude had been one of less alarm than the amateur +one. Mary confessed to March, with a flicker of ironic amusement, that +she had supported this lighter view so successfully that, a little before +noon, Rush had confided to her his wish--if she were perfectly sure she +didn't need him--to take the one o'clock train to Lake Geneva. He and +Graham were still expected there for the week-end and on a good many +accounts it would be well if he didn't fail them. He dreaded going, of +course, but he felt he could meet the situation better on the ground +whatever turned up. He could wait for the three o'clock train, but this +was the one Mr. Stannard always took and he'd like to get in a talk with +Sylvia first. She was a great pal of her brother's and might well have +some real information about He'd have Pete's wife come in and look after +Mary--get lunch and so on. And father would be down about two. + +March thought the forlorn smile with which she told him this the most +heart-breaking thing he had ever seen. Damn Rush! Damn all the +sentimentalists in the world. Dressing up their desires in altruistic +clothes. Loving themselves in a lot of crooked mirrors! + +The rest of the story told itself in very few words. John Wollaston +telephoned, about three, from Ravinia, to say that Paula wasn't +well--meant to sing to-night as she was billed to do (she took great +pride in never disappointing her audiences)--but very much wanted him at +hand through the ordeal. If Mary was feeling as much better as her voice +sounded would she mind his not coming until to-morrow morning. + +She'd assured him, of course, that she wouldn't mind a bit. Aunt Lucile +hadn't arrived yet but she would be coming any minute now. Rush had been +making a great fuss about nothing, anyway. She did not volunteer the +information that Rush had already gone to Lake Geneva. + +At five o'clock a telegram, addressed to Rush, had come from Miss +Wollaston. Pete had broken one of the springs of the big car and had had +to go to Durham for another. She hoped Rush and his father would be able +to take care of Mary until to-morrow morning when she would arrive with +one of the servants and take charge. + +That cleared the board. To-morrow they would descend upon her with their +fussy attentions, their medical solemnities, their farcical search for +something--for anything except the truth they wouldn't let her tell--to +account for her nervous breakdown. But for a dozen hours she was, +miraculously, to be let alone, with blessed open spaces round her. No +need for any frantic haste. Plenty of time. The whole of that hot still +summer night. + +And then, at six o'clock, a man named James Wallace had telephoned! And +Jennie MacArthur had decided to drop in that evening for a visit with +Sarah! Fate had played its part; given March his chance. + +"So that's why you decided to go away," he said. + +He had been nerving himself during a long slow silence for that. He could +almost as easily have struck her a blow, and indeed the effect of it was +precisely that. But though she tried to shrink away he held her tighter +and went on. "I don't believe there's anything in the whole picture now +that I don't see and understand. But--but the way out ... Oh, Mary +darling, it isn't the one you are trying to take. There's happiness for +both of us if you'll take the other way--with me." + +She was struggling now to get free from his hands. "No!" she gasped +wildly. "I won't do that. I'll do anything--_anything_ else rather than +that. Let me go now." + +But he held her fast. Presently she relaxed and lay back panting in her +chair. "Won't you please let me go?" she pleaded. "You haven't understood +at all if you don't see that you must. Oh, but you do understand! You've +comforted me ... I didn't think there could be any comfort like that. Let +me go now--in peace. Don't ask the other. I've spoiled things for +everybody else, but I won't for you. I couldn't endure that." + +All the pleas, the arguments, the convincing phrases which he had been +mustering while she talked to him so contentedly, to convince her of the +truth, the blinding truth that he wanted her now for his wife, that life +no longer seemed a possible thing for him upon any other terms--all that +feeble scaffolding of words was, to his despair, swept now clean away in +the very torrent of his passion. He could do nothing for a while but go +on holding her. At last, words burst from him. + +"I won't let you go. Not alone. Wherever you go, I'll go with you." + +She looked up, staring into his face and he saw an incredulous surmise +deepen into certainty. She had seen, heard in that cry of his, the +truth--that he understood what she meant to do. Then her face contorted +itself like a child's, ineffectually struggling to keep back tears, and +she broke down, weeping. + +That broke the spell that had fallen upon him. He took her up, carried +her over to the big armchair and sat down with her in his arms. + +His own terror, which had never more than momentarily receded since she +had first spoken to him from the doorway, was, he realized, gone; +replaced by an inexplicable thrilling confidence that he had won his +victory. He didn't speak a word. + +The tempest was soon spent. It was a matter only of minutes before the +sobbing ceased. But for a long while after she was quiet, all muscles +relaxed, she lay just as he held her, a soft dead weight like a sleeping +child. He wondered, indeed, if she had not fallen asleep and finally +moved his head so that he could see her eyes. They were open, though, and +at that movement of his she stirred, sighed and sat erect. + +"I think I would have dropped off in another minute," she said. Then she +put her hands upon his shoulders. "I won't do that. I promise, solemnly, +I won't do what--what we both thought I meant to do. I don't believe I +could now, anyway. Now that the nightmare is gone." + +She smiled then and bent down and kissed him. "But I won't do the other +thing either, my dear. I'll find some other way. Really go to Omaha +perhaps. But I won't marry you. You see why, don't you?" + +"Oh, yes," he said. "I can tell you exactly why. You don't want to take +away my freedom. You want me to be a sort of--what was that opera you +spoke about at Hickory Hill?--_Chemineau_. Doing nothing but what I +please. Wandering off wherever I like." He smiled. "Mary, dear, do you +realize that you're proposing to deal with me exactly as Graham Stannard +would have dealt with you? Trying to make an image of me?" + +She started from his knees, retreated a pace or two and turned and +confronted him. + +"That's not true," she protested. "That can't possibly be true!" + +He did not answer. He had plenty of arguments with which to establish the +parallel, his mind was aflame with phrases in which to plead his cause +with her. Somehow they wouldn't come to his tongue. It didn't occur to +him that fatigue had anything to do with this. He was filled with a +sudden fury that he could not talk to her. + +She had turned away, restlessly, and moved to one of the dormer windows. +Following her with his eyes he saw the dawn coming. + +He rose stiffly from his chair. "I guess I had better take you home +now," he said. + +She nodded and got her hat. When he found her at the door after he had +put out the lamp she clung to him for a moment in the dark and he thought +she meant to speak, but she did not. + +He helped her down the irregular shaky stair and then, along the gray +cool empty street he walked with her toward the brightened sky. + +She said, at last, "Graham wouldn't let me tell him what the real me was +like. Tell me the truth about the real you." + +"There isn't much to tell. I guess I'm pretty much like any one else when +it comes down to--to ... I don't want to go on, alone. I want to be +woven in with you. I want..." + +He stood still in a vain effort to make the words come. "I can't talk!" +he cried, and his voice broke in a sob. + +"You needn't," she said; and pressing his hand against her breast she led +him on again. She was trembling and her hand was cold. + +Nothing more was said between them, all the way. But when they reached +her door and managed to open it she stood for a moment peering through +the dusk into his face. + +"If it's true..." she said. "If you really want a home and a wife--like +me... Oh, yes, I know it's true!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +JOHN ARRIVES + + +Two or three hours after March and Mary came to the Dearborn Avenue house +that Sunday morning, a little before eight o'clock to be precise, John +Wollaston, deterred by humane considerations from ringing the door-bell, +tried his latch-key first and found it sufficient. Rather surprisingly +since his sister was particular about bolts and chains. But this mild +sensation was engulfed the next moment in clear astonishment when he +encountered in the drawing-room doorway, Anthony March. + +The piano tuner was coatless and in his socks. Evidently it was no less +recent an event than the sound of the latchkey which had roused him +from sleep. + +"Oh," he said. "It's you, sir." And added as he came a little wider +awake, "I'm very glad you've come." + +John detected a reservation of some sort in this afterthought; faintly +ironic perhaps. There was, at any rate, a conspicuous absence of any +implication that his presence was urgently needed just then, or eagerly +waited for. + +He replied with an irony a little more marked, "It's an unexpected +pleasure to find you here. They're wanting you rather badly up at Ravinia +these days, I understand." + +March nodded, cast a glance in the direction of the stairs and led the +way decisively into the drawing-room. His pantomime made it clear that he +did not wish the rest of the slumbering household aroused. Considerate of +him, of course, and all that, but the decisiveness of the action--as if +he somehow felt himself in charge, despite the arrival of his +host--roused in John a faint hostility. + +He followed nevertheless. He saw at once where his unaccountable visitor +had made his bed. A big cane davenport had been dragged into the bay +window, its velvet cushions neatly stacked on the piano bench, and the +composer's coat, rolled with his deftness of experience, had served him +for a pillow. Not a bad bed for such a night as this that John himself +had sweltered through so unsuccessfully. Probably the coolest place in +the house, right by those open south windows. But all, the same ... + +"Couldn't Rush do better for you than that?" he said. "There must be a +dozen beds in the house." + +"Rush isn't here," March answered. "I believe he went to Lake Geneva +yesterday, for over Sunday." + +John Wollaston felt the blood come up into his face as the conviction +sprang into his mind that Lucile wasn't here, either. She'd never have +left the front door unbolted. She'd never have permitted a guest, however +explicit his preferences, to sleep upon the cane davenport in the +drawing-room with his coat for a pillow. + +It was as if March had followed his train of thought step by step. + +"Miss Wollaston isn't here either," he said. "She was detained by a +broken spring in the car. I believe she expects to arrive this morning." + +A faint amusement showed in his face and presently brightened into a +smile. "I'm really very relieved," he added, "that it was you who got +here first." + +And then the smile vanished and his voice took a new timbre, not of +challenge, certainly not of defiance, but all the more for that of +authority. "The only other person in the house is Mary." + +A sudden weakness of the legs caused John to seat himself, with what +appearance of deliberation he could manage, in the nearest chair. March, +however, remained on his feet. + +"I brought her home last night," he went on, "very late--early this +morning rather--with the intention of leaving her here alone. But I +decided to stay. Also it was her preference that I should. I suspect +she's asleep. She promised, at least, to call me if she didn't." + +That, apparently, finished for the present what he had to say. He +turned--it really was rather gentle the way he disengaged himself from +the fixity of John's look,--replaced the cushions on the cane davenport; +and then, seating himself, began putting on his shoes. + +Precisely that gentleness, though it checked on John's tongue the angry +question, "What the devil were you doing with her until early this +morning?" only added to his anger by depriving it of a target. For a +minute he sat inarticulate, boiling. + +It was an outrageous piece of slacking on Rush's part that he should have +deserted his sister before the arrival of one or the other of his +promised reenforcements relieved him of his duty. It was inexcusable of +Lucile to let a trivial matter like a broken spring keep her at Hickory +Hill. There were plenty of trains, weren't there? And the third rail +every hour? It was shockingly disengenuous of Mary, when she talked with +him over the telephone yesterday afternoon, to have suppressed the +essential fact that Rush had already deserted her and that she was at +that moment alone. + +And then his anger turned upon himself, as a voice within him asked +whether, on his conscience, he could affirm that this knowledge would +have made a difference in his own actions. Could he be sure he wouldn't +have clutched at the assurance that his sister was already on the way +rather than have exacerbated his quarrel with Paula by doing the one +thing that would annoy her most. + +Laboriously he got himself together, steadied himself. "You mustn't +think," he said, "that I'm not grateful. We're all grateful, of course, +to you for having done what our combined negligence appears to have made +necessary." Then his voice hardened and the ring of anger crept into it +as he added, "You may be sure that nothing of the sort will occur again." + +"No," March said dryly. "It won't occur again." He straightened up +and faced John Wollaston squarely. "I've persuaded Mary to marry +me," he said. + +"To marry--_you_!" John echoed blankly. For a moment before his mind +began to work, he merely stared. The first thought that struggled through +was a reluctant recognition of the fact that there was a sort of dignity +in the man which not even the stale look, inevitable about one who has +just slept in his clothes, could overcome. No more than his pallor and +the lines of fatigue deeply marked in his face could impeach his air of +authority. There was something to him not quite accountable under any of +the categories John was in the habit of applying. So much John had +conceded from the first; from that morning in this very room when he had +found him tuning the Circassian grand and had gone away, shutting the +door over yonder, so that Paula shouldn't hear. + +But that Mary should seriously contemplate marrying him! Mary! Good God! + +Once more March disengaged himself from John's fixed gaze. Not at all +as if he couldn't support it; gently again, by way of giving the older +man time to recover from his astonishment. He went into the bay and +stood looking out the window into the bright hot empty street. From +where he sat John could see his face in profile. He certainly was +damned cool about it. + +There recurred to John's mind, a moment during that day's drive he had +taken with Mary, down South, when he had leaped to the wild surmise that +there might be something between those two. She'd been talking about the +piano tuner with what struck him as a surprisingly confident +understanding. + +She had instantly, he remembered, divined his thought and as swiftly +set it at rest. March wasn't, she had said, a person who saved himself +up for special people. He was there for anybody, like a public +drinking fountain. + +But had she been ingenuous in making that reply to him? Had he really +been in her confidence about the man? Obviously not. The only encounter +between them that he had ever heard about was the one she had upon that +day described to him. And Lucile and Rush were evidently as completely in +the dark about the affair as he himself had been. Their meetings, their +numerous meetings, must have been clandestine. That Mary, his own white +little daughter, should be capable of an affair like that! + +Another memory flashed into his mind. The evening of that same day when +she had tried to tell him why she couldn't marry Graham. She wasn't, she +had said, innocent enough for Graham; she wasn't even quite--good. + +The horror of the conclusion he seemed to be drifting upon literally, for +a moment, nauseated John Wollaston. The sweat felt cold upon his +forehead. And then, white hot, bracing him like brandy, a wave of anger. + +Some preliminary move toward speaking evidently caught March's ear, for +he turned alertly and looked. It was one of the oddest experiences John +Wollaston had ever had. The moment he met March's gaze, the whole +infernal pattern, like an old-fashioned set-piece in fireworks, +extinguished itself as suddenly as it had flared. There was something +indescribable in this man's face that simply made grotesque the notion +that he could be a blackguard. John felt himself clutching at his anger +to keep him up but the momentary belief which had fed it was gone. + +March's face darkened, too. "If you have any idea," he said, "that I've +taken any advantage--or attempted to take any..." + +"No," John said quickly. "I don't believe anything like that. I confess +there was a moment just now when it looked like that; when I couldn't +make it look like anything else. It is still quite unaccountable to me. +That explanation is discarded--but I'd like the real one." + +"I don't believe," March said, reflecting over it for a moment, "that +there is any explanation I could give that would make it much more +accountable. We love each other. That is a fact that, accountable or not, +we both had to recognize a number of weeks ago. I didn't ask her to marry +me until last night. I wouldn't have asked her then if it hadn't become +clear to me that her happiness depended upon it as much as mine did. When +she was able to see that the converse was also true, we--agreed upon it." + +"What I asked for," John said, "was an explanation. What you have offered +is altogether inadequate--if it can be called an explanation at all." He +wrenched his eyes away from March's face. "I've liked you," he went on, +"I've liked you despite the fact that I've had some excuse for +entertaining a contradictory feeling. And I concede your extraordinary +talents. But it remains true that you're not--the sort of man I'd expect +my daughter to marry. Nor, unless I could see some better reason than I +see now, permit her to marry." + +This was further than, in cool blood, he'd have gone. But the finding of +a stranger here in his own place (any man would have been a stranger when +it came as close as this to Mary) professing to understand her needs, to +see with the clear eye of certainty where her happiness lay, angered and +outraged him. The more for an irresistible conviction that the profession +was true. But that word permit went too far. He wasn't enough of an +old-fashioned parent to believe, at all whole-heartedly, that Mary was +his to dispose of. + +Again, he looked up at the man's face, braced for the retort his +challenge had laid him open to, and once more the expression he saw +there--a thing as momentary as a shimmer of summer lightning,--told him +more than anything within the resources of rhetoric could have effected. +It was something a little less than a smile that flashed across March's +face, a look half pitiful, half ironic. It told John Wollaston that his +permission was not needed. Events had got beyond him. He was superseded. + +He dropped back limp in his chair. March seated himself, too, and leaned +forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. + +"I know how it must look to you, sir," he said gravely. "Even the social +aspect of the thing in the narrowest sense of the word is serious. And +there are other difficulties harder to get over than that. I don't think +I minimize any of them. And I don't believe that Mary does. But the main +thing is a fact that can't be escaped. If we face that first ..." + +He broke off there for a moment and John saw him grip his hands together. +It was with a visible effort that he went on. + +"One of the things Mary said last night was that sentimentality was the +crudest thing in the world. It caused more tragedies, she said, than +malice. She had learned the cruelty of it by experience. It's not an +experience she can safely go through again." + +It was in an automatic effort to defend himself against the conviction he +felt closing down upon him that John lashed out here with a reply. + +"The fact you're asking me to face is, I suppose, that you two have +discovered you're in love with each other to a degree that makes all +other considerations negligible." + +"That's not quite it," March replied patiently. "A part of it is, that it +would have been just as impossible for Mary to marry Graham Stannard if +she had never seen me. And if she could forget me completely it would +still be impossible for her to marry any one else like him." + +John didn't follow that very closely. His mind was still upon the last +sentence of March's former speech. "It's not an experience she can safely +go through again." What did he mean by that? How much did he mean by +that? Would John, if he could, plumb the full depth of that meaning? +There was no use fighting any longer. + +"The simplest way of stating the fact, I suppose," he said, "is that you +two mean to marry and that you're satisfied that your reasons for making +the decision are valid. Well, if Mary corroborates you, as I have no +doubt she will, I'll face that fact as realistically as possible. I'll +agree not to, as you put it, sentimentalize." + +Then he got up and held out his hand. "I mean that for a better welcome +that it sounds," he concluded. And if there was no real feeling of +kindliness for his prospective son-in-law behind the words, there was +what came to the same thing, a realization that this feeling was bound to +come in time. No candid-minded person could keep alive, for very long, a +grievance against Anthony March. + +The physician in him spoke automatically while their hands were gripped. +"Good lord, man! You're about at the end of your rope. Exhausted--that's +what I mean. How long is it since you've fed?" + +March was vague about this; wouldn't be drawn into the line John had been +diverted into. He answered another question or two of the same tenor with +half his mind and finally said--with the first touch of impatience he had +betrayed, "I'm all right! That can wait. There's one more thing I want +to say before you talk to Mary." + +He seemed grateful for John's permission to sit down again, dropped into +his chair in a way that suggested he might have fallen into it in another +minute, and took the time he visibly needed for getting his wits into +working order again. + +"I think I can see how the prospect must look to you," he began. "The +difficulties and objections that you see are, I guess, the same ones that +appeared to me. The fact that I'm not in her world, at all. That I've +never even tried to succeed nor get on, nor even to earn a decent living. +And that, however hard I work to change all that, it will only be by +perfectly extraordinary luck if I can contrive to make a life for her +that will be--externally anywhere near as good a life as the one she's +always taken for granted. + +"It won't be as much worse, though, as you are likely to think. With the +help she'll give me I shall be able to earn a decent living. Unless that +opera of mine fails--laughably, and I don't believe it will, up at +Ravinia, it will help quite a lot. Make it possible for me to get some +pupils in composition. And I know I can write some songs that will be +publishable and singable--for persons who aren't musicians like Paula. I +did write two or three for the boys in Bordeaux that went pretty well. +That sort of thing didn't seem worth while to me then and I never went +on with it. + +"Oh, you know how I've felt about it. How I've talked about traveling +light and not letting my life get cluttered up. But that isn't really the +thing that's changed. I've never been willing to pay, in liberty and +leisure, for things I didn't want. The only difference is that there's +something now that I do want. And I shan't shirk paying for it. I want +you to understand that." + +He stressed the word you in a way that puzzled John a little, but what +he went on to say after a moment's hesitation made his meaning clear. + +"That's preliminary. You'll find that Mary's misgivings--she's not +without them and they won't be easy to overcome--aren't the same as ours. +Those aren't the things that she's afraid of. She's afraid of taking my +liberty away from me. She won't be able to believe, easily, that my old +vagabond ways have lost their importance for me; that they're a phase I +can afford to outgrow. She's likely to think I've sacrificed something +essential in going regularly to work, giving lessons, writing popular +songs. Of course, it will rest mostly with me to satisfy her that that +isn't true, but any help you can give her along that line, I'll be +grateful for. Last night she seemed convinced--far enough to give me her +promise but..." + +Words faded away there into an uneasy silence. John, looking intently +into the man's face, saw him wrestling, he thought, with same idea, some +fear, some sort of nightmare horror which with all the power of his will +he was struggling not to give access to. He pressed his clenched hands +against his eyes. + +"What is it?" John asked sharply. "What's the matter?" + +"It's nothing," March said between his teeth. "She promised, as I said. +She told me I needn't be afraid." Then he came to his feet with a gesture +of surrender. "Will you let me see her?" he asked John. "Now. Just for a +minute before I go." + +John, by that time, was on his feet, too, staring. "What do you mean, +man? Afraid of what? What is it you're afraid of?" + +March didn't answer the question in words, but for a moment he met her +father's gaze eye to eye and what John saw was enough. + +"Good God!" he whispered. "Why--why didn't you ..." Then turning swiftly +toward the door. "Come along." + +"I'm really not afraid," March panted as he followed him up the stairs, +"because of her promise. It was just a twinge." + +Her door at the foot of the stairs which led to the music room stood wide +open, but both men came to an involuntary breathless pause outside it. +Then John went in, looked for a brief moment at the figure that slept so +gently in the narrow little bed, gave a reassuring nod to March who had +hung back in the doorway, a nod that invited him in; then turned away and +covered his face with his hands just for one steadying instant until the +shock of that abominable fear should pass away. + +When he looked again March stood at the bedside gazing down into the +girl's face. It was as if his presence there were palpable to her. She +opened her eyes sleepily, smiled a fleeting contented smile and held up +her arms to her lover. He smiled, too, and bent down and kissed her. Then +as the arms that had clasped his neck slipped down he straightened, +nodded to John and went back to the door. John followed and for a moment, +outside the room, they talked in whispers. + +"I'm going home now," March said. "To my father's house--not the other +place. There's a telephone there if she wants me. But I'll call anyhow +before I go to Ravina this afternoon." + +It was he, this time, who held out his hand. + +"You can trust her with me in the meantime, I think," John said as he +took it, but the irony of that was softened by a smile. March smiled, +too, and with no more words went away. + +Her eyes turned upon John when he came back into the room, wide open but +still full of sleep. When he stood once more beside her bed a pat of her +hand invited him to sit down upon the edge of it. + +"He really was here, wasn't he?" she asked. "I wasn't dreaming?" + +"No, he was here," John said. + +Her eyelids drooped again. "I'm having the loveliest dreams," she told +him. "I suppose I ought to be waking up. What time is it?" + +"It's still very early. Only about half past eight. Go back to sleep." + +"Have you had breakfast? Pete's wife, out in the garage, will come in and +get it for you." + +"When I feel like breakfast, I'll see to it that I get some," he +said, rising. + +Once more she roused herself a little. "Stay here, then, for a while," +she said. "Pull that chair up close." + +When he had planted the easy chair in the place she indicated and seated +himself in it she gave him one of her hands to hold. But in another +minute she was fast asleep. + +And that, you know, was the hottest, most intolerable sting of all. He +was sore, of course, all over. He had been badly battered during the last +four days. Some of those moments with March down-stairs had been like +blows from a bludgeon. But his daughter's sleepy attempt to concern +herself about his breakfast and the perfunctory caress of that slack +unconscious hand had the effect of the climax of it all. + +She'd just been through the crisis of her life. She'd been down chin-deep +in the black waters of tragedy (he didn't yet know, he told himself, what +the elements of the crisis were nor the poisonous springs of the tragedy) +and all her father meant to her was a domestic responsibility, some one +that breakfast must be provided for! + +He managed to control his release of her hand and his rising from his +chair so that these actions should not be so brusk as to waken her again +and, leaving the room, went down to his own. + +That was the way with children. They remained a part of you but you were +never a part of them. Mary having awakened for her lover, smiled at him, +been reassured by his kiss, had been content to drop off to sleep again. +Her father didn't matter. Not even his derelictions mattered. + +He had been derelict. He didn't pretend to evade that. He could have +forgiven her reproaches; welcomed them. But thanks to March, she had +nothing to reproach him for The presence of a man she had known a matter +of weeks obliterated past years like the writing on a child's slate. He +tried to erect an active resentment against the composer. Didn't all his +troubles go back to the day the man had come, to tune the drawing-room +piano? First Paula and then Mary. + +None of this was very real and he knew it. There was an underlying +stratum of his consciousness that this didn't get down to at all, +which, when it managed to get a word in, labeled it mere petulance, a +childish attempt to find solace for his hurts in building up a +grievance, a whole fortress of grievances to take shelter in against +the bombardment of facts. + +Was this the quality of his bitter four days' quarrel with Paula? Was the +last accusation she had hurled at him last night before she shut herself +in her room, a fact? "Of course, I'm jealous of Mary," she had +acknowledged furiously when he charged her with it. "You don't care +anything about me except for your pleasure. Down there in Tryon, when you +didn't want that, you got rid of me and sent for Mary instead. If that +weren't true, you wouldn't have been so anxious all these years that I +shouldn't have a child." + +No, that wasn't a fact, though it could be twisted into looking like one. +If he had refrained from urging motherhood upon her, if he'd given her +the benefit of his special knowledge, didn't her interest in her career +as a singer establish the presumption that it was her wish rather than +his that they were following. Had she ever said she'd like to have a +baby? Or even hinted? + +He pulled himself up. There was no good going over that again. + +He bathed and shaved and dressed himself in fresh clothes, operations +which had been perforce omitted at the cottage this morning in favor of +his departure without arousing Paula. (He'd slept, or rather lain awake, +upon the hammock in the veranda.) When he came down-stairs he found +Pete's wife already in the kitchen, gave her directions about his +breakfast and then from force of habit, thought of his morning paper. The +delivery of it had been discontinued, of course, for the months the house +was closed, so he walked down to Division Street to get one. + +He had got his mind into a fairly quiescent state by then which made the +trick it played when he first caught sight of the great stacks of +_Tribunes_ and _Heralds_ on the corner news-stand all the more +terrifying. It had the force of an hallucination; as if in the head-lines +he actually saw the word suicide in thick black letters. And his +daughter's name underneath. + +He had managed, somehow, to evade that word; to refrain from putting into +any words at all the peril Mary had so narrowly escaped, although the +fact had hung, undisguised, between him and March during the moment they +stared at each other before they went up-stairs together. It avenged that +evasion by leaping upon him now. He bought his paper and hurried home +with it under his arm, feeling as if it might still contain the news of +that tragedy. + +Reacting from this irrational panic he tried to discount the whole thing. +March hadn't lied, of course, but, being a lover, he had exaggerated. As +John sat over his breakfast he got to feeling quite comfortable about +this. His mind went back to the breakfast he had had with Mary at Ravinia +--breakfast after much such an abominable night as this last had +been--the breakfast they had left for that talk under the trees beside +the lake. And then his own words came back and stabbed him. + +He had been arguing with her his right to extinguish himself if he chose. +He had said he had no religion real enough to make a valid denial of that +right. It was a question no one else could presume to decide. How much +more had he said to that sensitive nerve-drawn child of his? He +remembered how white she had gone for a moment, a little later. And he +had pretended not to see! Just as he had been pretending, a few minutes +back, to doubt the reality of the peril March had saved her from. What a +liar he was! + +Sentimentality, March had quoted Mary as saying, was the cruelest thing +in the world. John stood convicted now of that cruelty toward his +daughter. Was he guilty of it, also, toward his wife? Did their quarrel +boil down to that? + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +SETTLING PAULA + + +Anthony March might deny as much as he pleased that he was "enough of an +Olympian to laugh" at life's ironies, but it remained true that his God +had a sense of humor and that March himself appreciated it. When, well +within that same twenty-four hours, a third member of the Wollaston +family insisted upon telling him her troubles and asking him what she'd +best do about them, he conceded with the flicker of an inward grin (not +at all at the troubles which were serious enough nor at their sufferer +who was in despair), that the great Disposer, having set out to demolish +that philosophy, enjoyed making a thorough job of it. + +It was about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon that he came to Paula's +cottage at Ravinia to get the score to _The Outcry_. The maid who opened +the door informed him that her mistress wasn't at home, but when he told +her what he wanted, and she had gone rather dubiously up-stairs to see +about it, it was Paula herself who, after a wait of ten minutes or so, +came down with the manuscript in her hand. + +He was, perhaps, just the one person in the world she'd have come down to +see. All the explanation she volunteered to herself was that he didn't +matter. It didn't matter, this was to say, if he did perceive that she +had been crying for days and days and looked an utter wreck. + +And then his errand brought her a touch of comfort. The acceptance of +_The Outcry_ for production restored the proprietary feeling she once +had had about it. She was the discoverer of _The Outcry_ and if you'd +asked her who was responsible for the revival of interest in it and for +the fact that it was now to be produced, I think she'd have told you +quite honestly that she was. Hadn't she asked them all to come to her +house to hear it? And sung the part of "Dolores" herself at that very +informal audition? + +And I'll hazard one further guess. It is that her quarrel with John made +March's opera a rather pleasanter thing to dwell on a little. She had +taken it up in defiance of his wish in the first place; her abandonment +of it had acquired from its context the color of a self-sacrificial +impulse. She would carry out her contract, she had told John down in +Tryon, but she wouldn't sing "Dolores" for anybody. Well, now that her +love-life with John was irremediably wrecked, there was a sort of +melancholy satisfaction in handling, once more, the thing that stood as +the innocent symbol of the disaster. + +That's neither here nor there, of course. Paula was totally unaware of +any such constellation about her simple act of deciding to carry down the +score herself instead of handing it over to the maid. + +The sight of him standing over the piano in her sitting-room cheered her +and the look of melancholy she brought down-stairs with her was replaced +by a spontaneous unexpected smile. Just as Mary, out at Hickory Hill, had +predicted, she remembered how well she liked him. She laid the manuscript +on the piano in order to give him both hands. + +"I can't tell you how pleased I am about it," she said. "I wish you all +the luck in the world." + +He brightened responsively at that but looked, she thought, a little +surprised, too. + +"I am glad you're pleased about it," he told her. "I wasn't quite sure +you'd know. Of course, they telephoned." + +She stepped back, puzzled. "But of course I know!" she said. "Haven't I +been working on it for weeks! Why, it was right here in this room that +they decided on it. Days ago. I've been trying frantically to find you +ever since." + +"Oh," he said, "you mean _The Outcry_. I thought you were congratulating +me on my engagement to marry Mary." + +She stared at him in simple blank incredulity. "To marry Mary! Mary +Wollaston? You don't mean that seriously?" + +"It's the only serious fact in the world," he assured her. + +"But John--Does John know about it?" she demanded. + +"Yes," he said. + +She drew a long breath, then pounced upon him with another question. "Did +you tell him about it, or was it Mary who did?" + +"It was I," March said. "I was the first one to see him after it +happened." + +"He hadn't suspected anything, had he?" she persisted. + +She was vaguely aware that he was a little puzzled and perhaps in the +same degree amused by her intensity, but she had no interest in half +tones of that sort. + +When he answered in the sense she expected, "No, I can testify to +that. He was taken completely by surprise when I broke it to him;" she +heaved another long breath, turned away, and sat down heavily in the +nearest chair. + +"Poor old John!" she said. But she didn't let that exclamation go +uninterpreted. "I didn't mean anything--personal by that," she went on. +"Only--only I didn't think John could make up his mind to let her +marry--anybody." Then in a rush--an aside, to be sure, but one he was +welcome to hear if he chose.--"He wanted her so much all to himself." + +Whether he heard it or not, he failed, she thought, to attach any special +significance to that last comment of hers. He said that John had been +very nice about it, though he was, as any father would be under the +circumstances, taken aback. He had consented to regard the arrangement as +an accomplished fact and would, March hoped, in time be fully reconciled +to it. Then he went back rather quickly to the matter of his opera. + +"Of course, it means more than ever to me now," he said, putting his hand +on the manuscript, "to get this produced. If it goes moderately well it +will help in a good many ways." + +She found some difficulty in again turning her mind to this theme and +answered absently and rather at random, until she perceived that he was +getting ready to take his leave. He was saying something about an +appointment with LaChaise. + +"Is it at once?" she asked. "Do you have to go right away?" + +"I'm to have dinner with him and his secretary, who can talk English, at +six," March said, "but I thought I'd carry this off somewhere and read it +before I talked with them. It's been a long way out of my mind this last +three months." + +"Don't go," Paula said. "It seems so--so nice to have you here. Sit down +and read your score. Then you'll have a piano handy in case you want to +hear anything." She added as she saw him hesitate, "I won't bother +you--but I'm feeling awfully lonely to-day." + +At that, of course, he relinquished, though a little dubiously she +thought, his intention to go. She set about energetically making matters +convenient for him, cleared a small table of its litter and set it in the +window where he would have the best light; chose a chair for him to sit +in; urged him to take off his coat; and began looking about for something +for him to smoke--but not quite successfully. She was sure there were +cigarettes of Mary's somewhere about. + +He didn't care to smoke just now, he said. If he felt later like +resorting to a pipe he would. + +Was there anything else? Didn't he want a pencil and paper to make notes +on? No, he was supplied with everything, he said. + +But for all the ardor of these preparations of hers, she was a little +disconcerted and aggrieved at the way he took her at her word and plunged +into the study of his score. + +She found herself a novel and managed, for five minutes or so, to pretend +to read. Then she flung it aside and drifted over to the piano bench and +after gazing moodily a while at the keyboard, began in a fragmentary way +to play bits of nothing that came into her head. But she stopped herself +short in manifest contrition when, happening to look around at him, she +saw a knot of baffled concentration in his forehead. + +"Of course, you can't read if I do that," she said. "I'm sorry." Then +under cover of the same interruption, "How did John look when you saw him +this morning? Like a wreck? What time was it, anyway? It must have been +frightfully early that he left here because I waked as soon as it was +really light and he was gone by then." + +"I don't know that he looked particularly a wreck," March said. "Not any +worse, I mean, than he looked out at Hickory Hill the day you opened the +season here." + +"He didn't say anything about me, did he?" she asked. + +"No," March said, "I don't think he did." + +"I suppose you'd remember it if he'd happened to tell you that he loathed +and hated me and never wanted to see me again." Then she rose and went +over to the opposite side of his little table and leaning down spread her +hands out over his score. + +"Oh, I know I said I wouldn't bother, but do stop thinking about this and +talk to me for a minute. We're having--we're having a perfectly hideous +time. He and I. We've been fighting like cat and dog for four days. I +don't exactly know what it's all about, except that it seems we hate each +other and can't go on. You've got to tell me what to do. It all started +with you anyway. With the time you brought around those Whitman +songs.--That was the day Mary came home from New York, too," she added. + +"All right," he said, shutting down the cover upon his manuscript, +"then Mary and I will try to patch you up. That is, if we haven't +already done it." + +Her face darkened. "Don't try to talk the way they do," she commanded. +"I'm not intelligent enough to take hints. Do you mean that the whole +trouble is that I'm jealous of Mary? And that now she's going to marry +you I'll have nothing to be jealous of? Well, you're wrong both ways. +There's more to it than that. And that isn't going to stop just because +she's marrying you. She'll always be there for him. And he'll be there +for her. You'll find that out before you've gone far." + +He didn't seem disposed to dispute this, nor to be much perturbed about +it, either. He annoyed her by saying, "Well, if it's a permanent fact, +like snow in February, what's the good of taking it so hard?" + +"You can go south in February," she retorted. Then she went on, "I want +to know if you don't think I've a right to be jealous of her. I'd saved +his life. He admitted that. But when we went south, afterward, he simply +didn't want me around. Sent me home pretending I'd be wanted for +rehearsals. And then he sent for her. They spent a week +together--talking! As far as that goes, they could have done it just as +well if I'd been there. They can talk right over my head and I never know +what it's all about. Wait till they begin doing that with you! I don't +suppose they will though. You're a talker, too. He told her things he'd +never told me-about his money troubles. What he said to me was that he +didn't want to stand in the way of my career. He left her to tell me the +truth about it, later,--after I'd told him I didn't want any +career--though I'd just been offered the best chance I ever had. And +then, when he came and found that I'd done--for him--what he'd been +trying to make me do for myself, he was furious. We fought all night +about it. And when I came down the next morning, ready to do anything he +wanted me to, he'd wandered off with Mary. To talk me over with her +again.--Tell her some more things, I suppose, that I didn't know about." + +March had nothing to interpose here, it seemed, in Mary's defense, for +her pause gave him ample opportunity to do so. He merely nodded +reflectively and loaded and lighted his pipe. + +"Well," she demanded presently, "can you see now that there's something +more to it than jealousy? Whatever I try to do, he fights. When I wanted +to begin singing again last spring, he fought that. And when I wanted to +give it all up, after he'd so nearly died, he wouldn't let me. And when +I'd refused the best chance I'd ever had, for him, and then changed +around and accepted it because of him, he seemed to hate me for doing +that. And he simply boiled when I told him I'd gone and got the money, +myself, from Wallace Hood." + +"Yes," March said, so decisively that he startled her, "I know all about +it up to there. That was Thursday afternoon, wasn't it? Go on from then." + +The interruption disconcerted her. "There isn't much more--to tell," she +went on, but a good deal less impetuously. "Except that we fought and +fought and fought. About eight o'clock that night I said I was going to +the park to see the performance;--just to get a rest from talking. Mr. +Eckstein was there and the Williamsons and James Wallace, so I asked them +all to come home with us. And Fournier and LaChaise, too. And we got on +your opera and LaChaise played part of it and then I read a lot of it +with Fournier. So they didn't go home till after three. John thought I +was keeping them there in order not to be left alone with him.--Well, +what was the good of talking, anyhow? We did get started again on Friday, +though; all day long. And Friday night we--made up, in a way. At least, I +thought we did. + +"Well, and then yesterday morning Rush telephoned out from town and said +he thought John ought to come in to see Mary. She wasn't very well. I +told him to go if he liked. I was feeling perfectly awful, yesterday, +myself--and I was billed for _Thais_ last night. There isn't another +soprano up here who wouldn't have cancelled it, feeling the way I did. +But I told John that if he thought Mary needed him more than I did, he'd +better go.--I wish he had gone. After he'd telephoned to say he wasn't +coming--he'd talked to Mary herself, that time--he kept getting colder +and gloomier and more--unendurable from hour to hour. And after the +performance, we had the most horrible fight of all. He told me I had kept +him away from Mary on purpose,--because I was jealous of her. He said he +could never forgive himself for the way he'd treated her--in order to +curry favor with me. And he said that the first thing in the morning he +was going to her. That's all.--Oh, well, I said a few things to him, too. +Do you wonder?" + +By way of a flourish, she flashed to her feet again at this conclusion +(she'd been up and down half a dozen times in the course of her appeal to +him as jury), and walked away to a window. But after the silence had spun +itself out to the better part of a minute, she whipped round upon him. + +"Have you been listening to a word I've said?" she demanded. + +"Yes," he said, but with the contradictory air of fetching himself back +from a long way off. "Truly! I've listened to every word. And I don't +wonder a bit." + +"Don't wonder at what?" + +"That you said a few things to him, too. You've got a valid grievance, it +seems to me. You couldn't be blamed for quarreling with him over it as +bitterly as possible." + +She barely heeded the words. They never did mean much to Paula. But his +look and his tone reached her, and stung. + +"Look here!" she said with sudden intensity. "Before we go any farther, I +want to know this. Did Mary really need John, yesterday?" + +She saw him turn pale and she had to wait two or three long breaths for +her answer. But it came evenly enough at last. + +"I happened to turn up instead. And she's perfectly all right, to-day." + +Her eyes filled with tears. She turned forlornly away from him and +dropped down upon a settee. "You hate me, too, now, I suppose. As +well as he." + +He sat down beside her and laid a hand upon her shoulder. "My dear," he +said--and his own voice had a break of tenderness in it,--"I couldn't +hate any one to-day if I wanted to. And I never could want to hate you. +If there's anything I can do to help with John Wollaston.... But you see, +if you want to keep your grievance you don't need any help. Nobody can +take it away from you. It's only if you want to get rid of it--because +it's making you beastly unhappy, no matter how valid it is--that you need +any help from me or any one else. If that's what you want, I'll take a +shot at writing you a prescription." + +"Go crawling back to him on my knees, I suppose," she said in a tone not +quite so genuinely resentful as she felt it ought to be. "And ask him to +forgive me. What's the good of that when he doesn't love me?--Oh, of +course I know he does--in a way." + +His hand dropped absently from her shoulder. After a thoughtful moment he +sprang up and took a turn of the room. "Do you know," he said, halting +before her, "'in a way' is the only way there is. The only way any two +people ever do love each other. That's what makes half the trouble, I +believe. Trying to define it as if it were a standard thing. Like +sterling silver; so many and so many hundredths per cent. pure. Love's +whatever the personal emotion is that draws two people together. It may +be anything. It may make them kind to each other, or it may make them nag +each other into the mad-house, or it may make them shoot each other dead. +It's probably never exactly the same thing between any two pairs of +people..." + +"Don't talk nonsense," she said petulantly. + +"I'm not a bit sure it's nonsense," he persisted. "I only just thought of +it, but I believe I've got on to something. Well, if I'm right, then the +problem is to adjust that emotion to your life, or your life to that +emotion, in such a way that the thing will work. There aren't any rules. +There can't be any. It's a matter of--well, that's the word--adjustment." + +She could not see that this was helping her much. It was not at all the +line she'd projected for him. Yet she was finding it hard not to feel +less tragic. She had even caught herself, just now, upon the brink of +being amused. "Wait till you've tried to adjust something, as you say, +with John, and have had him tell you what you think until you believe +you do. When he's really being perfectly unreasonable all the while." + +"Of course," March observed with the air of one making a material +concession, "he is a good bit of a prima donna himself." + +"What do you mean by that?" she demanded. And then, petulantly, she +accused him of laughing at her, of refusing to take her seriously, of +trying to be clever like the Wollastons. + +"Look here, Paula," he said, and he put so much edge into his tone that +she did, "have you ever spent five minutes out of the last five years +trying to think what John was, besides your husband? I don't believe it. +When I spoke of him to you, months ago, as a famous person you didn't +know what I was talking about. He is. He's got a better chance--say to +get into the next edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, than you +have. He's got a career. He had it long before he knew you existed.--How +old was he when he came to Vienna? About fifty, wasn't he?" + +"Forty-nine," she said with the air of one making a serious +contradiction; but her, "Oh, well,--" and a little laugh that followed it +conceded that it was not. + +"He'd had a career then for a long time," March went on. "He was +established. He had things about as he wanted them. And then, out of +nowhere, an irresistible thing like you came along and torpedoed him. He +must have realized that he had gone clean out of his head about you. A +man of that age doesn't fall in love unconsciously, nor easily either. He +must have had frightful misgivings about persuading you to marry him. On +your account as well as his own. Because he is that, you know. +Conscientious, I mean. Almost to a morbid degree." + +"Oh, yes," she conceded, "they're both like that. They spend half their +time working things out trying to be fair." + +He gave her a quick look, then came and sat down beside her again. +"Well, then," he said, "we're on the right track. Just follow it along. +You're the one big refractory thing in his life. The thing that +constantly wants reconciling with something else,--at the same time that +you're the delight of it, and the center and core of it. And while he's +trying to deal with those problems justly, you know, he's taking on all +of yours, too. He's trying to see things with your eyes, feeling them +with your nerves, and since he's got a kind of uncanny penetration, I'd +be willing to bet that he can tell you, half the time, what you're +thinking about better than you could yourself. No wonder, between his +conscience and his desire--your mutual desire--he's unreasonable. And +since he's too old to be reformed out of his conscience that leaves the +adjustment up to you." + +"I don't know what more I can do," she said. "I've offered to give up +everything." + +"Yes," he said with a grunt, "that's it. I don't wonder he flew at you. +_That's_ the thing you'll have to give up!" + +He rose and stood over her and thumped home, his point with one fist in +the palm of the other hand. "Why, you've got to give up the nobility," he +said. "The self-sacrificial attitude. You've got to chuck the heroine's +rôle altogether, Paula. That's what you've been playing, naturally +enough. It makes good drama for you, but look where it leaves him! First +you give up your career for him, and then you give him up for the career +you've undertaken for his sake. You've contrived to put him in the wrong +both ways. Oh, not meaning to, I know; just by instinct. Well, give that +up. Give up the renunciatory gesture. Go to him and tell him the truth. +That you want, in a perfectly human selfish way, all you can get, both of +him and of a career. They aren't mutually exclusive really. It ought to +be possible to have quite a lot of each." + +"You think you know such a lot," she protested rebelliously, "but +there's only one thing I want, just the same, and that's John, himself." + +"No doubt that's true this afternoon," he admitted. "You sang _Thais_ +last night and several thousand people, according to this morning's +paper, cheered you at the end of the second act. But I believe I can tell +you your day-dream. It's to be the greatest dramatic soprano in the +world--home for a vacation. With John and perhaps one or two small +children of the affectionate age around you." + +Her face flamed at that. "John _has_ been talking about me this morning!" +she cried. + +He shook his head. "It was only a chance shot," he told her. "I'm sorry +if it came close enough home to hurt. But there couldn't be a better +day-dream than that and there's no reason I can see why it shouldn't come +reasonably true, if you'll honestly try for as much of it as you can get. +That's the prescription, anyhow. Give up nobility and all the heroic +poses that go with it and practise a little enlightened selfishness +instead. Perhaps by force of example you may persuade John Wollaston to +abandon about half of his conscience. Then you _would_ be settled." + +With that he went back to his score and by no protest or expostulation +could she provoke another word out of him. She fidgeted about the room +for a quarter of an hour or so. Then with the announcement that she was +going to dress, left it and went up-stairs. + +When she came down a while later in street things and a hat she presented +him with a new perplexity. + +"I've been trying everywhere I can think of to get a car," she said, "and +there simply isn't one to be had. I even tried to borrow one." + +He asked her what she wanted of a car. Where she wanted to go. + +"Oh, can't you see!" she cried, "I don't want to send for John again to +come to me. I want to go to him. It's too maddening!" + +"Well," he said, with a grin, "if you really want--desperately--to go to +him, of course there's the trolley." + +She stared at him for a moment and then perceiving, or thinking she +perceived, something allegorical about the suggestion, she gave a laugh, +swooped down and kissed him and went. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE KALEIDOSCOPE + + +It was the next Sunday morning that Miss Wollaston, who had decided to +stay in town even though the emergency she had been summoned to meet was +found mysteriously to have evanesced when she arrived, asked Wallace +Hood, walking home with her from church, to come in to lunch. + +"I haven't the least idea," she said, "whether we shall be quite by +ourselves or whether the entire family, including the latest addition to +it, will come straggling in before we've finished." + +She would not have considered it quite delicate to have owned to him how +very clearly she hoped to have him, for an hour or two, all to herself. +He would be found, she was confident, not to have gone through the +looking-glass into the world of topsy-turvey that all the rest of them +seemed to be inhabiting, these days. It would be comforting to talk with +somebody who was still capable of regarding things right side to. + +She was much too penetrating a person not to have been perfectly aware +from the first that, astonishing as were the facts John had communicated +to her, upon her arrival from Hickory Hill a week ago, other facts of +major importance were being suppressed. + +She had found her brother apparently occupied in the normal Sunday +morning manner with his newspaper, and he had answered her rather +breathless inquiries about Mary by saying that she was all right. She was +finishing off her night's sleep but would, he supposed, be down by and +by. There was nothing the matter. Rush had been unnecessarily alarmed, +lacking the fact which explained the case. And then he sprang his mine, +informing her that Mary was engaged to marry Anthony March. + +When, after a speechless interval, she had asked him, feebly, whether he +didn't mean Graham Stannard, he had been very short with her indeed. The +engagement to March was an accomplished fact, and the sooner we took it +for granted the better. He showed a great reluctance to go further into +detail about the matter and he flinched impatiently from the innocent +question;--when had he himself been informed of this astounding state of +things. Well, naturally, since in the train of his answer the fact had +been elicited that he hadn't come to town until this morning and that +Mary had spent another night alone. And it was not Mary but March who +had, already this morning, told him about it. + +Beyond that John couldn't be driven to go. He concluded by putting a +categorical injunction upon her. She wasn't to expostulate with Mary nor +to attempt to examine either into her reasons for this step nor into her +state of mind in making it. He was satisfied that the girl knew what she +was doing and that it represented her real wishes. His sister's +satisfaction on these points would have to be vicarious. + +The surmise had formed itself irresistibly in Lucile's mind that John +himself was involved in this decision of Mary's. Had she done this +thing--involved herself in the beginnings of it, anyhow,--as a desperate +measure to bring her father and his wife together again? By removing a +temptation that Paula was still in danger of yielding to? She didn't put +it to herself quite as crudely as that to be sure. + +Certainly she had no intention of asking Wallace Hood what he thought +about it. But perhaps he might have some other explanation of her +niece's sacrifice. It must have been a sacrifice to something. An answer +to some fancied call of duty. Unless it were a freak of sheer perversity. +But this was dangerous ground for Lucile. + +The queerest thing about it all was the way it seemed--magically--to be +producing such beneficent results. John and Paula were reconciled by +it,--or at least as soon as it happened. Paula had come down from Ravinia +that very day, had had some sort of scene with her husband, and the two +had been almost annoyingly at one upon every conceivable subject since. +Something had happened also during the week to Rush, which lightened the +gloom that had been hanging on him so long,--some utterly surprising +interview with Graham Stannard's father. Pure coincidence one must +suppose this to be, of course. Mary's engagement couldn't have anything +to do with it. And then Mary herself! The girl was a new person. +Absolutely radiant. Orthodox conduct of course for a just engaged +girl--but in the circumstances one would think... + +Lucile saw that Wallace hesitated a little about accepting her +invitation to lunch and recalled the fact that he hadn't dropped in on +them once during the week though he had known that they were more or +less back in town. + +"Why, yes, I'll come with pleasure," he said. "I don't know precisely +what sort of terms I'm on with John. He felt for a few days, I know, that +I'd been rather officious, but I may as well have it out with him now as +later. And I shall be glad of an opportunity to give Mary my best wishes. +I wrote her a note, of course, the day I read the announcement of the +engagement in the newspapers." He added, "I certainly was in the dark as +to that affair." + +"Aren't you--still more or less, in the dark about it?" Miss Wollaston +inquired. "I don't mind owning that I am. Mary's sense of social values +always seemed to me to be at least adequately developed. On the surface +one would have to call her rather worldly, I think." + +"On the surface perhaps," Wallace interposed, "but not really; not at +heart. Still, I'll grant it isn't easy to understand. There's a certain +attraction about the man of course. And then there's his music." + +"And Mary," Miss Wollaston observed, "happens to be the one utterly +unmusical person in the family. She's completely absorbed in the +preparation for his opera however." Then after a little pause, "She may +prove rather more explanatory with you than she has been with me. She +seems to take a certain pleasure in mystifying me. In saying things in a +matter-of-fact way that are quite astounding. That's the new generation, +of course. They talk a different language from mine. It will be a +comfort," she concluded, rather pathetically, as they mounted the high +steps to her brother's door, "to talk the matter over quietly with some +one to whom my ideas and standards are still intelligible." + +But this comfort was, for the present, to be denied her. Mary had spent +the morning in her room writing notes and was coming down the stairs when +the church-goers came in. + +She negotiated what were left of the steps in a single swoop, gave her +visitor both hands along with the "Wallace! How nice!" that welcomed him, +and then, drawing back with a gesture which invited his scrutiny, said, +"Well? What do you think?--Oh, but thanks for your note, first. I've just +answered it." + +Radiant was the word. There couldn't be any doubt of that. And younger. +There was a twinkle of mischief that he had to go back-five years, +anyhow, to remember the like of. + +He had none of Lucile's feeling that decency required one's joy over an +event of this sort to be of the chastened variety and he brightened in +instantaneous response to the girl's mood, but the mere impact of her +left him for a moment wordless. + +"You needn't try to make me a speech," she said. "I know you're pleased. +Not as pleased as you would be if you knew all about it, but ..." + +"As pleased as possible, anyhow," he said. On that, amicably arm in arm, +they followed Miss Wollaston into the drawing-room. + +"I don't believe we've seen each other," she said, "since the night we +had dinner together at the Saddle and Cycle, weeks and weeks ago." + +"No," he said. "I remember very well that we haven't." + +Miss Wollaston had drifted away from them (occupied, as she so often +was when there were no persons present in the formal status of guests, +in making minute readjustments of pillows and things as a sort of +standing protest against the demon of disorder), and having noted this +fact he went on: + +"I didn't come for the picnic tea you invited me to the other day. If I'd +known how the land lay, I shouldn't have sent a substitute. I'm afraid, +perhaps, that was rather--tactless of me." + +He saw the queerest look come into her face,--enough in itself to startle +him rather though it wasn't without a gleam of humor. + +"I was just wondering," she explained, "whether if you had come that +particular day, I mightn't be engaged to you now instead of to Tony." + +Unluckily Lucile heard that and froze rigid for a moment with horror. +Then recovering her motor faculties, she moved in a stately manner +toward the door. + +"I think if you will excuse me," she said, "I'll go up and prepare for +luncheon." + +Mary gazed conscience-stricken from her to Wallace who was blushing like +a boy caught stealing apples. "I'm sorry," she gasped, but not quickly +enough for the apology to overtake her aunt. "It's terrible of me to say +things like that and I do, every now and then. Can you bear with me until +I've had time to quiet down? It's all so new, to be happy like this, I'm +a little--wild with it." + +In his nice neutral unexaggerated way he told her that her happiness +could never be anything but a joy to him; and after that, when they were +seated side by side upon the cane davenport he asked about her plans; +when they were going to be married, where they meant to live, and so on. + +"Why, we'll be married, I suppose," she said, "at the end of the +customary six weeks' engagement. There isn't a thing to wait for, +really." + +"I'm glad of that," he remarked. + +Anybody but Mary would have taken that at its face value; he was glad +that they would have to wait no longer. But he flinched as she glanced +round toward him and at that she laughed and patted his hand +reassuringly. + +"We're doing everything correctly," she told him; "beginning with +father's announcement of the engagement in the papers, Tuesday. We +remain on exhibition during the conventional six weeks and then we're +married at noon over in the Fourth Church. Impeccable! That's going to +be our middle name." + +Mary used so very little slang that she was able to produce quite +extraordinary effects with it when she did. + +"I'm glad," Wallace said, a little ruffled by the start she had given +him, "that you have not been persuaded to do anything--differently." + +"Who do you suppose it was," she asked, "who insisted, in an adamantine +manner, that it be done like that? It wasn't me and it wasn't Aunt +Lucile. It was Anthony March." She added, after a reflective silence, "He +was right about it, of course, because when that's over it's done with. +And then--what he hasn't thought of, and I wouldn't have, most likely +until it was too late--he'll have a friendlier audience next Tuesday +night than if he'd given me my way and made a trip to the City Hall with +me last Monday. I wanted to burn my bridges, you see;--and he laughed at +me. I haven't told that to any one but you.--All the same, if he thinks, +from that, that he can go on accumulating--millstones ..." + +"Tell me where you are planning to live," Wallace said, getting back as +he was always glad to do, to firm ground again. "Not too far away, I +hope, for us to go on seeing a lot of you." + +"Oh, it's very sad about that," she told him. "I was hoping to live with +him in his secret lair over the Italian grocery. No, but it was really +delightful. One big room, bigger than this, with dormers and dusty beams +and an outside stair. He's had it for years. It's not half a mile from +here--and Paula could never find out where it was! But, unexpectedly, +he's being turned out. I could have wept when he told me." + +"Unexpectedly!" quoted Wallace, the professional real estate man in +him touched by this evidence of lay negligence. "March hadn't any +lease, I suppose." + +"He didn't need any," said Mary. "He owned it." + +"If he owns it how can they turn him out--unexpectedly?" + +"What he owned was the second story. Well, he still does, of course. But +when they tear the first floor and the basement out from under him, as +they're going to do next week, his second story won't do him much good." + +"But, good gracious, they can't do that!" Wallace cried. "They must +leave him his floor and his ceiling just where they are now. And his +light. They can build above and below--I suppose that's what they're +tearing the old building down for--but that layer of space, if he +really bought it and has got anything to show that he really bought it, +belongs to him." + +"Do you mean seriously," she demanded, "that it's possible to buy the +second story of a building? It's like Pudd'n-'head Wilson's joke about +buying half a dog and killing his half." + +"Of course I mean it," he insisted. "An easement like that cost our +estate thousands of dollars only a year or two ago. Serious! I should +think it was! Ask Rodney Aldrich. See what he says.--Of course, it's +nothing unless he can show some instrument that proves his title. But if +he can it might be worth ... Well, it's just a question how badly they +happen to need that particular bit of land. Those people we fell foul of +managed to hold us up for a tidy sum." + +She was looking at him thoughtfully, a faint, rather wry smile just +touching her lips. "A minute ago," she said, "I was about to fling myself +upon your neck and thank you for so wonderful a wedding present to us as +that would be. And now I'm wondering ... Wallace, I don't suppose it +would strike you that there would be anything--shady about doing a thing +like that." + +"Shady!" He was, for a moment, deeply affronted by the mere suggestion. +Then, remembering her total ignorance of all such matters, he smiled at +her. "My dear Mary, do you think--leaving my rectitude aside--that I'd +have referred you to Rodney Aldrich if I'd felt that there was anything +questionable about it?" + +"I know," she conceded. "And Martin Whitney would feel the same way. And +father, I suppose, and Rush. Everybody we know. Yet I was wondering +whether I'd say anything to Tony about it. I've decided I will, but I'm +going to ask you not to, nor to anybody else, until I've talked to him. +I'd like it left--altogether to him, you see." + +He agreed, rather blankly to this. Presently she went on: + +"I'm glad he's a real genius, not just a fragment of one as so many of +them are. There's something--robust about him. And since that's so, I +don't believe we'll do him any real harm; we--advantage-snatchers, you +know. That's so very largely how we live, we nice people (it's why we're +able to be nice, of course)--that we get perfectly blind to it. But he's +so strong, and he can see in so deep, that I guess he's safe. That's the +belief I have to go on, anyhow." + +She sprang up and gave him another pat upon the shoulder. "He'll be +getting here in a few minutes, I suspect. Father telephoned that he and +Paula were going to bring him down as soon as his rehearsal was over. I'm +going up now to try to make my peace with Aunt Lucile." + +After lunch she told the family that she had matters to talk over with +Tony and meant to take him for a walk. His father and mother expected +them to drop in at their house about five and the intervening two hours +would give them just about time to "cover the ground." She was openly +laughing at her own pretense at being matter-of-fact. + +It was pretty hot for walking, her father thought. Why not let Pete drive +them around a while in the car? Or take the small car and drive herself? +But she was feeling pedestrian, she said, and, anyhow, the topic she had +in mind couldn't be discussed in a motor-car. They'd go to Lincoln Park +and stroll around in the shade. + +"And if we get tired," she added with a flicker, in response to her +aunt's movement of protest, "we can squeeze in among the other couples on +some grassy bank.--Oh, Aunt Lucile, don't mind! We _won't_ do +anything--disgraceful." + +"You see what a cat I am," she told March as they set out. "I make her +squirm without meaning to, and then, when she squirms, I scratch. Now +talk to me until I can get in good humor with myself again." + +"I've two or three things to tell you," he said. "I saw Sylvia Stannard +this morning. She came to rehearsal with the little Williamson girl, and +carried me off bodily for a talk. She's had a long letter from Graham. + +"He's quite well," he went on swiftly, ignoring the gasp she gave, "and +doesn't want to be, as he says, fussed over." + +"Where is he?" she asked. "I'll write him a letter, of course. Only +you'll have to tell me what to say." + +"He's visiting a friend--a college classmate--on Long Island. And he's +already had a job offered him by his friend's father, in an engineering +office. He's a pretty good engineer, I believe. He thinks he'll accept +it. Anyhow, he is definitely not coming back to Hickory Hill. Sylvia +attaches some significance to the fact that his friend also has a pretty +sister, but that's just the cynicism of youth, I suspect." + +This last suggestion silenced her--with another gasp, as perhaps he had +meant it to do. He added, presently: + +"As for writing, I've already done that myself." + +"You!" she exclaimed. "Where's the letter?" + +"It's already despatched. I wrote it as soon as the rehearsal was over. +But I'll tell you what I said in it. I told him I supposed he had heard +of our engagement, but that I knew you wished him to be told of it +personally. You were very fond of him, I said, and the only thing that +clouded your happiness was a fear that he might not be able to share it. +I assured him that I was completely in your confidence and knew that you +had been through a period of very severe nervous stress, verging upon a +nervous breakdown, but that I believed you were on the way to a speedy +recovery. And I ended by saying that I believed a line from him to you, +setting some of your misgivings at rest, would hasten it. And I was his +most cordially." + +She didn't try to pretend she wasn't aghast at this. "But what +an--extraordinary letter. Won't he be--furious? At you for +writing?--Speaking for me in a case like that. Telling him you knew all +about it!" + +"Well, that was more or less the idea," he confessed, with a rueful grin. +"He'll think I stole you away from him; he'll think I gave you the +nervous prostration I hinted at. Heaven knows what he won't think! But, +of course, the more of a villain I am the less you're to be held +responsible. And there's nothing insupportable or--ludicrous about a +grievance against another man. At all events it enables him to get round +the statement you demolished him with. No, you'll see. He'll write you a +letter, correctly affectionate but rather chilly, and after that you'll +be off his mind. And if the pretty sister Sylvia alleges doesn't exist, +there'll be another one along pretty soon, who will." + +She was obviously a little dazed by all this. It was the first time they +had talked of Graham since that night in his room and he knew the bruise +from that experience must still be painful to touch. So he hastened to +produce his other item of news--also provided by Sylvia. + +"This is a perfectly dead secret of hers," he began. "Told me in sacred +confidence. She finished, however, by saying that she knew, of course, +I'd go straight and tell you. So to justify her penetration, I will. +Sylvia has accounted for her father's amazing change of attitude toward +Hickory Hill. It seems she's persuaded her father to give Graham's share +of it to her. She told him--what's obviously true--that she's a better +farmer now than Graham would ever be. She hates town and society and all +that, she says, and never will be happy anywhere but on a farm--anywhere, +indeed, but on that farm. He was very rough and boisterous about the +suggestion, she says, for a day or two, but finally he quieted down like +a lamb and gave in. He never has refused her anything, of course." + +"But a partnership between her and Rush!" Mary cried. "It's perfectly +impossibly mad. Unless, of course ... You don't mean...?" + +"Yes, that's the idea, exactly," March said. "Only Rush, as yet, knows +nothing about it. Hence the need for secrecy. Sylvia acknowledged to her +father that she couldn't possibly own a farm in partnership with a young +man of twenty-three unless she married him, but she said she'd intended +to marry Rush ever since she was twelve years old. She's confident that +he's only waiting for her eighteenth birthday to ask her to marry him, +but she says that if he doesn't, she means to ask him. And if he refuses, +she pointed out to her father, he can't do less than consent to sell the +other half of the farm to her. She treats that alternative, though, as +derisory.--And I haven't a doubt she's right. Evidently her father has +none, either. + +"Well, it accounts for the change in Mr. Stannard's attitude toward the +farm, of course," he concluded. "A son's supposed to thrive on adversity. +It wouldn't be good morals not to make things difficult for him by way of +developing his character. But where a mere daughter is involved he can +chuckle and write checks. Under his tradition, he's entitled to regard +her as a luxury. Anyhow, your father has nothing more to worry about as +far as Rush and Hickory Hill are concerned." + +"Life's a kaleidoscope," Mary said. "I'm tired. Let's sit down."--They +were half-way up the park by that time.--"Oh, here on the grass. What +does it matter?" When they were thus disposed she went back to her +figure. "There's just a little turn, by some big wrist that we don't know +anything about, and a little click, and the whole pattern changes." + +"There are some patterns that don't change," he said soberly, but he +didn't try to argue the point with her. He knew too exactly how she felt. +"Tell me," he said, "what it was that you wanted to talk to me about." + +She acknowledged that she'd been hoping he'd forgotten that, of the +momentousness of his two items of news had left her, as her talk about +kaleidoscopes indicated, rather disoriented. So he threw in, to give her +time to get round to it, the information that both Sylvia and the little +Williamson girl had decided they wanted to study music with him. "I +agreed," he added, "to take them on, when I got around to it." + +"Tony," she said, "I won't let you do that. Not music lessons to little +girls. I won't." + +"Afternoons?" he asked gently. "When I'm through the real day's work? It +would be pretty good fun, trying to show a few people--young unspoiled +people--what music really is. Dynamite some of their sentimental ideas +about it; shake them loose from some of the schoolmasters' niggling rules +about it; make them write it themselves; show 'em the big shapes of it; +make a piano keyboard something they knew their way about in. That +wouldn't be a contemptible job for anybody.--Oh, well, we can talk that +out later. But you needn't be afraid for me, my dear." + +"That's what I said to Wallace Hood," she told him; "just before lunch. +When I was trying to decide to tell you what he'd been saying.--About +your room that they're turning you out of." + +With that, she repeated the whole of the talk with Wallace and the +serio-fantastic idea that it had led up to. + +He grinned over it a while in silence, then asked, "Are you willing to +leave it entirely to me?" + +"Of course," she said. + +"Well, then," he decided, "if I've still got that paper--and I think I +have ... I copied it, I remember, out of an old law-book, and to satisfy +Luigi's passion for the picturesque and the liturgical we took it to a +notary and got it sealed with a big red wafer--Well, if I've got it and +it's any good, I'll let Aldrich,--is that his name?--make what he can of +it. I'll square it with Luigi afterward of course." + +"It's a compromise for you," she said gravely. "You wouldn't have done +that two weeks ago." + +He laughed. "Folks use the word uncompromising as if it were always a +praiseworthy thing to be. But it hardly ever is, if you stop to think. +Certainly if life's an art, like composing music or painting pictures, +then compromise is in the very fabric of it. Getting different themes or +colors that would like to be contradictory, to work together; developing +a give and take. What's the important thing? To have a life that's full +and good and serviceable, or to mince along through it with two or three +sacred attitudes?--Wait a minute." + +She waited contentedly enough, watching him with a misty smile as he lay +upon the grass beside her wrestling with his idea. + +"All right," he said presently. "Here's the test that I'll agree to. I'll +agree to do things or to leave them undone, to the end that when +I'm--sixty, say, I'll have packed more of real value into my life--my +life as your husband and the father of your children--than that vagabond +you're so concerned about would have had in his if--if ..." + +"If I hadn't gone to him a week ago last night?" She said it steadily +enough, where he could not say it at all. + +"Yes," he said. "That's what I mean." + +He reached out for her hand and she gave it to him. Presently his face +brightened once more into a grin. "I'll even promise to write more music. +Lord, if I've really got anything, you couldn't stop me. Come along. +Father and mother will be looking for us before very long now." + +The critics agreed that the _première_ of March's opera was a "distinct +success," and then proceeded to disagree about everything else. The dean +of the corps found it somewhat too heavily scored in the orchestra and +the vocal parts rather ungrateful, technically. The reactionary put up +his regular plaintive plea for melody but supposed this was too much to +ask, these days. The chauvinist detected German influence in the music +(he had missed the parodic satire in March's quotations), and asked +Heaven to answer why an American composer should have availed himself of +a decadent French libretto. + +The audience showed a friendly bias toward it at the beginning and were +plainly moved by the dramatic power of it as it progressed, but they +seemed shocked and bewildered by the bludgeon blows of the conclusion and +the curtain fell upon a rather panicky silence. Then they rallied and +gave both the performers and the composer what would pass in current +journalese for an ovation. + +The Wollastons' friends, who were out in pretty good force, crowded +forward to be introduced to Mary's fiancé and to offer him their +double congratulations. They found him rather unresponsive and decided +that he was temperamental (a judgment which did him no serious +disservice with most of them), though the kindlier ones thought he +might be shy. Mary herself found something not quite accountable in +his manner, but she forbore to press for an explanation and let him +off, good-humoredly enough, from the little celebration of his triumph +which she had had in mind. + +The fact was that he had come through the experience, which no one who +has not shared it with him can possibly understand, of discovering the +enormous difference between the effect of a thing on paper, or even in +its last rehearsal, and the effect of it when it is performed before an +audience which has paid to see it. It was no wonder he was dazed, for the +opera he found himself listening to seemed like a changeling. + +He worked all night over it and told LaChaise the next morning that he +had made serious alterations in it and would need more rehearsals. The +opera had been billed in advance for a repetition on the following +Saturday night, the understanding among the powers being that if it +failed to get a sufficient measure of favor the bill should be changed. +It was touch and go, but the final decision was that it should have +another chance. + +So LaChaise agreed to March's request, ran over the composer's revised +manuscript with a subtle French smile, sent for the timpani player, who +was an expert copyist, and put him to work getting the altered parts +ready, instanter. March told Mary he was making a few changes and asked +her to stay away from rehearsals so that on Saturday night, from out in +front, she might get the full effect. + +Really, as it turned out, he did not need any individual testimony, for +one could have learned the effect of the new ending from half a mile +away. When he came back into the wings from his fourth recall he saw +her face shining with joy through her tears. But his heart sank when he +saw, standing beside her, Paula. He thanked his gods that Mary had a +sense of humor. + +Paula was smiling in high satisfaction, and she spoke first. "Well, +stupid," she demanded, "what have you got to say for yourself, now?" + +"Not a word," he answered, smiling too, "except that we have to live +to learn." + +Then he explained to Mary. "That ending--having the girl come back to +life again, to sing some more after she'd been shot--was one of the +things Paula was trying to make me do, all the while. And some of the +other changes were, too." + +"But not that trumpet," said Paula, and he could only blush. + +In a moment of dead silence, just before the crash that accompanied the +descent of the curtain, he had scored for the C trumpet, muted and +pianissimo, a phrase in the rhythm of the first three bars of the +_Marsellaise_, but going up on the open tones and sustaining the high G, +so that it carried also, a suggestion of _The Star Spangled Banner_. A +flagrant trick, but it had served to remind the audience, bruised by the +horror of abomination it had just witnessed, of the vengeance which, afar +off, was gathering. + +"I'd like to know what you'd have said to me," Paula went on, "if I'd +asked you to do that!" + +Mary laughed, and pushed her lover toward the stage. "Oh, go back," she +said. "They want you again, my dear." + +They gave _The Outcry_ two more performances during the next week, one of +them being the closing performance of the season, and by that time, so +far as a single success could be said to establish any one, March was +established. He and Mary discussed this rather soberly as they drove home +in the small car after the convivial wind-up supper at the Moraine, where +this fact had been effusively dwelt upon. Their wedding was now less than +a month off. + +"I know," she admitted, "it looks as if I were all wrong. To go on being +afraid of--harness and millstones and all that. But just the same ... +Oh, you can live my sort of life. That's been made plain enough. But I +wish I could think of some way of making you sure that I could live +yours, as well. Your old one; the _Chemineau_ one. The way it was when +you came to Hickory Hill." + +A few minutes later she gave a sudden laugh. "Tony," she said, "will you +swear you will do something for me--without knowing what it is? Oh, it's +nothing very serious. It's about our honeymoon. A girl has a right to +decide about that, hasn't she?" + +"You've got something up your sleeve, all right," he said dubiously; but +she remained severely silent until he gave in and promised. + +"Well, then," she said, "this is what our honeymoon is going to be. We'll +take one of the farm Fords-Rush can spare one, I'm sure, in October-and +we'll get some camping things and start out--oh, along any one of your +old routes--without one single cent of money. And we'll tune pianos as we +go. We'll live off the country. Really and honestly take to the road. For +a month. If we can't find any pianos we'll go hungry--or beg! The one +thing we won't do, whatever happens, is to telegraph. After we've done +that we'll come back and be--regular people. And I won't mind, then. +Because, don't you see, you'll know. And if it's ever necessary to do it +again, we'll do it again." + +"There's no one in the world," he remarked in a voice that wanted to +break, "--no one in the world who'd have thought of that but you. But, my +dear, I don't need any reassurance like that." + +"Tony, dearest, don't be solemn," she admonished him. "Won't it be +_fun_!" + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Mary Wollaston, by Henry Kitchell Webster + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY WOLLASTON *** + +***** This file should be named 11161-8.txt or 11161-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/1/6/11161/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's +eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII, +compressed (zipped), HTML and others. + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over +the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed. +VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving +new filenames and etext numbers. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000, +are filed in directories based on their release date. If you want to +download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular +search system you may utilize the following addresses and just +download by the etext year. + + https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06 + + (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, + 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90) + +EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are +filed in a different way. The year of a release date is no longer part +of the directory path. The path is based on the etext number (which is +identical to the filename). The path to the file is made up of single +digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename. For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/11161-8.zip b/old/11161-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bce7e71 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11161-8.zip diff --git a/old/11161.txt b/old/11161.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4363465 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11161.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12601 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Wollaston, by Henry Kitchell Webster + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mary Wollaston + +Author: Henry Kitchell Webster + +Release Date: February 19, 2004 [EBook #11161] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY WOLLASTON *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + MARY WOLLASTON + + BY HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER + + 1920 + + + + +CONTENTS + + I THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND + + II SEA DRIFT + + III THE PEACE BASIS + + IV THE PICTURE PUZZLE + + V JOHN MAKES A POINT OF IT + + VI STRINGENDO + + VII NO THOROUGHFARE + + VIII THE DUMB PRINCESS + + IX IN HARNESS + + X AN INTERVENTION + + XI NOT COLLECTABLE + + XII HICKORY HILL + + XIII LOW HANGS THE MOON + + XIV A CLAIRVOYANT INTERVAL + + XV THE END OF IT + + XVI FULL MEASURE + + XVII THE WAYFARER + + XVIII A CASE OF NECESSITY + + XIX THE DRAMATIST + + XX TWO WOMEN AND JOHN + + XXI THE SUBSTITUTE + + XXII THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE + + XXIII THE TERROR + + XXIV THE WHOLE STORY + + XXV DAYBREAK + + XXVI JOHN ARRIVES + + XXVII SETTLING PAULA + + XXVIII THE KALEIDOSCOPE + + + + +MARY WOLLASTON + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE CIRCASSIAN GRAND + + +Miss Lucile Wollaston was set to exude sympathy, like an aphid waiting +for an overworked ant to come down to breakfast. But there was no +sympathizing with the man who came in from a doctor's all-night vigil +like a boy from a ball-game, gave her a hard brisk kiss on the +cheek-bone, and then, before taking his place at the table, unfolded the +morning paper for a glance at the head-lines. + +If there was something rigorous about the way she lighted the alcohol +lamp under the silver urn and rang for Nathaniel, the old colored butler, +it was from a determination not to let this younger brother of hers put +her into a flurry again as he so often did. A very much younger brother +indeed, he seemed when this mood was on him. + +Miss Wollaston was born on the election day that made James Buchanan +president of the United States and Doctor John within a few days of +Appomattox. But one would have said, looking at them here at the +breakfast table on a morning in March in the year 1919, that there was a +good deal more than those ten years between them. He folded his paper and +sat down when the butler suggestively pulled out his chair for him and +his manner became, for the moment, absent, as his eye fell upon a letter +beside his plate addressed in his daughter, Mary's, handwriting. + +"I want a big platter of ham and eggs, Nat, sliced thick. And a few of +Lucartha's wheat cakes." He made some sort of good-humored, half +articulate acknowledgment of the old servitor's pleasure in getting such +an order, but one might have seen that his mind was a little out of +focus, for it was not exactly dealing with the letter either. He sliced +it open with a table knife with the precise movement one would have +expected from a surgeon and disengaged it in the same neat way from its +envelope. But he read it as if he weren't very sharply aware of what, +particularly, it had to say and he laid it beside his plate again without +any comment. + +"Did you have any sleep last night, at all?" Miss Wollaston asked. + +It brought him back like a flash. "Not a wink," he said jovially. + +This was a challenge and the look that went with it, one of clear boyish +mischief, was one that none of John Wollaston's other intimates--and +among these I include his beautiful young wife and his two grown-up +children by an earlier marriage--ever saw. It was a special thing for +this sister who had been a stately young lady of twenty when he was a bad +little boy of ten. She had watched him, admiring yet rather aghast, ever +since then. + +To the world at large his social charm lay in--or was at least +inseparable from--his really exquisite manners, his considerateness, the +touch of old-fashioned punctilio there was about him. His first wife +would have agreed with her successor about his possession of this quality +though they would have appraised it rather differently. Only this elderly +unmarried sister of his felt the fascination of the horrible about him. + +This was to some extent inherent in his profession. He had a reputation +that was growing to amount to fame as a specialist in the very wide +field of gynecology, obstetrics and abdominal surgery. The words +themselves made Miss Wollaston shudder. + +When he replied to her question, whether or not he had had any sleep at +all, with an open grin and that triumphant "Not a wink," she had a +prophetic sense of what was going to happen. She was going to ask him +more questions and he was going to tell her something perfectly ghastly. + +She felt herself slipping, but she pulled up. "What's in Mary's letter?" +she asked. + +She knew that this was not quite fair, and the look that it brought to +his face--a twinge of pain like neuralgia--awakened a sharp compunction +in her. She did not know why--at least not exactly why--his relation with +his daughter should be a sore spot in his emotional life, but she knew +quite well that this was true. There was on the surface, nothing, or +nowhere near enough, to account for it. + +He had always been, Miss Wollaston felt, an adorer to the verge of +folly of this lovely pale-blonde daughter of his. He had indulged her +outrageously but without any evident bad results. Upon her mother's +death, in 1912 that was, when Mary was seventeen years old, she had, +to the utmost limit that a daughter could compass, taken her mother's +place in the bereaved man's life. She had foregone the college course +she was prepared for and had taken over very skillfully the management +of her father's household; even, in a surprisingly successful way, +too, the motherly guidance of her two-years-younger brother, Rush. +Miss Wollaston's testimony on these two points was unbiased as it was +ungrudging. She had offered herself for that job and had not then +been wanted. + +Two years later there had been a quarrel between John and his daughter. +She fell in love, or thought she did--for indeed, how could a child of +nineteen know?--with a man to whom her father decisively and almost +violently objected. Just how well founded this objection was Miss +Wollaston had no means of deciding for herself. There was nothing +flagrantly wrong with the man's manners, position or prospects; but she +attributed to her brother a wisdom altogether beyond her own in matters +of that sort and sided with him against the girl without misgiving. And +the fact that the man himself married another girl within a month or two +of Mary's submission to her father's will, might be taken as a +demonstration that he was right. + +John had done certainly all he could to make it up with the girl. He +tried to get her to go with him on what was really a junket to +Vienna--there was no better place to play than the Vienna of those +days--though there was also some sort of surgical congress there that +spring that served him as an excuse, and Mary, Miss Wollaston felt, had +only herself to blame for what happened. + +She had elected to be tragic; preferred the Catskills with a dull old +aunt to Vienna with a gay young father. John went alone, sore from the +quarrel and rather adrift. In Vienna, he met Paula Carresford, an +American opera singer, young, extraordinarily beautiful, and of +unimpeachable respectability. They were in Vienna together the first week +in August, 1914. They got out together, sailed on the same ship for +America and in the autumn of that year, here in Chicago, in the most +decorous manner in the world, John married her. + +There was a room in Miss Wollaston's well ordered mind which she had +always guarded as an old-fashioned New England village housewife used to +guard the best parlor, no light, no air, no dust, Holland covers on all +the furniture. Rigorously she forbore to speculate upon the attraction +which had drawn John and Paula together--upon what had happened between +them--upon how the thing had looked and felt to either of them. She +covered the whole episode with one blanket observation: she supposed it +was natural in the circumstances. + +And there was much to be thankful for. Paula was well-bred; she was +amiable; she was "nice"; nice to an amazing degree, considering. She had +made a genuine social success. She had given John a new lease on life, +turned back the clock for him, oh--years. + +Mary, Miss Wollaston felt, had taken it surprisingly well. At the wedding +she had played her difficult part admirably and during the few months she +had stayed at home after the wedding, she had not only kept on good terms +with Paula but had seemed genuinely to like her. In the spring of the +next year, 1915, she had, indeed, left home and had not been back since +except for infrequent visits. But then there was reason enough--excuse +enough, anyhow--for that. The war was enveloping them all. Rush had left +his freshman year at Harvard uncompleted to go to France and drive an +ambulance (he enlisted a little later in the French Army). Mary had gone +to New York to work on the Belgian War Relief Fund, and she had been +working away at it ever since. + +There was then no valid reason--no reason at all unless she were willing +to go rummaging in that dark room of her mind for it--why John should +always wince like that when one reminded him of Mary. It was a fact, +though, that he did, and his sister was too honest-minded to pretend she +did not know it. + +He answered her question now evenly enough. "She's working harder than +ever, she says, closing up her office. She wants some more money, of +course. And _she's_ heard from Rush. He's coming home. He may be turning +up almost any day now. She hopes to get a wire from him so that she can +meet him in New York and have a little visit with him, she says, before +he comes on here." + +It was on Miss Wollaston's tongue to ask crisply, "Why doesn't she come +home herself now that her Fund is shutting up shop?" But that would have +been to state in so many words the naked question they tacitly left +unasked. There was another idea in her brother's mind that she thought +she could deal with. He had betrayed it by the emphasis he put on the +fact that it was to Mary and not to himself that Rush had written the +news that he was coming home. Certainly there was nothing in that. + +"Why," she asked brightly, "don't you go to New York yourself and +meet him?" + +He answered instantly, almost sharply, "I can't do that." Then not liking +the way it sounded in his own ear, he gave her a reason. "If you knew the +number of babies that are coming along within the next month...." + +"You need a rest," she said, "badly. I don't see how you live through +horrors like that. But there must be other people--somebody who can take +your work for you for a while. It can't make all that difference." + +"It wouldn't," he admitted, "nine times out of ten. That call I got last +evening that broke up the dinner party,--an intern at the County +Hospital would have done just as well as I. There was nothing to it at +all. Oh, it was a sort of satisfaction to the husband's feelings, I +suppose, to pay me a thousand dollars and be satisfied that nobody in +town could have paid more and got anything better. But you see, you never +can tell. The case I was called in on at four o'clock this morning was +another thing altogether." A gleam had come into his eyes again as over +the memory of some brilliantly successful audacity. The gray old look had +gone out of his face. + +"I don't altogether wonder that Pollard blew up," he added, "except that +a man in that profession has got no business to--ever." + +The coffee urn offered Miss Wollaston her only means of escape but she +didn't avail herself of it. She let herself go on looking for a +breathless minute into her brother's face. Then she asked weakly, +"What was it?" + +"Why, Pollard...." John Wollaston began but then he stopped short and +listened. "I thought I heard Paula coming," he explained. + +"Paula won't be down for hours," Miss Wollaston said, "but I do not +see why she shouldn't hear, since she is a married woman and your +own wife...." + +Her brother's "Precisely" cut across that sentence with a snick like a +pair of shears and left a little silence behind it. + +"I think she'll be along in a minute," he went on. "She always does come +to breakfast. Why did you think she wouldn't to-day?" + +This was one of Miss Wollaston's minor crosses. The fact was that on the +comparatively rare occasions when Doctor John himself was present for the +family breakfast at the custom-consecrated hour, Paula managed about two +times in five to put in a last-minute appearance. This was not what +annoyed Miss Wollaston. She was broad-minded enough to be aware that to +an opera singer, the marshaling of one's whole family in the dining-room +at eight o'clock in the morning might seem a barbarous and revolting +practise and even occasional submissions to it, acts of real devotion. +She was not really bitterly annoyed either by Paula's oft repeated +assertion that she always came to breakfast. Paula was one of those +temperamental persons who have to be forgiven for treating their +facts--atmospherically. But that John, a man of science, enlisted under +the banner of truth, should back this assertion of his wife's, in the +face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, really required +resignation to put up with; argued a blindness, an infatuation, which +seemed to his sister hardly decent. Because after all, facts were facts, +and you didn't alter them by pretending that they did not exist. + +So instead of answering her brother's question, she sat a little +straighter in her chair, and compressed her lips. + +He smiled faintly at that and added, "Anyhow she said she'd be along in a +minute or two." + +"Oh," said Miss Wollaston, "you have wakened her then. I would have +suggested that the poor child be left asleep this morning." + +Now he saw that she had something to tell him. "Nothing went wrong last +night after I left, I hope." + +"Oh, not wrong," Miss Wollaston conceded, "only the Whitneys went of +course, when you did and the Byrnes, and Wallace Hood, but Portia Stanton +and that new husband of hers stayed. It was his doing, I suppose. You +might have thought he was waiting all the evening for just that thing to +happen. They went up to Paula's studio--Paula invited me, of course, but +I excused myself--and they played and sang until nearly two o'clock this +morning. It was all perfectly natural, I suppose. And still I did think +that Paula might have sung earlier, down in the drawing-room when you +asked her to." + +"She was perfectly right to refuse." He caught his sister up rather short +on that, "I shouldn't have asked her. It was very soon after dinner. They +weren't a musical crowd anyway, except Novelli. It's utterly unfair to +expect a person like Paula to perform unless she happens to be in the +mood for it. At that she's extremely amiable about it; never refuses +unless she has some real reason. What her reason was last night, I don't +know, but you may be perfectly sure it was sufficient." + +He would have realized that he was protesting too much even if he had not +read that comment in his sister's face. But somehow he couldn't have +pulled himself up but for old Nat's appearance with the platter of ham +and eggs and the first installment of the wheat cakes. He was really +hungry and he settled down to them in silence. + +And, watching him between the little bites of dry toast and sips of +coffee, Miss Wollaston talked about Portia Stanton. Everybody, indeed, +was talking about Portia these days but Miss Wollaston had a special +privilege. She had known Portia's mother rather well,--Naomi Rutledge +Stanton, the suffrage leader, she was--and she had always liked and +admired Portia; liked her better than the younger and more sensational +daughter, Rose. + +Miss Wollaston hoped, hoped with all her heart that Portia had not made +a tragic mistake in this matter of her marriage. She couldn't herself +quite see how a sensible girl like Portia could have done anything so +reckless as to marry a romantic young Italian pianist, ten years at +least her junior. It couldn't be denied that the experiment seemed to +have worked well so far. Portia certainly seemed happy enough last +night; contented. There was a sort of glow about her there never was +before. But the question was how long would it last. How long would it +be before those big brown Italian eyes began looking soulfully at +somebody else; somebody more.... + +It was here that Miss Wollaston chopped herself off short, hearing--this +time it was no false alarm--Paula's step in the hall. She'd have been +amazed, scandalized, profoundly indignant, dear good-hearted lady that +she was, had some expert in the psychology of the unconscious pointed +out to her that the reason she had begun talking about Portia was that +it gave her an outlet for expressing her misgivings about her own +brother's marriage. Paula, of course, was a different thing altogether. + +What a beautiful creature she was, even at eight o'clock in the morning +at the end of an abruptly terminated night's sleep. She looked lovelier +than ever as she came in through the shadowy doorway. She wasn't a true +blonde like Mary. Her thick strong hair was a sort of golden +glorification of brown, her skin a warm tone of ivory. Her eyes, set wide +apart, were brown, and the lashes, darker than her hair, enhanced the +size of them. The look of power about Paula, inseparable from her beauty, +was not one of Miss Wollaston's feminine ideals. It spoke in every line +of her figure as well as in the lineaments of her face; in the short, +rather broad, yet cleanly defined nose; in the generous width of her +mouth; in the sculpturesque poise of her neck upon her shoulders. + +Paula's clothes, too, worried her elderly sister-in-law a little, +especially the house-dresses that she affected. They were beautiful, +heaven knew; more simply beautiful perhaps than it was right that +clothes should be. There was nothing indecent about them. Dear Paula was +almost surprisingly nice in those ways. But that thing she had on now, +for instance;--a tunic of ecru colored silk that she had pulled on over +her head, with a little over-dress of corn colored tulle, weighted +artfully here and there that it mightn't fly away. And a string of big +lumpish amber beads. She could have got into that costume in about two +minutes and there was probably next to nothing under it. From the +on-looker's point of view, it mightn't violate decorum at all; indeed, +clearly did not. But Miss Wollaston herself, if she hadn't been more or +less rigidly laced, stayed, gartered, pinched, pried and pulled about; +if she could have moved freely in any direction without an +admonitory--"take care"--from some bit of whalebone somewhere, wouldn't +have felt dressed at all. There ought to be something perpetually +penitential about clothes. The biblical story of the fall of man made +that clear, didn't it? + +John sprang up as his wife came into the room; went around the table and +held her chair for her. "My dear, I didn't know I was robbing you of half +a night's sleep," he said. "You should have turned me out." + +She reached up her strong white arms (the tulle sleeves did fall away +from them rather alarmingly, and Miss Wollaston concentrated her +attention on the spiggot of the coffee urn) for his head as he bent over +her and pulled it down for a kiss. + +"I didn't need any more sleep. I had such a joyous time last night. I +sang the whole of _Maliela_, and a lot of _Thais_. I don't know what all. +Novelli's a marvel; the best accompanist I've found yet. But, oh, my +darling, I did feel such a pig about it." + +He was back in his own chair by now and his sister breathed a little +more freely. + +"Pig?" he asked. + +"Oh, because you weren't there," said Paula. "Because I didn't sing +before, when you asked me to." + +"Dearest!" John remonstrated,--pleased though with the apology, you could +see with half an eye,--"it was inexcusable of me to have asked you. It +was a dull crowd from a musical point of view. The only thing I minded +was having, myself, put you into a position where you had to refuse. I am +glad you were able to make it up to yourself after." + +"That was not why I didn't," Paula said. She always spoke rather +deliberately and never interrupted any one. "I mean it wasn't because the +others weren't especially musical. But I couldn't have sung without +asking Novelli to play. And he couldn't have refused--being new and a +little on trial you know. And that drawing-room piano, so badly out of +tune, would have been terrible for him. There's no knowing what he +mightn't have done." + +John's face beamed triumph. "I might have known you had an unselfish +reason for it," he said. He didn't look at his sister but, of course, the +words slanted her way. + +It was perfectly characteristic of Miss Wollaston that she did not, +however, make any immediate attempt to set herself right. She attended +first very competently to all of Paula's wants in the way of breakfast +and saw her fairly launched on her chilled grapefruit. Then she said, "A +man is coming to tune the piano this morning." + +It was more than a statement of fact. Indeed I despair of conveying to +you all the implications and moral reflections which Miss Wollaston +contrived to pack into that simple sentence. + +The drawing-room piano was what an artillerist would speak of as one of +the sensitive points along the family front. It had been a present to the +Wollaston household from the eldest of John's brothers, the unmarried one +Miss Wollaston had kept house for so many years before he died; the last +present, it turned out, he ever made to anybody. Partly perhaps, because +it was a sacred object, the Wollaston children took to treating it rather +irreverently. The "Circassian grand" was one of its nicknames and the +"Siamese Elephant" another. It did glare in the otherwise old-fashioned +Dearborn Avenue drawing-room and its case did express a complete +recklessness of expense rather than any more austere esthetic impulse. + +Paula ignored it in rather a pointed way; being a musician she might have +been expected to see that it was kept in tune. She had a piano of her own +up in the big room at the top of the house that had once been the nursery +and over this instrument, she made, Miss Wollaston felt, a silly amount +of fuss. Supposedly expert tuners were constantly being called in to do +things to it and nothing they did ever seemed to afford Paula any +satisfaction. + +The aura that surrounded Miss Wollaston's remark included, then, the +conviction that the drawing-room piano, being a sacred memory, couldn't +be out of tune in the first place; that Paula, in the second, ought to +have attended to it; and third (this is rather complex but I guarantee +the accuracy of it) the fact that it was to be tuned this morning, really +made it a perfectly possible instrument for Mr. Novelli to have played +upon last night. + +John missed none of that. He hadn't been observing his sister during half +a century for nothing. He glanced over to see how much of it his wife +took in; but the fact, in this instance, was all that interested Paula. + +"It was awfully clever of you," she said, "to get hold of a tuner. Who is +he? Where did you find him?" + +"I found him in the park," said Miss Wollaston brightly, responding to +the little thrill you always felt when Paula focused her attention upon +you. "He was sitting on a bench when I drove by just after lunch. I don't +know why I noticed him but I did and when I came back hours later, he was +still sitting there on the same bench. He was in uniform; a private, I +think, certainly not an officer. It struck me as rather sad, his sitting +there like that, so I stopped the car and spoke to him. He got his +discharge just the other day, it seemed. I asked him if he had a job and +he said, no, he didn't believe he had. Then I asked him what his trade +was and he said he was a piano tuner. So I told him he might come this +morning and tune ours." + +It was Paula's bewildered stare that touched off John's peal of laughter. +Alone with his sister he might have smiled to himself over the lengths +she went in the satisfaction of her passion for good works. But Paula, he +knew, would just as soon have invited a strange bench-warming dentist to +come and work on her teeth by way of being kind to him. + +Miss Wollaston, a flush of annoyance on her faded cheeks, began making +dignified preparations to leave the table and John hastily apologized. "I +laughed," he said,--disingenuously because it wouldn't do to implicate +Paula--"over the idea that perhaps he didn't want a job at all and made +up on the spur of the moment the unlikeliest trade he could think of. And +how surprised he must have been when you took him up." + +"He did not seem surprised," Miss Wollaston said. "He thanked me very +nicely and said he would come this morning. At ten, if that would be +convenient. Of course if you wish to put it off...." + +"Not at all," said John. He rose when she did and--this was an extra bit, +an act of contrition for having wounded her--went with her to the door. +"It was a good idea," he said; "an excellent way of--of killing two birds +with one stone." + +Paula was smiling over this when he came back to her. "It doesn't matter, +does it?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "It isn't that it's out of tune, really; it's +just--hopeless." + +It was strange how like a knife thrust that word of hers--hopeless--went +through him. Perfectly illogical, of course; she was not speaking of his +life and hers but of that ridiculous drawing-room piano. Somehow the mere +glow she had brought into the room with her, the afterglow of an +experience he had no share in producing, had become painful to him; made +him feel old. He averted his eyes from her with an effort and stared down +at his empty plate. + +A moment later she came around the table and seated herself, facing him, +upon the arm of his chair; clasped his neck with her two hands. "You're +tired," she said. "How much sleep did you have last night?" And on his +admitting that he hadn't had any, she exclaimed against his working +himself to death like that. + +No memory, though he made a conscious effort to recover it, of his +audacious success during the small hours of that morning in bringing +triumphantly into the world the small new life that Pollard would have +destroyed, came back to fortify him; no trace of his own afterglow that +had so fascinated and alarmed his sister. "I shall sleep fast for an hour +or two this morning and make it up," he told Paula. + +"I do wish you might have been there last night," she said after a little +silence. "I don't believe I've ever sung so well;--could have, at least, +if there had been room enough to turn around in. It was all there; it's +getting bigger all the time. Not just the voice, if you know what I mean, +darling, but what I could do with it." + +"It was partly Novelli, I suspect," he said. "Having him for an +accompanist, I mean. He's very good indeed, isn't he?" + +"Oh, yes, he's good," she assented absently. "Awfully good. And he is a +nice furry little enthusiastic thing; like a faun, rather; exciting to +play with of course. But it wasn't that. It's you, really--being in love +with you the way I am. I suppose that's the very best thing that could +possibly have happened to me. I'm another person altogether from that +girl you found in Vienna. Just where she left off, I begin." + +She uttered a little laugh then of sheer exuberance and with a strong +embrace, pressed his head hard against her breast. He yielded passively, +made no response of his own beyond a deep-drawn breath or two. A moment +later when she had released him and risen to her feet, he rose too. + +"Would Novelli be procurable?" he asked. "Could he be engaged regularly, +as an accompanist for you and so on?" + +She looked at him rather oddly. "Why, I don't need him," she said, "as +long as I am just playing. Of course, if I were to go regularly to work, +somebody like him would be almost necessary." + +There was a tight little silence for a few seconds after that, he once +more evading her eyes. "It seems to me you work most of the time as it +is," he said. Then he announced his intention of going up-stairs to take +a nap. He wasn't going to the hospital until eleven. + +He did go up to his room and lay down upon his bed and, eventually, he +slept. But for an hour, his mind raced like an idle motor. That nonsense +of Lucile's about Portia Stanton's folly in marrying a young musician +whose big Italian eyes would presently begin looking soulfully at some +one else. Had they already looked like that at Paula? Jealousy itself +wasn't a base emotion. Betraying it was all that mattered. You couldn't +help feeling it for any one you loved. Paula, bending over that furry +faun-like head, reading off the same score with him, responding to the +same emotions from the music.... Fantastic, of course. There could be no +sane doubt as to who it was that Paula was in love with. That embrace of +hers, just now. Curious how it terrified him. He had felt like a mouse +under the soft paw of a cat. An odd symptom of fatigue. + +What a curious thing life was. How widely it departed from the +traditional patterns. Here in his own case, that Fate should save the one +real passion of his life for the Indian summer of it. And that it should +be a reciprocated passion. The wiseacres were smiling at him, he +supposed; smiling as the world always smiled at the spectacle of +infatuate age mating with tolerant, indifferently acquiescent youth. +Smiled and wondered how long it would be before youth awoke and turned to +its own. Well, he could afford to smile at the wiseacres. And at the +green inexperienced young, as well, who thought that love was exclusively +their affair--children the age of Mary taking their sentimental thrills +so seriously! + +Four years now he had been married to Paula and the thing had never +chilled,--never gone stale. How different from the love of his youth that +had led to his former marriage, was this burning constant flame. Paula +was utterly content with him. She had given up her career for him.--No. +She hadn't done that. He had not asked her to do that. Had not, on the +contrary, her marriage really furthered it? Was she not more of a person +to-day than the discouraged young woman he had found singing for +pittances the leading dramatic soprano roles in the minor municipal +operas of Germany and Austria? Wasn't that what she had said this +morning--that falling in love with him was the best thing that could +possibly have happened to her? He had taken it wrong when she said it, as +if she were regarding him just as an instrument that served her purpose, +a purpose that lay beyond him; outside him. + +That was what had given him that momentary pang of terror. Fatigue, of +course. He ought to go to sleep. Paula was refraining from her morning +practise just so that he could. Or was that why? Was she dreaming, up in +the music room where she was never to be disturbed,--of last night--of +Novelli? Damnation.... + + + + +CHAPTER II + +SEA DRIFT + + +Paula went up to the music room after breakfast, stood at one of its +open windows for a few minutes breathing in the air of an unusually +mild March and then abruptly left it; dressed for the street and went +out for a walk. + +She was quite as much disturbed over the scene in the dining-room as her +husband had been. His flash of jealousy over the little Italian pianist, +instantly recognizable through its careful disguise, had only endeared +John Wollaston to her further, if that were possible. She had laughed and +hugged his worried old head tight against her breast. + +But his refusal to face facts about her musical career was another thing +altogether. Once more he had, patently and rather pitiably, evaded the +subject of her going seriously to work. Did he think that she could go +on indefinitely parading a parlor accomplishment for his society +friends,--singing nice little English songs for Wallace Hood? It was too +ridiculous! That hadn't been their understanding when she married him. + +What she had been sure of last night as never before, she had tried down +there in the dining-room to convey to him; that her powers were ripe, +were crying out for use. She had failed simply because he had refused to +see what she was driving at. It was just another form of jealousy really, +she supposed. + +She was not an introspective person, but this, clearly, was something +that wanted thinking over. It was to "think" that she went out for the +walk. Only, being Paula, the rhythm of her stride, the sparkle of the +spring air, the stream of sharp new-minted sensations incessantly +assailing eye and ear, soon swamped her problem; sunk it beneath the +level of consciousness altogether. Long before ten o'clock when she came +swinging along Dearborn Avenue toward her husband's house, she had +"walked off" her perplexities. + +A block from the house she found herself overtaking a man in uniform and +slackened her pace a little in order not to pass him. There was something +unmilitary about the look of him that mildly amused her. It was not that +he slouched nor shuffled nor that he was ill-made, though he was probably +one of those unfortunates whom issue uniforms never fit. He carried a +little black leather satchel, and it broke over Paula that here perhaps +was Lucile's piano tuner. She half formed the intention to stay away +another hour or two until he should have had time to finish. But he +interfered with that plan by stopping in front of the house and looking +at it as if making up his mind whether to go in. + +It was an odd look he had, but distinctly an engaging one. He was not +criticizing the architecture, if so it could be called, of the +house-front. Yet there was a sort of comfortable detachment about him +which precluded the belief that it was a mere paralyzing shyness that +held him there. + +Paula abandoned her intention of walking by. She stopped instead as she +came up to him and said, "Are you coming in here? If you are, I'll let +you in." She fished an explanatory latch-key out of her wrist-bag as she +went up the steps. + +"Why," he said, "I believe this is the house where I'm expected to +tune a piano." + +In the act of thrusting home her key, Paula stopped short, turned +irrepressibly and stared at him. She was one of that very small number of +American-born singers who take the English language seriously and she +knew good speech when she heard it. It was one of the qualities which had +first attracted her to Doctor John. This man's speaking voice would have +arrested her attention pleasantly anywhere. Coming from the private +soldier Lucile had told to come round to tune the piano, it really +startled her. She turned back to the door and opened it. + +"Yes," she said, "they're expecting you. Come in and I'll show you +the piano." + +She might, of course, merely have indicated the drawing-room door to him +with a nod and gone up-stairs, but she was determined now to wait and +hear him say something more. So she led the way into the drawing-room and +quite superfluously indicated the Circassian grand with a gesture. Then +she looked back at him quickly enough to surprise the expression that +flickered across his face at the sight of it. A mere cocking of one +eyebrow it was, but amusingly expressive. So, too, was the way he walked +over toward it, with an air of cautious determination, of readiness for +anything, that made Paula want to laugh. He dropped down sidewise on the +bench, turned up the lid and dug his fingers into the keyboard. + +At the noise he evoked from that pampered instrument she did laugh aloud. +It was not a piano tuner's arpeggio but a curiously teasing mixed +dissonance she couldn't begin to identify. She thought she heard him say, +"My God!" but couldn't be sure. He repeated his chord pianissimo and held +it down, reached up and echoed it in the upper half of the keyboard; then +struck, hard, two octaves in the bass. + +"What a piano!" he said. "What a damned piano!" He made a sort of effort +to pull himself up; apologized (she thought that was what he meant to +do) for the damn. But as he turned back to the piano and struck another +chord or two, she could see that his sense of outrage was mounting +steadily all the time. + +"You can't tune a piano like this."--He pushed up the cover and stared +gloomily at the strings. "A mincing sickly thing like this. It's all +wrong. The scale is all wrong. The man who designed it ought to be hung. +But he called it a piano and sold it for a piano and I'm expected to come +in and tune it. Slick and smear it over and leave it sounding sicklier +and tubbier and more generally disgusting than ever. You might as well +take a painted harlot off the streets"--he glared at the ornate +extravagance of the case--"and expect to make a gentlewoman of her with +one lesson in deportment. I won't tune it. It's better left as it is. In +its shame." + +"Well," said Paula, letting go a long breath, "you've said it." + +Then she dropped into a chair and began to laugh. Never again, she felt +sure, would the drawing-room piano be able to cause her a moment's +irritation. This astonishing piano tuner of Lucile's had converted it, +with his new christening, into a source of innocent merriment. "The +painted harlot" covered the ground. Clear inspiration was what that was. +The way he went on glowering at it, digging every now and then a new and +more abominable chord out of its entrails made her mirth the more +uncontrollable. + +"It isn't funny, you know, a thing like this," he remonstrated at last. +"It's serious." + +"It would be serious," she retorted with sudden severity, "if you had +said all that or anything in the least like that to Miss Wollaston. +Because she really loves it. She has adopted it." + +"Was she the lady who spoke to me in the park?" His evident consternation +over this aspect of the case made Paula smile as she nodded yes. + +"That was an act of real kindness," he said earnestly. "Not mere good +nature. It doesn't grow on every bush." + +To this she eagerly agreed. "She is kind; she's a dear." But when she +saw him looking unhappily at the piano again, she said (for she hadn't +the slightest intention of abandoning him now), "There's another one, +quite a different sort of one, in the music room up-stairs. Would you +like to come along and look at that?" + +He followed her tractably enough, but up in her studio before looking at +the piano, he asked her a question or two. Had he the name right? And was +the lady related to Doctor Wollaston? + +"She's his sister," said Paula, adding, "and I am his wife. Why, do you +know him?" + +"I talked with him once. He came out to the factory to see my father and +I happened to be there. Two or three years ago, that was. He did an +operation on my sister that saved her life. He is a great man." He added, +"My name's Anthony March, but he wouldn't remember me." + +He sat down at the instrument, went over the keyboard from bottom, to top +and back again with a series of curious modulations. Then opening his bag +and beginning to get out his tools, he said, "Before I went into the +army, there was a man named Bernstein in these parts, who used to +perpetrate outrages like this on pianos." + +"Yes," said Paula, "he tuned this one two weeks ago." + +Without so much as a by your leave, Anthony March went to work. + +It was Paula's childlike way to take any pleasurable event simply as a +gift from heaven without any further scrutiny of its source; with no +labored attempt to explain its arrival and certainly with no misgivings +as to whether or not she was entitled to it. Anthony March was such a +gift. By the time he had got to work on her own piano, she knew he was +pure gold and settled down joyously to make the most of him. + +It was not until she attempted to give an account to the Wollastons at +dinner that night, of the day they had spent together--for they had made +a day of it--that she realized there was anything odd, not to say +astonishing, about the episode. How in the first place did it happen that +it was Paula's piano he tuned instead of the one in the drawing-room? +This was, of course, inexplicable until she could get John by himself and +tell him about it. One couldn't report to Lucile his phrase about the +painted harlot. She had to content herself with stressing the fact that +he intended to tune the drawing-room piano after he had finished with +hers and then somehow he hadn't got around to it. + +But why had an unaccredited wanderer whom Lucile had found in the park +even been given a chance at the piano up-stairs? Well, he had looked to +Paula like an artist when she had let him in the door. You could tell, +with people like that, if you had an eye for such matters. And then his +recognition of Bernstein's nefarious handiwork had clenched her +conviction. Certainly she had been right about it; he had absolutely +bewitched that piano of hers. She didn't believe there was another such +tuner in the United States. If they would come up-stairs after dinner, +she'd show them. They had always thought she was unnecessarily fussy +about it, but now they should see they were mistaken. It was like +unveiling a statue. The poor thing had been there all the time, covered +up so that you couldn't hear it. She was so excited about it she could +hardly leave it alone. + +And he had been as delighted with the results as she herself. After he +had played it a while for her (oh, he didn't play well, atrociously badly +really, but that didn't matter; it only made it all the more exciting) he +made her play for him. Paula smiled reminiscently when she added that he +had sat all the while she was playing, on the bare floor under the piano +where he could feel the vibrations as well as hear them. He had paid her +an odd sort of compliment too, when he came crawling out, saying that he +had assumed from the scores on the piano that she was a singer but that +she played like a musician,--only not a pianist! + +He was a genius, absolutely a genius of the first water, when it came to +tuning pianos. Whether his talent as a composer ran to any such lengths +as that she, of course, didn't know. If what he had played for her had +been his own, any of it, it was awfully modern and interesting, at +least. You could tell that even though it kept him swearing at himself +all the time for not being able to play it. And from something he said +at lunch... + +"Lunch!" Miss Wollaston gasped (she had been away from home all day). "Do +you mean you had lunch with him?" + +"Why not?" Paula wanted to know. "Me to have gone down-stairs and eaten +all alone and had a tray sent up for him? That would have been so silly, +I never even thought of it. He's a real person. I like him a lot. And I +don't know when I've had such a nice day." + +Here was where Paula's difficulties began. Because when they asked her +who he was, where he lived, where he came from, what his experiences in +the army had been, and whether he had been to France or not, she had to +profess herself upon all these topics totally uninformed. His name she +happened to know; it was Anthony March. He told her that, somehow, +right at the beginning, though she couldn't remember how the fact had +cropped out. + +As to the other matters her husband and his sister were seeking +information about she simply hadn't had time to get around to things like +that. She thought he might have been a farmer once or some such sort of +person. He liked the country anyway. He had spent a lot of time, he told +her, tramping about in Illinois and Iowa, earning his way by tuning +farmers' pianos. + +He hated Puccini and spoke rather disrespectfully of Wagner as a +spell-binder. He liked Wolf-Ferrari pretty well; the modern he was really +crazy about was Montemezzi. But he had made her sing oceans of +Gluck,--both the _Iphigenia_ and _Euridice_. It was awfully funny too +because he would sing the other parts wherever they happened to lie, +tenor, bass, contralto, anything, in the most awful voice you ever heard, +though his speaking voice was lovely. Let John just wait until he heard +it. It was almost as nice as his own. Oh, he was coming back again some +time. He had promised to bring over some songs of his own composing for +her to try. + +It was at this point or thereabouts that John precipitated a crisis by +asking how much this paragon of a piano tuner had charged her for his +professional services. Paula stared at him, stricken. + +"Why," she said, "I don't believe I paid him anything. I know I didn't. I +never thought of it at all. Neither did he, for that matter though, I'm +sure of it." + +This provoked Lucile into an outburst, rare with her, of outspoken +indignation. The man, delinquent as he had been in the matter of the +drawing-room piano, became once more her protege, her soldier whom she +had found in the park and attempted to do a kindness to. Paula had +kept him fussing over her piano all day and then let him go without, +for all she knew, money enough to buy his supper or procure a lodging +for the night. + +John, though he made less commotion about it, took his wife's negligence +even more seriously for he set about attempting to repair it. "You're +quite sure," he asked in his crisp, consulting-room manner--a manner +Paula was happily unfamiliar with--"You're quite sure he told you +nothing about himself beyond his bare name? You've got that right, +haven't you? Anthony March?" + +"Yes," said Paula uncertainly, "I'm absolutely sure of that." + +Had he any insignia on his uniform?--little bronze numerals on his +collar--anything like that that she could remember? That would tell them +what organization he belonged to and might give them a clue. + +Here Lucile got drawn into the inquisition. She had seen him and talked +to him. Had she noticed anything of the sort? But Lucile had not. She +had, naturally, deferred all inquiries until he came to tune the piano; +and had she been called as she felt she should have been.... + +But John, it appeared, was not interested in pursuing that line. He +turned back to Paula. "I wish you'd begin at the beginning, my dear, at +the time you let him into the house, and try to remember as nearly as you +can everything that you said to him and that he said to you. He may have +said something casually that you didn't remark at the time which would be +of the greatest help to us now." + +Paula wasn't very hopeful of obtaining any result in this way, but she +dutifully went to work trying to think. She was perfectly amiable about +it all. Presently her husband prompted her. "How did he happen to tell +you what his name was? Can you remember that?" + +After a minute, she did. "Why," she cried, lighting up, "he said he knew +you but you wouldn't remember him. He said you did an operation on his +sister once--that saved her life." + +"An unmarried sister?" he asked. + +"What difference ... Oh, I see, because if she was married her name +wouldn't be March. No, he didn't say anything about that. He did say +something, though, about a factory. You went out to the factory to see +his father and he was there." + +John Wollaston's face went blank for a minute and his eyelids drooped +shut. Then a quick jerk of the head and a sharp expulsion of breath +announced success. "That's all right," he said. "Thank the Lord, I've +got it now." + +It would have seemed absurd to Paula, had she been capable of regarding +anything he did in that light, that he should take a trivial matter like +this so seriously. He couldn't have looked more relieved over the +successful finish of a difficult operation. + +"That happens to be a case I'll never forget," he went on to explain. +"Professionally speaking, it was unique, but it had points of human +interest as well. The girl was a patient in one of the wards at the +Presbyterian. I didn't get a look at her until the last minute when it +was desperate. Her father was opposed to the operation--a religious +scruple, it turned out. Didn't want God's will interfered with. He was a +workman, a skilled workman in a piano factory. There was no time to lose +so I drove out there and got him; converted him on the way back to the +hospital. I remember the son, now I think of it; by his speech, too. I +remember thinking that the mother must have been a really cultivated +woman. Well, it's all right. I've got the address in the files at the +office. I'll send a letter there in the morning and enclose a check. How +much ought it to be?" + +Once more Paula did not know. Hadn't, she protested, an idea; and when +John asked her how much she paid Bernstein, she didn't know that either. +It all went on the bill. + +"Well, that's easy," said John. "I've got last month's bills in my desk. +All right, I'll look into it. You needn't bother about it any more." + +An approximation to a sniff from Miss Wollaston conveyed the comment +that Paula hadn't bothered appreciably about it from the beginning, but +neither of the others paid any attention to that. + +As it fell out, John might have spared his labors because at eight +o'clock or thereabouts the next morning just as he was sitting down to +breakfast, Anthony March came back to repair his omission of the day +before and tune the drawing-room piano. + +A minor domestic detail of that sort would normally have fallen within +Lucile's province, but John decisively took it away from her. + +"When I finish breakfast," he said, "I'll write him a check and take it +in to him." He added, "I'm curious to see what this new discovery of +Paula's looks like." + +That was exactly what he felt, an amused comfortable curiosity. Nothing +in the least like that flash of jealousy he had felt over Novelli. If it +had occurred to him to try to explain the difference to himself and had +he taken the trouble to skim off the superficial explanation,--that +Portia Stanton's husband belonged in Paula's world and that a tramp +genius who came around to tune pianos did not,--he might have got down to +the recognition of the fact that the character Paula had sketched for him +last night was a grotesque and not therefore to be taken seriously. You +could not, at least, do anything but smile over a man who sat on the +floor under Paula's piano while she played and came crawling out to +express surprise that a singer should be a musician as well. + +So the look of the man he found in the drawing-room stopped him rather +short. Anthony March had taken off the ill-fitting khaki blouse and the +sleeves of his olive-drab uniform shirt were rolled up above the elbows. +He was sitting sidewise on the piano bench, his left hand on the +keyboard, his right making imperceptible changes in the tension of one of +the strings. His implement, John's quick eye noticed, was not the +long-handled L shaped affair he had always seen tuners use but a T shaped +thing that put the tuner's hand exactly above the pin. + +"It must take an immense amount of strength," he observed, "to tune a +piano with a wrench like that." + +March turned and with a pleasant sort of smile wished him a good morning. +But he finished ironing the wave out of a faulty unison before he replied +to John's remark. He arose from the bench as he spoke. "It does; but it +is more a matter of knack really. A great tuner named Clark taught me, +and he learned it from Jonas Chickering himself. Old Jonas wouldn't allow +any of his grand pianos to be tuned with an L head wrench." + +"My wife," said John, "recalled you to me last night, in the effort to +remedy her omission to pay you for your services yesterday. I remember +your sister's case very distinctly. I hope she is ..." + +"She is quite well, thank you," March said. Oddly enough his manner +stiffened a little. + +John hastily produced his check. It had struck him as possible that March +might suspect him of hinting that one gratuitous service ought to offset +the other. + +"I hope the amount is satisfactory," he said. + +March glanced at the check and smiled. "It's rather more than +satisfactory; I should call it handsome. Thank you very much." He tucked +the check into the pocket of his shirt. + +"My wife's immensely pleased over what you did to her piano. I'm sure she +will be glad to do all she can in the way of recommending you among her +musical friends." + +March looked at him in consternation. "Oh, she mustn't do that!" he +cried. "I hope she won't--recommend me to any one." + +John's sudden unwelcome surmise must have been legible in his face +because March then said earnestly and quite as if the doctor had spoken +his thought aloud, "Oh, it isn't that. I mean, I haven't done anything +disgraceful. It's only that I know too many musicians as it +is--professional pianists and such. If they find out I'm back, they'll +simply make a slave of me. I don't need to earn much money and I like to +live my own way, but it's hard to deny people what they are determined to +get." He added thoughtfully, "I dare say you understand that, sir." + +John Wollaston nodded. He understood very well indeed. He checked on his +tongue the words, "Only I _have_ to earn a lot of money." "You are a +composer, too, my wife tells me." + +"Yes," March said, "but that isn't the point exactly. Put it that I enjoy +traveling light and that I don't like harness. Though this one,"--he +glanced down at his uniform,--"hasn't been so bad." He turned toward the +piano with the evident idea of going back to work. + +"Well," John said, "I must be off. You've a good philosophy of life if +you can make it work. Not many men can. Good-by. We'll meet again some +time, I hope." + +"I hope so too," said Anthony March. + +John went out and closed the drawing-room door behind him. Then he left +the house without going up-stairs and saying hello to Paula and sitting +down on the edge of her bed, as he had meant to do, and telling her all +about his talk with the piano tuner. + +It really was late and he must be getting started. Only why had he closed +the drawing-room door so carefully behind him? So that his wife shouldn't +be disturbed by the infernal racket those fellows always made tuning +pianos? Or so that she mightn't even know, until he had finished his work +and gone, that Anthony March had come back at all? And not knowing, +should not come down _en negligee_ and ask whether he had brought his +songs for her. Had he brought them? Certainly John had given him a good +enough chance to say so. And if he had brought them and Paula did not +come, would he leave them for her with Nat? Or would he carry them away +in his little black satchel? + +All the way out to the hospital John kept turning Anthony March over in +his mind and the last thing to leave it was what had been the first +impression of all. The fine strength of that hand and wrist which tuned +grand pianos with a T wrench. + +He hated himself for having shut the door. + +And as it happened this act did not prevent Paula from finding March. The +tyrant who looked after her hair had given her an appointment that +morning at ten. So, a little before that hour and just as March was +finishing off his job, she came down, dressed for the street. She came +into the drawing-room and with good-humored derision, smiled at him. + +"I knew you'd come and do it," she told him. + +"It isn't going to be so bad," he answered. "Moszkowski, +Chaminade,--quite a little of Chopin for that matter,--will go pretty +well on it." + +"Did you bring my songs?" she asked. + +From the chair that he had thrown his blouse upon, he produced a flat +package neatly wrapped in brown paper. And as she went over to the window +with it, tearing the wrappers away as she walked, he went back to his +work at the piano. + +"Don't do that," she said, as he struck a chord or two. "I can't read if +you do." But almost instantly she added with a laugh, "Oh, all right, go +ahead. I can't read this anyway. Why, it's frightful!" She came swiftly +toward the piano and stood the big flat quires of score paper on the +rack. "Show me how this goes," she commanded, but he pushed back a little +with a gesture almost of fright. + +"No," he protested sharply. "I can't. I can't begin to play that stuff." + +She remained standing beside his shoulder, looking at the score. + +"They're strange words," she said, and began reading them to herself, +half aloud, haltingly. + +"'Low hangs the moon. It rose late, +It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.'" + +"Walt Whitman," he told her. "They're all out of a poem called +_Sea-Drift_." + +She went on reading, now audibly, now with a mere silent movement of the +lips, half puzzled, half entranced, and catching--despite her protest +that she could not read the music,--some intimations of its intense +strange beauty. + +"' ..._do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?... Loud I +call to you, my love ... Surely you must know who is here ... O rising +stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise ... with some of you ... +O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere_ ...'" + +With a shake of the head, like one trying to stop the weaving of a spell, +she turned the pages back to the beginning. + +"This means Novelli," she said. "I'll get him. I'll get him this morning. +He's the best accompanist in Chicago. We'll go to work on them and when +we've got them presentable, I'll let you know and sing them to you. +Where do you live?" + +He got up for a paper and pencil and wrote out an address and a telephone +number. She was still staring at that first page of the score when he +brought it back to her. + +"I've never heard any of those songs myself," he told her. + +At that she looked around at him, looked steadily into his face for a +moment and then her eyes filled with tears. She reached out both hands +and took him by the shoulders. "Well, you're going to hear them this +time, my dear," she said. As she moved away, she added in a more +matter-of-fact tone, "Just as soon as we can work them up, in a few days +perhaps. I'll let you know." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE PEACE BASIS + + +There were four in their party but it was only with Alfred Baldwin that +Mary Wollaston danced. The other man--Black his name was, and he came +from Iowa City or Dubuque or thereabouts--devoted all his attention to +Baldwin's wife. He was very rich, very much married--out in Iowa--and +whenever he made his annual business trip to New York, he liked to have a +real New York time. They had dined together at the Baldwins' apartment +with a vague idea of going afterward to see a play of Baldwin's then +drawing toward the close of a successful season's run. But dinner had +been late and they had lingered too long over it to make this excursion +worth while. It had amused both Mary and Christabel to discover Black's +secret hope of being taken back-stage and introduced to the beautiful +young star who was playing in the piece and taking her out to supper with +them. He didn't know that Baldwin hated her with a perfect hatred and +never got within speaking distance of her if he could help it. + +So, by way of making up to the western visitor for his disappointment +they taxied up-town about ten o'clock to the brightest, loudest and most +fantastically expensive of New York's dancing restaurants. Once there, he +took command of the party; confidently addressed the head waiter by his +first name and began "opening wine" with a lavish hand. He was flirting +in what he conceived to be quite a desperate and depraved manner with +Christabel, and what enhanced his pleasure in this entertainment was that +he did it all right under the nose of the husband, who obviously didn't +mind a bit. He would talk eloquently when he got home, with carefully +selected corroborative details, about the wickedness of New York. + +Mary liked the Baldwins. Christabel was on the executive committee of +their Fund and one of the best and steadiest and most sensible supporters +it had. She was a real person. Baldwin, himself, whom she hadn't known so +long nor so well and had regarded from afar as a rather formidable +celebrity, proved on better acquaintance, though witty and sophisticated, +to be as comfortable as an old glove. Altogether they were the nearest +thing to friends that her long sojourn in New York had given her. She had +sometimes thought rather wildly of putting them to the test and seeing +whether they were real friends or not. + +To-night, though, even they irritated her. She wished Christabel would +snub that appalling bounder, Black, as he deserved. How could she go on +playing up to him like that! As for Baldwin, she wished he would just +dance with her and not talk. She supposed that the amount of alcohol they +had consumed since seven o'clock had something to do with his verging +upon the vein, the Broadway sentimental vein, that he had got started on +and couldn't seem to let alone. + +It wasn't new to Mary. Indeed it was a phenomenon familiarly associated +in her mind with Forty-second Street restaurants and late hours and +strong drink, particularly gin. The crocodile tear for the good woman who +stayed at home; who didn't know; who never, please God! should know. The +tribute to flower-like innocence--the paper flower-like innocence of the +stage _ingenue_! + +Baldy wasn't as bad as that, couldn't ever conceivably be as bad as that, +no matter how much he had had to drink. Perhaps, if she had not been +hypersensitive to-night,--in an impossible mood for any sort of party +really--she might have failed to detect the familiar strain in his +sensible, rather fatherly talk. As it was, she thought she did detect it +and it made her want to scream--or swear! + +There is one point to be urged in Baldy's defense that Mary never learned +to allow for. Gin or no gin, the effect of contrast she presented to her +surroundings in a place like this, her look of a seraphic visitor gone +astray, would have given any one the impulse, at least, to rush to the +rescue. To begin with, it was not possible to credit her with the +twenty-five years she truly claimed; nineteen, in a soft colored evening +frock like the one she had on to-night, was about what one would have +guessed. Then, you never would have believed, short of discovering the +fact yourself, how strong she was; her slenderness and the fine +articulation of her joints made her look fragile. Her coloring helped the +illusion along, the clear unsophisticated blue of her eyes, the pallor of +her hair that the petals of a tea-rose could have got lost in,--it was, +literally, just about the tint of unbleached linen--and the pearly +translucence of her skin. If you got the opportunity to look close enough +to see that there wasn't a grain of powder upon it, not even between the +shoulder blades, it made you think of flower petals again. What clenched +the effect was her healthy capacity for complete relaxation when no +effort was required of her. She drooped a little and people thought she +looked tired. She never could see herself like that and never made due +allowance for the effect she produced, invariably upon strangers and not +infrequently upon an old friend. + +To-night, she lacked the name to label her mood by, rejecting rather +fiercely the one that kept offering itself. You couldn't be homesick when +home was the last place in the world you wanted to go back to--the place +you were desperately marshaling reasons for staying away from. + +It was the non-appearance of her brother, Rush, that had brought a lot of +dispersed feelings to a focus. She had heard nothing later from him than +the letter she referred to when she last wrote to her father. She had +expected a cable and it hadn't come. She had this morning gone over to +Hoboken to meet the transport he had said he expected to sail on, but +having got down to the pier a little late, after the debarkation had +begun, she could not be sure that she hadn't missed him. So she had gone +back to her tiny flat in Waverly Place and had spent the rest of the day +there, vainly hoping that he would turn up or at least that she should +get some word of him. And sitting around like that for hours and hours +she had, which was a silly thing to do, let her thoughts run wild over +things--a thing--that there was simply no sense in thinking about at all. + +It was an odd fact, which she had noted long before today, that anything +connected with home, a letter from her father or her aunt, news of the +doings of any of her Chicago friends (the birth of Olive Corbett's second +baby, for example), any vivid projection of a bit of the pattern of the +life into which she had once been woven, roused that nightmare memory. Or +gave, rather, to a memory which normally did not trouble her much, the +quality of a nightmare; a moment of paralyzed incredulity that it could +have happened to her; a pang of clear horror that it really and truly had +happened to her very self; to this Mary Wollaston who still lived in the +very place where it had happened. + +This afternoon, while she had sat awaiting from moment to moment the +appearance of her brother, or at least the sound of his voice over the +telephone, the pang had been prolonged into an agony. She had let herself +drift into a fantastic speculation of a sort that was perfectly new. What +if the boy who had shared that crazy adventure with her, himself an +officer bound overseas, had fallen in with Rush, made friends with him, +told him the story! + +This was pure melodrama, she knew. There was, in any external sense, +nothing to be feared. The thing had happened almost a year ago. It had +had no consequences--except this inexplicable one that her brother's +approach brought back the buried memory of it. Why should it cling like +that? Like an acid that wouldn't wash off! She was not, as far as her +mind went, ashamed of it. Never had been. But, waiving all the +extenuating circumstances--which had really surrounded the act--admitting +that it was a sin (this thing that she had done once and had, later, +learned the impossibility of ever doing again), was it any worse than +what her brother had probably done a score of times? + +What was this brother of hers going to be like? It wasn't possible, of +course, that she would find him the boy he had been five years ago, +before he went to France--though from some of his letters one might have +thought he hadn't changed a bit. Wasn't it likely that he'd turn out to +be some one she could cling to a little; confide her perplexities +to--some of them? Was there a chance that ripened, disillusioned, made +gentle and wise by the alchemy of the furnace he had come through, he +might prove to be the one person in the world to whom she could confide +everything? That would make an end to her nightmare, she felt sure. + +The question whether he was or was not going to turn out like that was +one presently to be answered. Until she knew the answer she didn't want +to think at all, least of all about those things which Baldy's talk +to-night kept rousing echoes of. + +"Oh, they all look good when they're far away," she said, picking that +bit of comic supplement slang deliberately to annoy him. "I don't believe +our grandfathers and grandmothers were always such models of decorum as +they tried, when they had grown old, to make us think. And the simple +primitive joys ... I believe an old-fashioned husking bee, if they had +plenty of hard cider to go with it, was just as bad as this--coarser if +not so vulgar. After all, most of these people will go virtuously home +to bed pretty soon and you'd find them back at work to-morrow morning not +any the worse, really, for this. It may be a rather poor sort of home +they go to, but how do you know that the vine-covered cottage you have +been talking about was any better?" + +"Not to mention," he added, in humorous concurrence, "that there was +probably typhoid in the well the old oaken bucket hung in. It seems odd +to be convicted of sentimentality by an innocent babe like you. But if +you had been looking at the party down at the end table behind you that +I've had under my eye for ten minutes, perhaps you'd feel more as I do. +No! don't turn around; they have been looking at us." + +"Moralizing over us, perhaps," she suggested. "Thinking how wicked we +probably were." + +"No," he said, "I happen to know the girls. They live down in our part of +town, just over in the Village, that is. They have been here six or eight +years. One of them was quite a promising young illustrator once. And +they're both well-bred--came obviously from good homes. And they've both +gone, well--clean over the edge." + +Somehow his innocent euphemism annoyed her. "You mean they are +prostitutes?" she asked. + +He frowned in protest at her employment of the word but assented +unequivocally. He was used--as who is not--to hearing young women discuss +outspokenly such topics but he couldn't forgive it from one who looked +like Mary Wollaston. + +"I have a hunch," he said, "that the two boys who are with them are +officers out of uniform. I noticed that they looked the other way +pretty carefully when that major who is sitting at the next table to +ours came in." + +"Let's dance again," she said. "I love this Hawaiian Moonlight thing." + +He saw her take the opportunity that rising from the table gave her for +a good square look at the party he had been talking about and some change +in her manner made him say with quick concern, "What is it?" + +But she ignored the question and stepped out upon the floor with him. +They had danced half-way round the room when she said quietly, "One of +the boys at that table is my brother Rush." + +Baldwin said, "He has seen you, I think." He felt her give a sort of gasp +before she replied but the words came steadily enough. + +"Oh, yes, we saw each other at the same time." + +He said nothing more, just went on dancing around the room with her in +silence, taking care, without appearing to do so, to cut the corner where +Rush was sitting, rather broadly. After two or three rounds of the floor, +she flagged a little and without asking any questions, he led her back to +their table. Luckily, Christabel and her Iowan had disappeared. + +As soon as she was seated she asked him for a pencil and something she +could write on--a card of his, the back of an old letter, anything. She +wrote, "Won't you please come and ask me to dance?" and she slid it over +to him. He read it and understood, picked up a busboy with his eye and +despatched him with the folded scrap for delivery to Captain Wollaston at +the end table. + +Mary meanwhile had cradled her chin in her palms and closed her eyes. +She had experienced so clear a premonition before she turned round to +look at the party at the end table that one of those officers out of +uniform would turn out to be Rush that the verification of it had the +quality of something that happens in a dream. She felt a sharp +incredulity that it could really be they, staring at each other across +that restaurant. More than that, the brother she saw was not--in that +first glance--the man she had been trying all day to make up her mind he +would be. Not the new Rush with two palms to his _Croix de Guerre_ and +his American D.S.C.; and the scars in his soul from the experiences +those decorations must represent; but the Rush she had said good-by to +in the autumn of 1914 when he set out to be a freshman at Harvard, the +kid brother she had counciled and occasionally admonished, in the +vicarious exercise of her father's authority. And in his panic-stricken +gaze at her, she had recognized his instinctive acceptance of that +position. Exactly so would he have looked five interminable years ago if +she had caught him in mischief. + +Then, like the undertow of a big wave, the reaction caught her. It was +intolerable that he should look at her like that. He who had earned his +manhood and its privileges in the long death grapple with the grimmest of +realities. Certainly she was not the one to cast the first stone at him. +She must contrive somehow, at once, to make that clear to him. The +urgency of the thing lay in her belief that the whole of their future +relationship depended upon the removing of his misapprehension +now--to-night. + +She could not go to that table where he sat without seeming more than +ever the school mistress in pursuit of a truant, but perhaps he would +come to her if she put her request right. They had danced together quite +a lot in the old days. She danced so well that not even her status of +elder sister had prevented his enjoying the exercise of their combined +accomplishment. + +A horrible misgiving had attacked her when she had scribbled the note and +closed her eyes, that the cocktails and the champagne she herself had +consumed since seven o'clock might have clouded her judgment--if, indeed, +they were not responsible for the whole nightmare. Would she be equal to +following out the line she had set for herself? + +But no trace of that misgiving was apparent to her when Rush, after a +wait of only two or three minutes, appeared at her table. She greeted him +with a smile and a Hello, nodded a fleeting farewell to Baldwin and +slipped comfortably into her brother's arms out on the floor. They danced +away without a word. There was the same quite beautiful accord between +them that there had been in the old days, and the sense of this steadied +her. They had gone all the way around the floor before she spoke. + +"It is like old times, isn't it?" she said. "And it does seem good. You +don't mind, do you,--for ten minutes?" + +"Ten minutes?" he echoed dully. + +She knew then, as she had indeed been aware from the first, that he was +drunk and that only by the most painful effort, could he command his +scattered wits at all. It made her want to cry that he should be trying +so hard. She must not cry. That would be the final outrage. She must be +very simple and clear. She must--_must_ contrive to make him understand. + +"Will you listen to me, dear, and do exactly what I ask you to? I want +you to go back to your people and forget that you have seen me at all." + +"I am going to take you home--out of this," he said laboriously. + +"I'm going home soon, but not with you. I want you to go back to--to the +girl you brought here. No, dear, listen. This is the only reason I sent +for you. To tell you that I wasn't going to try to scold you. I don't +mind a bit. I want to tell you that, so that when you come back to me +to-morrow or next day or whenever your party is quite over, you won't +feel that you have anything to try to explain or apologize for. Now take +me back to my place and then go on to yours." + +"I won't take you back to him," he said doggedly. "What do you think I +am? I'm drunk, but not enough for that. I am going to take you home." + +She tried to laugh but in spite of herself it was more like a sob. + +"Rush, dear, don't be silly. I am perfectly all right--or would be if I +hadn't drunk quite so much champagne. They'll take me home. His wife's +here with him and they're old friends of mine. They know a lot of our +friends in Chicago. Please, Rush...." + +"Do you think I'd go back to that--" he managed to pull up on the edge +of an ugly word--"back to those people, and leave you here? Is it your +wrap on that chair? We'll stop and get it and then we'll go." + +She could have wept with vexation over the way her scheme had gone awry +but there was clearly nothing else to do. She retrieved her cloak, simply +said good night to Christabel and the man named Black, leaving Baldy to +explain things as he chose. + +Five minutes later she gave a taxi driver the address of her flat and +dropped back against the cushions beside her brother. Neither of them +spoke a word during that fifteen-minute drive. Mary wept quietly most of +the way--it didn't matter there in the dark. The thought of this splendid +glorious brother of hers painfully endeavoring to drag himself back into +a state of sobriety from his first wild caper after long wearing of the +harness of discipline--an escapade she supposed that he must have been +looking forward to for days--dragging himself back to protect her--oh, it +was too hopeless! Should she ever be able to explain to him why she had +sent for him, and that her intentions had been the opposite of those of +the moralizing meddler he would take her for? If only she could make it +up to him somehow. She would have liked to reach over and pull him down +into her arms, mother him and tell him not to mind--there was something +so intolerably pathetic about his effort to sit soberly straight--but she +resisted this impulse savagely. The alcohol in her own veins was +responsible for this. She could not quite trust herself not to go +maudlin. So she froze herself tight and huddled away from him into her +own corner. + +She did not think beyond the address she had given to the chauffeur until +they pulled up at her door. Then she turned to Rush and asked, "Where +shall he take you? Are you staying at a hotel?" + +"I am going to take you home," he said precisely. + +She saw she did not dare to let him go. There was no telling what serious +trouble he might get into, in his illicit civilian dress, if she turned +him adrift now. So she said, simply, "Well, here we are. Come in." + +She opened the street door with her latch-key, and punched on the hall +lights. She dreaded the two flights of stairs, but with the help of the +banister rail he negotiated them successfully enough. And then he was +safely brought to anchor in her sitting-room. It was plain he had not the +vaguest idea where he was. + +"I'll make some coffee," she said. "That will--pull us both together. And +it won't take a minute because it's all ready to make for breakfast." + +She was not gone, indeed, much longer than that, but when she came back +from her kitchenette he had dropped like a log upon her divan, submerged +beyond all soundings. So she tugged him around into a more comfortable +position, managed to divest him of his dinner-jacket and his waistcoat, +unbuttoned his collar and shirt-band, took off his shoes, and covered him +up with an eiderdown quilt. Then she kissed him--it was five years since +she had done that--and went, herself, to bed. + +At ten o'clock the next morning she sat behind her little breakfast +table--it was daintily munitioned with a glass coffee machine, a +grapefruit and a plate of toast--waiting, over _The Times_, for Rush to +wake up. She looked more seraphic than ever, enveloped in a white turkish +toweling bathrobe and with her hair in a braid. Her brother lay on the +divan just as she had left him the night before. Presently the change in +his breathing told her that he was struggling up out of the depths of +sleep. She looked over at him and saw him blinking at the ceiling. When +his gaze started round her way, she turned her attention to the busy +little coffee machine which opportunely needed it. + +It was a minute or two before he spoke. "Is that really you, Mary?" + +She smiled affectionately at him and said, "Hello," adding with just an +edge of good-humored mischief, "How do you feel?" + +He turned abruptly away from her. "I feel loathsome," he said. + +"Poor dear, of course you do. I'll tell you what to do. I've got a nice +big bathroom in there. Go in and take a cold one." Then--"You've grown +inches, Rush, since you went away but I believe you could still get into +a suit of my pajamas--plain ones, not ruffly. Anyhow, I've another big +bathrobe like this that you could roll up in. You'll be just in time for +the coffee. You won't know yourself by then." + +"I wish I didn't," he said morosely. + +There wasn't much good arguing with that mood, she knew, so she +waited a little. + +"Is this where you live?" he asked. "You brought me here last night?" + +"You brought me," she amended. + +He frowned over that but didn't take it in. The next moment though he +sat up suddenly and after a struggle with the giddiness this movement +caused, asked, "Who else is here? Where's the other girl that lives +with you?" + +"She's not here now," Mary said. "We are all by ourselves." + +He rose unsteadily to his feet. "I've got to get out of here quick. If +anybody came in ..." + +"Rush, dearest!" she entreated. "Don't be silly. Lie down again--Well, +then take that easy chair. Nobody will come in." Then over his air of +resolute remorse she cried, on the edge of tears herself, "Oh, _please_ +don't be so unhappy. Do let's settle down and be comfy together. I don't +have to go to the office to-day. My job's just about played out. But +nobody ever comes here to see me in the daytime. And it wouldn't matter +if they did." + +But this change of attitude was clearly beyond him. "I'll have to ask you +to tell me what happened last night. You were there at that restaurant +with friends of yours I suppose. I must have disgraced you up to the hilt +with them. I should think you'd hate the sight of me." + +"You didn't disgrace me at all," she contradicted, and now the tears did +came into her eyes. "They knew I was expecting you and I told Mr. Baldwin +who you were. You came up in the nicest way and asked me to dance and +when we went away together there wasn't a thing--about you--that they +could see. I was on the point of tears myself because my plan had gone +wrong. But that would have seemed natural enough to them." + +He frowned at the name Baldwin, as if he were trying to recover a memory. +Now he felt vaguely in his trousers pocket and pulled out the crumpled +visiting card that had her note scribbled on the back of it. "You haven't +told me yet what happened," he said. + +"Oh, I was afraid you wouldn't remember." She looked away from him as she +said it and a little unwonted color crept into her cheeks. + +"Afraid?" he questioned. + +"I wanted you to understand," she said, "and now I'll have to tell you +again. It was because I was trying so hard not to meddle that I did. I +sent that little note to you just to get a chance to tell you not to mind +my seeing you there with those others--not to let it spoil your party. I +couldn't bear to have you come to me to-day, or to-morrow or whenever it +was, feeling--well, ashamed you know, and explanatory. That's what I +tried to tell you last night but couldn't make you understand. So I did, +really, just exactly what I was meaning not to. Of course, I loved you +for coming away and I love having you here like this, all to myself. But +I didn't mean to--to spoil things for you." + +He stared at her a moment in blank inapprehension; then a deep blush came +burning into his face. "You didn't understand," he said thickly. "You +didn't know what those girls were." + +"Oh, Rush!" she cried. "Of course I did. I knew exactly what they +were--better than you. I even knew who they were. They live not very far +from here." + +He paled and his look was frightened. "How did you know that?" he +demanded. "How could you know a thing like that?" + +"They've lived here in the Village for years," she said, summarizing +Baldy without quoting him as her authority. "One of them used to be an +illustrator--or something--before she went--over the edge. They're two of +our celebrities. One can't go about, unless he's stone blind, without +picking up things like that." + +"You did know what she was, then," he persisted, doggedly pushing +through something it was almost impossible for him to say, "and yet, +knowing, you asked me to leave you alone and go back to her. You wanted +me to do that?" + +"I didn't want you to!" she cried. "I hated it, of course. But +men--people--do things like that, and I could see how--natural it was +that you wanted to. And if you wanted to, I didn't think it fair that it +should be spoiled for you just because we happened to recognize each +other. I didn't want you to hate me for having spoiled it. That's all." + +She gave him the minute or two he evidently needed for turning this over +in his mind. Then she turned her back on the window she had withdrawn to +and began again. + +"I used to be just a big sister to you, of course. Ever so superior, I +guess, and a good bit of a prig. And all this time over there in France +with nothing but my letters and that silly picture of me in the khaki +frame, I suppose you have been thinking of me, well,--as a sort of nice +angel. I'm not either, really. I don't want to be either. + +"I want to be somebody you feel would understand anything; somebody you +could tell anything to. So that it would work the other way as well. +Because I've got to have somebody to tell things to,--troubles, and +worries. And I've been hoping, ever since your letter came, that it would +turn out to be you." + +"What sort of troubles?" He shot the question in rather tensely. + +There was a breathless moment before she answered, but she shook it off +with a laugh and her manner lightened. "There's nothing to be so solemn +about as all that. We don't want to wallow. We'll have some +breakfast--only you go first and tub." + +He was too young and healthy and clean-blooded to resist the effect upon +his spirits which the cold water and the fresh white bathrobe and the hot +strong coffee with real cream in it produced. And the gloomy, remorseful +feeling, which he felt it his moral duty to maintain intact, simply +leaked away. She noted the difference in him and half-way through their +breakfast she left her chair and came round to him. + +"Would you very much mind being kissed now?" she asked. + +His answer, with a laugh, was to pull her down upon his knee and hug +her up tight in his arms. They looked rather absurdly alike in those +two white bathrobes, though this was an appearance neither of them was +capable of observing. She disengaged herself presently from his embrace +and went to find him some cigarettes, refraining from taking one +herself from a feeling that he would probably like it better just then +if she did not. + +Back in her own place over her coffee and toast, she had no difficulty in +launching him upon the tale of his own recent experiences. What the +French were like now the war was over; and the Boche he had been living +among in the Coblenz area;--the routine of his army life, the friends he +made over there, and so on. Altogether she built him up immensely in his +own esteem. It was plain he liked having her for a younger sister instead +of for an older one, listening so contentedly to his tales, ministering +to his momentary wants, visibly wondering at and adoring him. + +But she broke the spell when she asked him what he meant to do now. + +He turned restlessly in his chair. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know +what the deuce there is I can do. Certainly father's idea of my going +back to college and then to medical school afterward, is just plain, rank +nonsense. I'd be a doddering old man before I got through--thirty years +old. I should think that even he would see that. It will have to be +business, I suppose, but if any kind friend comes around and suggests +that I begin at the bottom somewhere--Mr. Whitney, for instance, offering +me a job at ten dollars a week in his bank--I'll kill him. I can't do +that. I won't. At the end of about ten days, I'd run amuck. What I'd +really like," he concluded, "for about a year would be just this." His +gesture indicated the bathrobe, the easy chair and the dainty breakfast +table. "This, all the morning and a ball-game in the afternoon. Lord, it +will be good to see some real baseball again. We'll go to a lot of games +this summer. What are the Sox going to be like this year?" + +She discussed the topic expertly with him and with a perfectly genuine +interest, at some length. "Oh, it would be fun," she finished with a +little sigh, "only I shan't be there, you know. At least I don't think I +shall." Then before he could ask her why not, she added in sharper focus, +"I can't go home, Rush." + +"Can't!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean by that?" + +"Oh, nothing to make a fuss about," she said with a frown of irritation. +"I wish you weren't so jumpy this morning,--or perhaps, it's I that am. +All I meant was that home isn't a comfortable place for me and I won't go +back there if I can help it--only I am afraid I can't. That's the trouble +I wanted to talk to you about." + +"I thought you liked the new stepmother," he said. "Hasn't she turned out +well?--What am I supposed to call her, anyhow? I wanted to find out about +that before I was right up against it." + +"Call her?" Mary was a little taken back. "Why, anything you like, I +should think. I've always called her Paula.--You weren't thinking of +calling her mother, were you?" + +"Well," he protested, "how should I know? After all, she is father's +wife. And she must be fairly old." + +"But, Rush, you've _seen_ her!" + +"Only that once, at the wedding. She was made up to look young then, of +course. Painted and dyed and so on, I suppose. I felt so embarrassed and +silly over the whole thing--being just a kid--that I hardly looked at +her. And that was a long while ago." + +Mary laughed at that, though she knew it would annoy him. "She never +paints nor dyes nor anything, Ruddy. She doesn't have to. She's such a +perfectly raving beauty without it. And she's more beautiful now than she +was then. She really is young, you see. Hardly enough older than we are +to matter, now that we're grown up." + +She saw Rush digesting this idea of a beautiful young stepmother whom he +was to be privileged to call--straight off--by her first name, with a +certain satisfaction, so she waited--rather conscious that she was being +patient--for him to come back from the digression of his own accord. +Presently he did. + +"What does she do that you don't like?" + +"She does nothing that isn't perfectly nice, and good-tempered, +and--respectable," Mary assured him, and added on a warmer note, "Oh, and +she's really amiable and lovely. I was being a cat. But I am truly fond +of her--when I have her to myself. It's when she's with father ..." + +She broke off there, seeing that she could not make that clear to him +(how could she since she would not state it in plain terms to herself?) +and hurried on, "It's really father whom I don't get on with, any more. +He worries about me and feels sorry for me and wants me to come home. But +I'm nothing to him when I do come--but an embarrassment.--No, it _isn't_ +rot. He knows it himself and feels horrid about it and raises my +allowance when I go away, though it was foolishly big already; and then, +as soon as I'm back here he begins worrying again, and urging me to come +home. He didn't insist as long as I was doing war work, but now that +that's played out, I suppose he will. + +"Oh, I know well enough what I ought to do. I ought to answer some +advertisement for a typist--I can do that, but not stenography--and take +a regular job. The sort you said you'd shoot Mr. Whitney for offering +you. And then I ought to take a hall bedroom somewhere in the +cross-town twenties and live on what I earned. That's the only thing I +can see, and, Rush, I simply haven't the courage to do it. It seems as +if I couldn't do it." + +His lively horror at the bare suggestion of such a thing drew her into a +half-hearted defense of the project. Numbers of the girls she knew down +here who had been doing war work were going enthusiastically into things +like that--or at least were announcing an invincible determination to do +so. Only they were cleverer than she at that sort of thing and could hope +for better jobs. They were in luck. They liked it--looked forward to a +life of it as one full of engaging possibilities. But to Mary it was +nothing, she hardly pretended, but a forlorn last shift. If one couldn't +draw nor write nor act nor develop some clever musical stunt, what else +was there for a girl to do? + +"Well, of course," said Rush, in a very mature philosophical way and +lighting a cigarette pretty deliberately between the words,--"of course, +what most girls do, is--marry somebody." Then he stole a look around at +his sister to see how she had taken it. + +There was a queer look that almost frightened him in her blue eyes. Her +lips, which were trembling, seemed to be trying to smile. + +"That's father's idea," she said raggedly. "He's as anxious now that I +should marry somebody--anybody, as he was that I shouldn't five years +ago--before he found Paula. You see I am so terribly--left on his hands." + +There was, no doubt, something comical about the look of utter +consternation she saw on her brother's face, but she should not have +tried to laugh at him for a sob caught the laugh in the middle and swept +away the last of her self-control. She flung herself down upon the divan +and buried her face in one of the pillows. He had seen men cry like that +but, oddly enough, never a woman. What he did though was perhaps as much +to the point as anything he could have done. He sat down beside her and +gathered her up tight in his arms and held her there without a word until +the tempest had blown itself out. When the sobs had died away to nothing +more than a tremulous catch in each indrawn breath, he let her go back +among the pillows and turn so that she could look up at him. By that time +the sweat had beaded out upon his forehead, and his hands, which had +dropped down upon her shoulders, were trembling. + +"Well," she asked unsteadily. "What do you think of me now?" + +He wanted to bend down and kiss her but wisely he forbore. "It's easy to +see what's the matter," he said. "This war business you have been doing +has been too much for you. You're simply all in." Then happily he added, +"I'd call you a case of shell-shock." + +She rewarded that with a washed-out smile. "What's the treatment going to +be?" she asked. + +"Why," he said, "as soon as I'm done tucking you up properly in this +eiderdown quilt, I'm going out to your icebox and try to find the makings +of an egg-nog. Incidentally, I shall scramble up all the rest of the eggs +I find and eat them myself. And then I'll find something dull to read to +you until you go to sleep. When it's dark enough so that my evening +clothes won't attract too much attention, I'll go back and get into +uniform; then I'll buy two tickets for Chicago on the fast train +to-morrow, and two tickets for a show to-night; and then I'll come back +and take you out to dinner. Any criticisms on that program?" + +"Not just for this minute," she said contentedly. "I don't know whether +I'm going to Chicago with you, tomorrow, or not." + +"That's all right," he said. "I know all about that." He added, "I +hope the other girl won't mind--the one who lives here with you. What +was her name?" + +"Ethel Holland? Oh, she went over to France with the Y.M.C.A. just +about a year ago. I've tried to find somebody to take her place, but +there didn't seem to be any one I liked well enough. So I've been +living alone." + +She saw his face stiffen at that but his only comment was that that +simplified matters. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PICTURE PUZZLE + + +There was a good quarter of an hour beginning with the tear-blurred +moment when Mary caught sight of her father looking for her and Rush down +the railway station platform, during which the whole fabric of misgivings +about her home-coming dissolved as dreams do when one wakes. It had not +been a dream she knew, nor the mere concoction of her morbid fancy. He +had not looked at her like this nor kissed her like this--not once since +that fatal journey to Vienna five years ago. Had something happened +between him and Paula that made the difference? Or was it her brother's +presence, that, serving somehow to take off the edge, worked a mysterious +catalysis? + +When John, after standing off and gazing wordless for a moment at this +new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with +bits of ribbon on the breast of it,--tried to say how proud he was and +choked instead, it was for Mary that he reached out an unconscious, +embracing arm, the emotion which would not go into words finding an +outlet for itself that way. + +When they got out to the motor and old Pete, once coachman, now +chauffeur, his eyes gleaming over the way Rush had all but hugged him, +said to her, "You home to stay, too, Miss Mary?" her father's hand which +clasped her arm revealed the thrilling interest with which he awaited her +answer to that question. The importunity of the red-cap with the luggage +relieved her of the necessity for answering but the answer in her heart +just then was "Yes." + +It was with a wry self-scornful smile that she recalled, later that day, +the emotions of the ride home. If at any time before they got to the +house, her father had repeated the old servant's question, "Are you home +to stay, Mary?" she would, she knew, have kissed the hand that she held +clasped in hers, wept blissfully over it and told him she wanted never to +go away again. She hadn't minded his not asking because she thought she +knew quite surely why he had not. He was afraid to risk his momentary +happiness upon her answer. And why had she not volunteered the assurance +he wanted so eagerly and dared not ask for? The beastly answer to that +question was that she had enjoyed the thrill of his uncertainty--a +miserable sort of feline coquetry. + +Well, it had been short-lived, that little triumph of hers. It had +stopped against a blank wall just when the car stopped under the _ports +cochere_ of the Dearborn Avenue house. John's arm which had been around +her was withdrawn and he looked with just a touch of ostentation at his +watch. She knew before he spoke that when he did, his tone would ring +flat. The old spell was broken. He was once more under the dominion of +the newer, stronger one. + +"I'm terribly late," he said. "I must drive straight along to the +hospital. I'll see you to-night. We're having a few old friends in to +dinner. Run along now. Your Aunt Lucile will be waiting for you." + +His omission to mention Paula had been fairly palpable. Her reply, "All +right, dad, till to-night, then. _Au 'voir_" had been, she knew, as +brittle and sharp-edged as a bit of broken glass. It had cut him;--she +had meant it to. + +Well it served her right. Paula deserved to own the stronger spell. +Paula's emotional channels were open and deep. No choking snags and +sandbars, no perverse eddies in them. Look at her with Rush to-day! There +was a situation that fairly bristled with opportunities for blundering. +She might, with this grown-up son of her husband's whom she had hardly +seen, have shown herself shy, embarrassed, at a loss how to take him. She +might have tried to be archly maternal with him or elder-sisterly. But +she played up none of these sentimental possibilities, seemed, indeed, +serenely unaware of them. She treated him just as she had always treated +Mary--as a contemporary. From the beginning she had no trouble making him +talk. For one thing her acquaintance with France and Germany was intimate +enough to enable her to ask him questions which he found it pleasantly +stimulating to try to answer. As she felt her way to firmer ground with +him, she allowed what was evidently a perfectly spontaneous affection to +irradiate the look she turned upon him and to warm her lovely voice. + +So she must have begun--as simply and irresistibly as that--in Vienna! + +Mary tried hard to think of it as a highly skillful performance, but this +was an attitude she could not maintain. It was not a performance at all; +it was--just Paula, who, having taken her father away from her was now, +inevitably, going to take her brother too. Not because she meant +to--quite unconscious that she was doing any harm ("and of course she +isn't, except to a cat like me")--that was the maddening, and at the same +time, endearing thing about her. + +For there was a broad impartiality about her spell that tugged at Mary +even while she forlornly watched Rush yielding to it. And the way it +affected Aunt Lucile was simply funny. She melted, visibly, like a +fragment left on the curb by the iceman, whenever Paula--turned the +current on. What made this the more striking was that Aunt Lucile's +normal mood to-day impressed Mary as rather aggressively sell-contained. +Was it just that Mary had forgotten how straight she sat and how +precisely she moved about? Had she always had that discreet significant +air, as if there were something she could talk about but didn't mean +to--not on any account? Or was there something going on here at home that +awaited--breathlessly awaited--discovery? Whatever it was, when Paula +turned upon her it went, laughably;--only it would have been a pretty +shaky sort of laugh. + +It was after lunch that Paula electrified them by suggesting that they +all go together to a matinee. That's an illustration of the power she +had. To each of the three, to Lucile and to Mary as well as to the now +infatuated Rush, she could make a commonplace scheme like that seem an +irresistibly enticing adventure. Lucile recovered her balance first, but +it was not until Nat had fetched the morning paper and they had discussed +their choice of entertainments for two or three minutes that she said of +course she couldn't go. She didn't know what she'd been thinking of. The +number of things imperatively to be done or seen to in preparation for +the party to-night would keep her busy all the afternoon. + +Then Mary followed suit. If this was really going to be a party--she +hadn't quite got this idea before--she'd have to spend the afternoon +unpacking and putting her frocks in order or she wouldn't have +anything to wear. + +"Well," Paula said comfortably, "until they turn me on like a Victrola at +nine o'clock or so, I've nothing to do with the party except not think +about it." She made this observation at large, then turned on Rush. +"You'll come with me, won't you, and keep me from getting frightened +until tea-time?" + +Rush would go--rather!--but he laughed at the word "frightened." + +"I'm not joking," she said, and reaching out she covered his hand, which +rested on the cloth, with one of hers. + +He flushed instantly at that; then said to the others with slightly +elaborated surprise, "It _is,_ cold, for a fact." + +"So is the other one," said Paula. "For that matter, so are my feet. And +getting colder every minute. Come along or we'll be late." + +Mary branded this as a bit of rather crude coquetry. It wasn't +conceivable that a professional opera singer of Paula's experience could +look forward with any sort of emotion to the mere singing of a few songs +to a group of familiar friends. It occurred to her, too, that Paula had +calculated on her refusal to go to the matinee as definitely as on Aunt +Lucile's and for a moment she indulged the idea of changing her mind and +going along with them just to frustrate this design. Only, of course, it +wouldn't work that way. She couldn't keep Rush from being taken away from +her by playing the spoil-sport. She couldn't keep him anyhow she +supposed. She made a hasty, rather forlorn retreat to her own room as +soon as the departing pair were safely out of the house. + +That room of hers exerted now a rather curious effect upon her mood. It +had been hers ever since her promotion from the nursery and it, like +her brother's adjoining, had been kept unchanged, unoccupied during her +long absence. + +The furniture and the decoration of it had been her mother's last +Christmas present. The first Mrs. Wollaston had lived under the influence +of the late Victorian esthetes, and Mary's room looked as if it had been +designed for Elaine the lily maid of Astolat, an effect which was +heightened by a large brown picture in a broad brown frame of Watts' Sir +Galahad. After her mother's death, that winter, Mary added a Botticelli +Madonna, the one with the pomegranate, which she hung by itself on a wall +panel. There was a narrow black oak table under it to carry a Fra +Angelico triptych flanked by two tall candlesticks. It wasn't exactly a +shrine, even if there was a crimson cushion conveniently disposed before +it, and if Mary for a while said her prayers there instead of in the old +childish way at her bedside, and if she genuflected when she passed it, +that was her own affair. + +Coming to it now, as to port after storms, with the intention almost +openly avowed to herself of lying down upon the bed and, for an hour or +two, feeling as sorry for herself as she could, she found an appalling +strangeness about its very familiarity that pulled her up short. The +abyss she stared into between herself and the Mary Wollaston whose +image was so sharply evoked by the ridiculously unchanged paraphernalia +of that Mary's life, turned her giddy. Even the face which looked back +at her from the frame of that mirror seemed the other Mary's rather +than her own. + +From the doorway she stood, for a moment, staring. Then she managed a +smile (it was the only possible attitude to take) at Sir Galahad, above +the bed. The notion of flinging herself down for a self-pitying revel +upon that bed,--the other Mary's virginal little narrow bed--had become +unthinkable. The thing to do was to stop thinking. Quickly. + +She stripped off her suit and blouse, slipped on a pongee kimono that she +got out of her hand-bag, unlocked her trunk and began discharging its +contents all about the room. She covered the chairs with them, the bed, +the narrow table--that had never had anything upon it but that Fra +Angelico triptych and the two candlesticks--the round table with the +reading lamp, the writing desk in the corner, the floor. Then, a little +out of breath, she paused. + +Which among two or three possible frocks should she wear for the party +to-night? What sort of party was it going to be anyhow? It was curious, +considering the fact that they had done nothing but sit and talk all the +morning, how vague her ideas about it were. Her father had said +something out in the car about having a few old friends in for dinner. +Paula was going to sing and professed herself frightened by the +prospect. Also she had cited it as the reason for an unusually and +almost strenuously unoccupied day. On the other hand it was keeping Aunt +Lucile distractedly busy. + +Was it the chance result of their preoccupation with other things that +she had been given no more intelligible account of it, or was it +something that all three of them, her father, Paula and Aunt Lucile, were +walking round the edge of? The nub of some seriously trivial quarrel? Was +that why Paula was so elaborately disengaged and Aunt Lucile so +portentous? Was it even perhaps why her father had so abruptly fled this +morning without coming into the house? + +She treated this surmise kindly. It was something to think about anyhow; +something to sharpen her wits upon, just as a cat stretches her claws in +the nap of the drawing-room rug. She rescued from oblivion half a dozen +remarks heard during the morning, whose significance had gone over her +head, and tentatively fitted them together like bits of a picture puzzle. +She hadn't enough to go on but she believed there was something there. +And when a little later in the afternoon, she heard, along with a knock +on her door, her aunt asking if she might come in, she gave her an +enthusiastic welcome, scooped an armful of things out of a chair and +cleared a sitting space for herself at the foot of the bed. + +"Would this blue thing do for to-night?" she asked, "or isn't it enough +of an affair? What sort of party is it anyhow?" + +"Goodness knows," said Lucile. "Between your father and Paula I find it +rather upsetting." + +Mary had reached out negligently for her cigarette case, lighted one and +letting it droop at a rather impossible angle, supported by the lightest +pressure of her lips so that the smoke crept up over her face into her +lashes and her hair, folded her hands demurely in her lap and waited for +her aunt to go on. She was mischievously half aware of the disturbing +effect of this sort of thing upon Lucile. + +"What has there been between them?" Mary asked, when it became clear that +her aunt needed prompting. "Between father and Paula, I mean. Not a row?" + +Mary never used language like this except provocatively. It worked on her +aunt as she had meant it to. + +"There has been nothing between them," she said, "that requires a rowdy +word like that to express. It has not been even a quarrel. But they have +been for the last day or two, a little--at ..." + +"Outs?" Mary suggested. + +This had been the word on Lucile's tongue. "At cross purposes," she +amended and paused again. But Mary seeing that she was fairly launched +waited, economically, meanwhile, inhaling all the smoke from her +cigarette. "I suppose after all, it's quite natural," Lucile began, +"that Paula should attract geniuses, since she's rather by way of being +one herself." + +Mary took the cigarette in her fingers so that she could speak a little +more crisply than was possible around it. "Who is the genius she's +attracting now? Doesn't father like him? And is he being not asked to the +party? I'm sorry, aunt, I didn't mean to interrupt." + +"He is being asked which, it appears, is what Paula objects to; only not +until after dinner. That she insisted upon. Really," she went on, in +response to her niece's perplexed frown, "I shall be much more +intelligible If you'll let me begin at the beginning." + +"Please do," said Mary. "Where did Paula find him?" + +"I found him," said Miss Wollaston. "Paula discovered him a little later. +I found him on a bench in the park and told him he might come to tune +the drawing-room piano. Paula had him tune her piano instead and spent +what must have been a rather mad day with him over it. He brought round +some songs the next day for her to try and she and Portia Stanton's +husband have been practising them with hardly any intermission since. The +idea was that when they had 'got them up' as they say, the man,--March +his name is, Anthony March, I think,--should be invited round to hear +Paula sing them. Paula insists, absurdly it seems to me, that he never +has heard a note of them himself; that he can't even play them upon the +piano. How he could compose them without playing them on the piano first, +is beyond me. But she is inclined to be a little emotional, I think, over +the whole episode. Quite naturally--even Paula can't deny that--your +father thought he would like to be present when the songs were sung and +it was arranged that it should be this evening." + +"She may not have been able to deny that it was natural," Mary observed, +"but I'd bet she didn't like it." + +"It's only fair to Paula to say," Miss Wollaston insisted, "that she did +nothing to exhibit a feeling of that sort. But when, at John's +suggestion, I spoke of the possibility of having in the Cravens and the +Blakes,--the Cravens are very musical, you know--and Wallace Hood who +would be really hurt if we left him out, Paula came nearer to being +downright rude than she often allows herself to be. She said among other +things that she didn't propose to have March subjected to a +'suffocating' affair like that. She said she wanted him free to +interrupt as often as he liked and tell them how rotten they were. That +was her phrase. When I observed that Mr. March didn't impress me as the +sort of person who could conceivably wish to be rude as that she said he +could no more remember to be polite when he heard those songs for the +first time than she herself could sing them in corsets. She summed it +up by saying that it wasn't going to be a polite affair and the fewer +polite people there were, hanging about, the better. There was, +naturally, nothing I could say to that." + +"I should think not," Mary agreed, exhaling rather explosively an +enormous cloud of smoke. "Poor Aunt Lucile!" Her commiseration didn't +sound more than skin deep. + +"The matter rested there," the elder woman went on, "until your father +received Rush's telegram that you were coming to-day. Then he took +matters into his own hands and gave me a list of the people he wanted +asked. There are to be about a dozen besides ourselves at dinner and +perhaps as many more are to come after." + +"I can see Paula when you told her that," Mary reflected. "Or did you +make dad tell her himself? Yes, of course you did! Only what I can't +understand is why Paula didn't say, 'All right. Have your party, and I'll +sing if you want me to. Only not--what's his name?--March's songs.' And +have him all to herself, as she wanted him, later. That would have been +mate in one move, I should think." + +Then, at the fleeting look she caught in the act of vanishing from her +aunt's face, she cried, "You mean she _did_ say that? And that father +turned to ice, the way he can and--made a point of it? You know it's +serious, if he's done that." + +With a vigor meant to compensate for a sad lack of conviction, Miss +Wollaston protested against this chain of unwarranted assumptions. But +she admitted, at last, that her own surmise accorded with that of her +niece. John certainly had said to her at breakfast that he saw no reason +for foregoing the musical feature of the evening simply because an +audience was to be present to hear it. Paula's only comment had been a +dispassionate prediction that it wouldn't work. It wouldn't be fair to +say she sulked; her rather elaborate detachment had been too good-humored +for that. Her statement, at lunch, that she was to be turned on like a +Victrola at half past nine, was a fair sample. + +"What's he like, this genius of hers?" Mary wanted to know. "Young and +downy and helpless, I suppose. With a look as if he was just about to +burst into tears. I met one like that last winter." She knew exactly how +to get results out of her aunt. + +"He's not in the least like that! If he had been I should never have +brought him home, not even to tune the piano. He's quite a well behaved, +sensible-appearing young man, a little over thirty, I should say. And he +does speak nicely, though I think Paula exaggerates about that." + +"Sensible or not, he's fallen wildly in love with her, of course," Mary +observed. "The more so they are the more instantaneously they do it." + +But this lead was one Miss Wollaston absolutely declined to follow. "If +that clock's right," she exclaimed, gazing at a little traveling affair +Mary had brought home with her, "I haven't another minute." It was not +right, for it was still keeping New York time, but the diversion served. +"Wallace Hood spoke of coming in to see you about tea-time," she said +from the doorway. "I'm going to be to busy even to stop for a cup, so do +be down if you can." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +JOHN MAKES A POINT OF IT + + +Mary was warmly touched by the thought of Wallace's coming to see her in +that special sort of way when he was certain of finding her at dinner an +hour or two later. Her feelings about him were rather mixed but he dated +back to the very earliest of her memories, and his kindly affectionate +attitude toward her had never failed, even during those periods when she +had treated him most detestably. Even as a little girl, she had been +aware of his sentimental attachment to her mother and perhaps in an +instinctive way had resented it, though her actual indictment against +Wallace in those days had always been that he made her naughty; incited +her by his perpetual assumption that she was the angelic little creature +she looked, to one desperate misdemeanor after another, for which her +father usually punished her. Mary had, superficially anyhow, her mother's +looks along with her father's temper. + +But for two years after Mrs. Wollaston's death, she and Wallace had been +very good friends. She was grateful to him for treating her like a +grown-up, for talking to her, as he often did, about her mother and how +much she had meant to him. (She owed it, indeed, largely to Wallace that +her memories of this sentimental, romantic, passionless lady with whom in +life she had never been completely in sympathy, were as sweet and +satisfactory as they were.) He had taken infinite pains with her, guiding +her reading and her enjoyment of pictures in the paths of good taste. He +took her to concerts sometimes, too, though at this point her docility +ceased. She wouldn't be musical for anybody. He gave her much-needed +advice in dealing with social matters which her sudden prematurity +forced her to cope with. And with all this went a placidity which had no +part at all in her relations with her father. + +She got the idea, during this period, that he meant, when she was a +little older, to ask her to marry him, and she sometimes speculated +whether, if he did, she would. There would be something beautifully +appropriate about it;--like the Professor's Love Story. Usually, though, +she terminated the scene with a tender refusal. + +She had long known, of course, how unreal all this was. Wallace had faded +into complete invisibility at the time when she fell in love with Captain +Burch and quarreled with her father about him. She couldn't remember +afterward whether he had even been on the scene or not. But the savor of +their friendship, though mild, was a pleasant one and there was none of +her old acquaintances she'd rather have looked forward to to-day at +tea-time in the drawing-room. She knew exactly what he would be like; +just what they would say to each other. The only doubt in her mind was +whether he'd bring her chocolates or daffodils. + +She guessed wrong. It was a box of candied strawberries that he gave her +as soon as their double hand-shake set him free. But nothing else came at +once to the surface to falsify her prevision. She remembered how he liked +his tea and was able to get an affectionate warmth into her voice, that +sounded real though strangely enough it wasn't, in agreeing with him how +like old times this was and how good it seemed to be home. Then came the +joy of having Rush back again, and the war, and the Peace +Conference,--only we weren't going to talk about things like that. And +then Alan Seeger, Rupert Brooke, Conningsby Dawson. + +But oddly enough, she felt herself going back to still older times, to +the abominable little girl who had yielded to irresistible desires such +as making faces at him and rubbing the nap of his silk hat the wrong +way. She repressed, vigorously, this lawless vein. She was determined for +this one day to be just as nice as he tried, so hard, to think she was. +But with this resolution occupying her mind the talk presently ran rather +thin, her contribution to it for whole minutes drying up entirely. It was +after a rather blank silence that he said he supposed Paula was lying +down, resting for to-night's performance. His inflection struck Mary as a +little too casual and reminded her that it was his first mention of her +stepmother's name. This roused her attention. + +"Oh, Paula's off playing with Rush," she said. "I believe they went to +a matinee." + +He exclaimed at that, over Paula's stores of energy and her reckless ways +of spending them. He said she gave him the impression of being absolutely +tireless, superimposing a high speed society existence which John +Wollaston and he, in relays, could hardly keep up with, upon the heavy +routine of work in her studio. He illustrated this with a schedule of her +activities during the last three days. "Oh, yes," he threw in, in +parenthesis, "I'm as much in the family as ever. When your father can't +do escort duty, they call on me." He added in conclusion that he was glad +she had already made a start toward getting acquainted with Rush. + +Was this relief, Mary wondered--at learning that she was not at this +moment engaged less domestically somewhere with Anthony March? But she +doubted whether this was a good guess. If he did feel any such relief, it +was not, at all events, from a personal jealousy; for the illuminating +conviction had come over her that Wallace could not possibly be one of +Paula's conquests. A man still capable of cherishing as the most +beautiful event of his life, that sentimental platonic friendship he had +enjoyed with her mother, would be immune against Paula's spells. + +She wondered if he wasn't a little afraid of Paula. If he did not, in +his heart, actually dislike her. But if this were true, why did he +willingly devote so many of his hours to squiring her about, substituting +for her husband? (She told herself, as one discovering a great truth, +that a substitute was exactly what Heaven had ordained Wallace Hood to +be.) She kept him going about Paula easily enough, as a sort of obbligato +to these meditations and her name was on Wallace's lips when John +Wollaston came into the room. + +"Where is she?" he asked Mary. "I hoped I'd find her resting for +to-night." Evidently he had been up to her room to see. The relief was +plainly legible in his face when he got Mary's answer. + +"She and Rush, eh," he said. "I'm glad they've made a start together, but +they ought to be back by now. They drove, didn't they?" + +She couldn't inform him as to that and by way of getting him to come to +anchor, offered him his tea. + +"Oh, I'll wait for the others," he said. "They can't be much later than +this.--I'm glad she's taken a vacation from those songs," he went on +presently from the fireplace. "She told me last night she'd been working +all day with Novelli over them. Only sent him home about half an hour +before it was time for her to dress for dinner. Do you suppose,"--this to +Wallace--"that they're as wonderful as she thinks they are?" + +It was obvious to Mary that Hood's reply was calculated to soothe; his +attitude was indulgent. He talked to Mary about March as just another of +Paula's delightful extravagances. March's indignant refusal, at first, to +tune the Circassian grand, his trick of sitting on the floor under +Paula's piano while she played for him, his forgetting to be paid, though +he had not, in all probability, a cent in his pockets, were exhibited as +whimsicalities, such as Wallace's favorite author, J.M. Barrie, might +have invented. It was just like Paula to take him up as she had done, to +work away for days at his songs, proclaiming the wonder of them all the +while. "We're all hoping, of course," he concluded, "that when she's +finished with them to-night, she'll sing us some of the old familiar +music we really love." + +The neat finality of all this, produced, momentarily, the effect of +ranging Mary on the other side, with Paula and her musician. But just at +this point, she lost her character of disinterested spectator, for +Wallace, having put March back in his box and laid him deliberately on +the shelf, abruptly produced, by way of diversion, another piece of goods +altogether. + +"I hope Mary's come home to stay," he said to John. "We can't let her go +away again, can we?" + +Afterward, she was able to see that it was a natural enough thing for him +to have said. It would never have occurred to him, pleasant, harmless +sentimentalist that he was, that John's second marriage might be a +disturbing factor in his relation with Mary and that the question so +cheerfully asked as an escape from the more serious matter that he had +been talking about, struck straight into a ganglion of nerves. + +But at the time, no such excuse for him presented itself. She stared for +a moment, breathless, paled a little and locked her teeth so that they +shouldn't chatter; then, a wave of bright anger relaxed her stiffened +muscles. She did not look at her father but was aware that he was fixedly +not looking at her. + +"I don't know whether I am going to stay or not," she said casually +enough. "There isn't any particular reason why I should, unless I can +find something to do. You haven't a job for me, have you?" + +"A job?" Wallace gasped. + +"In your office," she explained. "Filing and typing, or running the +mimeograph. It seems to be a choice between something like that +and--millinery." + +"That's an extravagant idea," her father said, trying for, but not quite +able to manage, a tone that matched hers. "Good lord, Wallace, don't sit +there looking as if you thought she meant it!" + +"You do look perfectly--consternated," she said with a pretty good laugh. +"Never mind; I shan't do anything outrageous for a week or two. Oh, here +they come. Will you ring, dad? I want some more hot water." + +Rush came into the drawing-room alone, Paula having lingered a moment, +probably before the mirror in the hall. Mere professional instinct for +arranging entrances for herself, Mary surmised this to be. And she may +have been right for Paula was not one of those women who are forever +making minute readjustments before a glass. But when she came in, just +after Wallace Hood had accomplished his welcome of the returned soldier, +it was hard to believe that she was concerned about the effect she +produced upon the group about the tea-table. She didn't, indeed, +altogether join it, gave them a collective nod of greeting with a faint +but special smile for her husband on the end of it and then deliberately +seated herself with a "No, don't bother; this is all right," at the end +of the little sofa that stood in the curve of the grand piano, rather in +the background. + +When Mary asked her how she wanted her tea, she said she didn't think +she'd have any; and certainly no cakes. No, not even one of Wallace's +candied strawberries. There was an exchange of glances between her and +Rush over this. + +"They have been having tea by themselves, those two," Mary remarked. + +"No," said Rush, "not what you could call tea." + +Paula smiled vaguely but didn't throw the ball back, did not happen, it +appeared, to care to talk about anything. Presently the chatter among the +rest of them renewed itself. + +Only it would have amused an invisible spectator to note how those three +Wollastons, blonde, dolichocephalic, high-strung, magnetically +susceptible, responded, as strips of gold-leaf to the static electricity +about a well rubbed amber rod, to the influence that emanated from that +silent figure on the sofa. Rush, in and out of his chair a dozen times, +to flip the ash from his cigarette, to light one for Mary, to hand the +strawberries round again, was tugging at his moorings like a captive +balloon. When he answered a question it was with the air of interrupting +an inaudible tune he was whistling. John still planted before the +fireplace, taking, automatically, a small part in the talk just as he +went through the minimum of business with his tea, seemed capable of only +one significant action, which he repeated at short, irregular intervals. +He turned his head enough to enable him to see into a mirror which gave +him a reflection of his wife's face; then turned away again, like one +waiting for some sort of reassurance and not getting it. Mary, muscularly +relaxed, indeed, drooping over the tea-table, had visible about her, +nevertheless, a sort of supernormal alertness. Every time her father +looked into the mirror she glanced at him, and she rippled, like still +water, at all of her brother's sudden movements. + +As for Wallace Hood, one look at him sitting there, as unresponsive to +the spell as the cup from which he was sipping its third replenishment of +tea, would have explained his domestication in that household;--the +necessity, in fact, for domesticating among them some one who was always +buoyantly upon the surface, whose talk, in comfortably rounded sentences, +flowed along with a mild approximation to wit, whose sentiments were +never barbed with passion;--who was, to sum him up in one embracing +word, appropriate. + +Mary, in addition to feeling repentant over her outbreak just before +Paula came in, experienced a sort of gratitude to him for being able to +sit squarely facing the sofa, untroubled by the absent thoughtful face +and the figure a little languorously disposed that confronted him. His +bright generalities were addressed to her as much as to the rest of them; +his smile asked the same response from her and nothing more. + +Nothing short of an explosion that shattered all their surfaces at once +could have got a single vibration out of him. By that same token, when +the explosion did occur, he was the most helpless person there, the only +one of them who could really be called panic-stricken. + +John had, at last, crossed the room and seated himself beside his wife. +He spoke to her in a low voice but her full-throated reply was audible +everywhere in the room. + +"No, I'm not tired and I really don't want any tea. I've gone slack on +purpose because that's how I want to be till nine o'clock. I've just +eaten an enormous oyster stew with Rush. That's what we waited for." + +John frowned. "My dear, you'll have ruined your appetite for dinner." + +"I hope so," she said, "because I'm not to have any." + +At that, from the other two men, there began an expostulatory--"No +dinner!" "You don't mean ...!" but it was silenced by John's +crisp--"You're planning not to come down to dinner, then?" + +"Oh, I'll come down," said Paula, "and I'll sit. But I don't mean to eat +anything. Unless you think that will be too much like a--what is +it?--skeleton at the feast." + +"I think it would seem somewhat-exaggerated," he said. + +"Well," Paula retorted, drawing the rest of the room into it again just +as Wallace was making a gallant effort to start a subsidiary conversation +to serve as a screen, "that's because you haven't heard those songs. If +there's a singer in the world who'd dare--cut loose with them right after +eating the sort of dinner Lucile will have to-night for Mary and Rush, +I'd like to see him try it." + +"I didn't mean to imply that they were not difficult. I dare say they are +all but impossible. But it does seem to me that you are taking the +occasion of singing them--a little too--emotionally." + +The tone he was trying for was meant to have nothing in it--for other +ears than hers, at least, beyond mere good-humored remonstrance. But her +reply tore all pretense aside. She let him have it straight. + +"You're the one who's being emotional about it," she said. + +The blood leaped into his face at that but he did not reply. + +"Look here, John," she went on--and her big voice swept away the polite +convention that the others were not listening, "I've told you that this +won't work and you must see now that that's true. There's still time to +call up March and tell him that it's to-morrow instead of to-day. Because +of Rush and Mary. Won't you let me do that?" + +It is just possible that if he had been alone with her, he might have +acknowledged the issue, might have admitted that this new composer whose +works she had been so absorbed in, frightened him, figured in his mind as +the present manifestation of a force that was trying to take her away +from him. And having let her see that, he could safely enough have said, +"Have your own way about it. You know what will work and what won't. Only +make it as easy for me as you can." But in the presence of his +children--it was they, rather than Wallace, that he minded--he was at +once evasive and domineering. + +"I thought we'd already disposed of that suggestion," he said. "If the +situation is as it has been made to appear to me there is not the +smallest reason why March should be put off; why Mary and Rush and the +friends we have asked in to meet them, shouldn't be permitted to hear his +songs; or why I shouldn't myself. I think we'll consider that settled." + +Paula rose all in one piece. "Very well," she said--to the audience, "it +is settled. Also it's settled that I shall not come down to dinner. As +for what people will think, I'll leave that to you. You can make any +explanation you like. But I shall sing those songs to March--and for +him--for all they're worth. I don't care who else is there or whether +they like it or not.--A lot of patronizing amateurs! Bring them up to the +music room about nine o'clock, if you like. I'll be there." + +She left behind her, in that Victorian drawing-room, a silence +that tingled. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +STRINGENDO + + +A crisis of this sort was just what the Wollastons needed to tune them +up. The four of them, for Lucile had to be counted in, met the +enemy--which is to say their arriving guests--with an unbroken front. +They explained Paula's non-appearance with good-humored unconcern. She +was afraid if she sat down to Lucile's dinner that she would forget her +duty and eat it and find herself fatally incapacitated for cutting loose +on Mr. March's songs afterward. They must be rather remarkable songs that +required to be approached in so Spartan a manner. Well, Paula assured us +that they were. The family declined all responsibility in the matter, not +having themselves heard a note of them, but if you wanted to you might +ask Mr. Novelli, over there. He'd been working over them with Paula for +days. As for the composer, he was as much a mystery as his songs. He +wasn't coming to the dinner but was expected to appear from somewhere +afterward. + +Novelli, as it happened, was not very productive of information. Half an +hour before the dinner, his wife had telephoned Lucile to ask if he +might bring a guest of his own, a certain Monsieur LaChaise, who was one +of the conductors at the Metropolitan and was to have the direction of +the summer opera out here at Ravinia this year. Portia added with the +falsely deprecatory air of a mother apologizing for a child's prank, +that Pietro had in fact, already invited him to the dinner and had only +just informed her of the fact. Lucile had assured her, of course, that +this addition to the company would cause not the slightest +inconvenience, served on the contrary to bring it up to the number that +had originally been counted upon. + +When LaChaise arrived the discovery that he talked no English at all +beyond a few rudimentary phrases, a fact which normally would have seemed +calamitous, was now merely treated as an added feature of the evening. He +and Novelli were in the midst of an animated discussion when they +arrived. They stuck together in the drawing-room as if locked in the same +pair of handcuffs and seating arrangements were hastily revised so that +they might go on talking in untroubled mutual absorption straight through +the dinner. Rush being placed handily by, where he could come to the +rescue in case of need. + +It was only the extremest surface of Mary sitting at the head of the +table in Paula's place (which once had been her own) that was engaged +with her unforeseen duties as hostess. And yet in a way, the whole of her +consciousness had been drawn to the surface. The strong interior +excitement that had been burning in her during all this day of her +home-coming, the rising conviction that life at home might turn out to be +something very different indeed from the thing that it had, down in New +York, looked like, the blend of foreboding with anticipation that +accompanied it, and finally a sense of the imminence of something +important, not quite to be accounted for by the quarrel between her +father and his wife,--all this emotional reaction found its outlet during +the long dinner in a quite unusual vivacity. Her sphere of influence +spread down the table until it embraced a full half the length of it on +both sides and those just beyond the reach of it, aware that they were +missing something, listened but distractedly to the talk of their more +remote partners. And while she was doing all this she managed with her +left hand, as it were, to, keep going a vivid little confidential +flirtation with the Stannard boy, Graham, a neighbor and a contemporary +of hers just back from service on a destroyer. + +The thing that stimulated her to all this was a consciousness of her +father's intense awareness of her. She had been deliberately evasive of +him since his quarrel with Paula. What he wanted of her she knew as well +as if he had expressed the need of it in so many words. He had turned to +her for it as soon as Paula had gone up-stairs and Rush had accompanied +the thoroughly demoralized Wallace into the hall. She had found a certain +hard satisfaction in denying it to him, in not nestling up into the arms +that happened, for the moment, to be vacant of Paula. This was so +imperative an instinct that she had not even reproached herself for it, +though she supposed she would later. + +The sense that something in some way or other decisive was going to +happen to-night, quickened her pulse as she mounted, along with the last +of their guests to the music room, in response to Paula's message that +Mr. March had come and that the "rehearsal" was about to begin. She +looked about eagerly for a man who might be March but could not discover +him anywhere. Was he, perhaps, she absurdly wondered, sitting once more +under the piano? + +Novelli drooped over the keyboard. LaChaise was half hidden in a deep +chair in one of the dormers. Paula, her back to the little audience, +stood talking to Novelli. Mary allowed herself a faint smile over the +expression in those faces that Paula wouldn't look at. The half-concealed +impatience, the anticipatory boredom, showed through so unfaltering a +determination to do and express to the end the precisely correct thing. +Even her father's anger looked out through a mask like that. + +LaChaise, from his corner said something in French that Mary didn't +catch. Novelli straightened his back. And in that instant before a note +was sounded, Mary's excitement mounted higher. The absorption of those +three musicians, the intensity of their preoccupation, told her that the +something she had expected was going to happen--now. But she did not know +that it was going to happen to her. + +Long ago the family had acquiesced in Mary's assertion that she was not +in the least musical and in her stubborn refusal to "take" anything, even +the most elementary course of lessons on the piano. She had been allowed +to grow up in an ignorance almost unique in these days, of the whole +mystery of musical notation and phraseology, an ignorance that might be +reckoned the equivalent of a special talent. + +Later, indeed, she had made the discovery--or what would have been a +discovery if she had fully admitted it to herself--that music sometimes +exerted a special power over her emotions. Whether it was a certain sort +of music that created the mood or a certain sort of mood that was capable +of responding to music, she had never seriously inquired. The critical +jargon of the wiseacres always irritated her. She supposed it meant +something because they seemed intelligible to each other but she rather +enjoyed indulging the presumption that it did not. When she went to +concerts, she liked to go alone, or at least to be let alone, to sit back +passively and allow the variegated tissue of sound to envelop her spirit +as it would. If it bored her, as it frequently did, there was no harm +done, no pretense to make. If, as more rarely happened, it stole somehow +into complete possession, floated her away upon strange voyages, she was +at least immune from analysis and inquisition afterward. + +So it was with no critical expectancy that she listened when Novelli +began to play; indeed, in the active sense, she did not listen at all. +She forgot to be amused by the composed faces about her; she forgot, +presently, whose music it was and whose voice she heard. What she felt +was a disentanglement, an emergence into more open, wider spaces,--cold +ethereal spaces. It seemed, though, that it was her own mood the music +fitted into, rather than the other way about. + +She heard the talk that followed the polite rustle of applause at the +first intermission, without being irritated by it, without even +listening to what it meant, though here and there a phrase registered +itself upon her ear. Henry Craven's "Very modern, of course. No tonality +at all, not a cadence in it," and Charlotte Avery's "No form either. And +hardly to be called a song. A tone poem, really, with a part written +into it for the voice." + +The music began again, and now was given ungrudging credit for the +recreation of her mood. Only its admitted beauty created a longing which +it did not serve to satisfy. The cold open sky with its mysterious +interstellar spaces, the flow of the black devouring clouds, the +reemergence of the immortal Pleiades, remote, inhuman, unaware, brought +no tranquillity but only a forlorn human loneliness. + +On that note it ended, but Paula, with a nod to Novelli, directed him to +go straight on to the love song. The two do not form a sequence in the +poem; indeed the love song occurs very early in it and the Burial of the +Stars comes afterward, nearly at the end. But I think, as March did, that +Paula's instinct was sound in using the unearthly Schubert-like beauty of +the Burial of the Stars as a prelude to the purely human passion of the +love song. + +It is, I suppose, one of the supreme lyric expressions in the English +language of the passion of love. Furthermore, Whitman's free unmetered +swing, the glorious length of his stride, fell in with March's rhythmic +idiom as though they had been born under the same star. + +The result is one of those happy marriages so rare as to be almost +unique, in which the emotional power of a great song is enhanced by its +musical setting, and where, conversely, a great piece of lyric music +gains rather than loses by its words. + +March did not use the whole poem. His setting begins on the line "Low +hangs the moon," and ends with the "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" +Why he elected not to go on with it, I don't know. Possibly, because his +own impulse was spent before Whitman's; possibly, because he did not wish +to impose the darker melancholy of the latter stanzas upon the clear +ecstasy of that last call. + +It lost something, of course, from the inadequacy of the piano +transcription, for it was conceived and written orchestrally. Paula, too, +has given finer performances of it;--indeed, she sang it better a little +later that same evening. But spurred as she was by the knowledge that the +composer was listening to it and by her determination to win a victory +for it, she flung herself into it with all the power and passion she had. + +I doubt whether any other auditor ever is more completely overwhelmed +by it than Mary was. It was so utterly her own, the cry of it so verily +the unacknowledged cry of her own heart, that the successive stanzas +buried themselves in it like unerring arrows. The intensity of its +climax was more poignant, more nearly intolerable, than anything in all +the music she had ever heard. Limp, wet, breathless, trembling all +over, she sat for a matter of minutes after that last ineffable +yearning note had died away. + +There was a certain variety in the emotions of the rest of the audience, +but they met on common ground in the feeling of not knowing where to look +or what to say. Their individualities submerged in a great crowd, they +might--most of them--have allowed themselves to be carried away, +especially if they'd come in the expectation--founded on the experience +of other audiences--that they would be carried away. But to sit like +this, all very much aware of each other while a woman they knew, the +wife of a man they had long known, proclaimed a naked passion like that, +was simply painful. What they didn't know you see--there was no program +to tell them--was whether the thing was inspired or merely dreadful, and +when it was over they sat in stony despair, waiting, like the children of +Israel, for a sign. + +It was LaChaise who broke the spell by crossing the room and +unceremoniously displacing Novelli at the piano. He turned back to the +beginning of the score and began reading it, at first silently, then +humming unintelligible orchestral parts as he was able to infer them from +the transcription; finally with noisy outbursts upon the piano, to which +din Novelli contributed with one hand reached down over the conductor's +shoulder. Paula standing in the curve of the instrument, her elbows on +the lid, followed them from her copy of the score. It got to the audience +that an alert attitude of attention was no longer required of them. That +in fact, so far as the three musicians were concerned, nothing was +required of them, not even silence. As an audience they ceased to exist. +They were dissolved once more into their social elements and began a +little feverishly to talk. + +The realization broke over Mary with the intensity of panic that some one +of them might speak to her. She rose blindly and slipped out into the +hall, but even there she did not feel safe. Some of them, any of them, +might follow her. She wanted to hide. There was a small room adjoining +the studio--it had been the nurse's bedroom when the other had been the +nursery--and its door now stood ajar. She slipped within and closed it +very softly behind her. + +Here in the grateful half-dark she was safe enough although the door into +the studio was also part way open. There was nothing in here but +lumber--an old settee, a bookcase full of discarded volumes from the +library and an overflow of Paula's music. No one would think of looking +for her in here. + +But as she turned her back upon the door that she had just closed, she +saw that some one was here, a man in khaki sitting on the edge of that +old settee, leaning forward a little, his hands clasped between his +knees. She had come in so quietly he had not heard her. + +It seemed to her afterward that she must have had two simultaneous and +contradictory ideas as to who he was. She knew,--she must have known, +instantly--that he was Anthony March, but his uniform suggested Rush and +drew her over toward him just as though she had actually believed him to +be her brother. And then as he became aware of her and glanced up, Paula +in the other room began singing the last song over again, her great broad +voice submerging the buzz of talk like the tide rushing in over a flat. +Without a word Mary dropped down beside him on the settee. + +In the middle of a phrase the music stopped. + +"A vous le tour!" they heard LaChaise say to Novelli. "Je ne suis pas +assez pianiste. Maintenant! Recommencons, n'est-ce-pas?" + +The song resumed. March's frame stiffened. + +"Oh night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the + breakers? + What is that little black thing I see there in the white?" + +"Now then," March whispered. "Quicker! My God, can't they pick it up?" +Like an echo came LaChaise's "Plus vite! _Stringendo_, jusque au bout!" +and with a gasp the composer greeted the quickened tempo. Then as the +song swept to its first tempestuous climax he clutched Mary's arm. +"That's it," he cried. "Can't you see that's it?" + +"Loud! loud! loud! + Loud I call to you, my love! + High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves, + Surely you must know who is here, is here, + You must know who I am, my love." + +He let go her arm. The song went on. + +"Low-hanging moon! + What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? + O it is the shape, the shape of my mate! + Oh moon, do not keep me from her any longer." + +From there, without interruption it swept along to the end. + +It was during the ecstatic pianissimo just before the final section +that their hands clasped. Which of them first sought the contact +neither of them knew but they sat linked like that, tingling, +breathless during the lines:-- + +"... somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, + So faint I must be still, be still to listen, + But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to + me." + +On the last "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" the clasp tightened, +convulsively. But it was not until the circuit was broken that the spark +really leaped across the gap. + +There was no applause in the other room when the song ended for the +second time, but it won a clear half minute of breathless silence before +the eddies of talk began again. During that tight-stretched moment the +pair upon the settee, their hands just unclasped, sat motionless, fully +aware of each other for the first time, almost unendurably aware, +thrilling with the just-arrived sense of the amazing intimacy of the +experience they had shared. Neither of them was innocent but neither had +ever known so complete a fusion of his identity with another as this +which the spell of his music had produced. + +They sat side by side but not very close, not so close that there was +contact anywhere between them and neither made any move to resume it. +Both were trembling uncontrollably and each knew that the other was. + +The hum of talk in the other room rose louder and finally became +articulate in Charlotte Avery's crisp, "Good night, my dear Paula, +we've had a most interesting evening. I shall hope to hear more of +your discovery. And see him too sometime if you make up your mind to +exhibit him." + +March started from his seat at that. "Don't make any noise," Mary +whispered, rising too, and laying a detaining hand on him. "Nobody will +come in here. They'll all go now. We must wait." + +He obeyed tractably enough, only turned toward her now and gazed at her +with undissimulated intensity; not, though, as if speculating who she +might be, rather as if wondering whether she were really there. + +"Don't you want them to find you, either?" he asked. + +"N-not after that," she stammered; and added instantly, "We +mustn't talk." + +So silent once more, they waited while the late audience defiled in +irregular, slow moving groups down the hall toward the stairs. Mary +distinguished her father's voice, her brother's, her aunt's, all taking +valiantly just the right social note. They were covering the retreat in +good order. And she heard Portia Stanton taking her husband home. But the +music room was not yet deserted. There were sounds of relaxation in +there, the striking of a match, the sound of a heavy body--that of +LaChaise, probably--dropping into an easy chair. + +"And now," Mary heard him say to Paula--"Now fetch out your composer. +Where have you had him hidden all this while?" + +"He's in there. I was just waiting until they were really gone. I'll get +him now, though. No, sit still; I'd rather, myself." + +March, however, didn't move; not even when they could hear Paula coming +toward the door. He stood gazing thoughtfully at Mary, his eyes luminous +in the dark. It occurred to her that the conversation in the other room +had been in French and that he had not understood it. + +"Oh, go--quickly!" she had just time to breathe. Then she crowded back, +close against the partition wall. The door opened that way, so that when +Paula flung it wide it screened her a little. + +The singer stood there, a golden glowing thing in the light she had +brought in with her. "Where are you?" she asked. Then she came up to +March and took him by the arms. "Was it good?" she asked. "Was it--a +little--as you meant it to sound?" + +When he did not speak, she laughed,--a rich low laugh that had a hint of +tears in it, pulled him up to her and kissed his cheek. "You don't have +to answer, my dear," she said. "Come in and hear what LaChaise has got to +say about it." + +Without effort, irresistibly, she swept him along with her into the +music room. + +Mary, when they were gone, let herself out by the other door as softly as +she had come in. She fled down one flight of the stairs and a moment +later had locked the door of her own room behind her. She switched on the +light, gave a ragged laugh at Sir Galahad; then lay down, just as she +was, on the little white bed, her face in the pillow, and cried. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +NO THOROUGHFARE + + +It was hours later, well along toward one o'clock in the morning when +Rush coming into his room saw a light under the door communicating with +his sister's and, knocking, was told he might come in. + +He found her in bed for the night, reclining against a stack of pillows +as if she had been reading, but from the way she blinked at the softened +light from the lamp on her night table, it appeared that she had switched +it on only when she heard him coming. She might have been crying though +she looked composed enough now;--symmetrically composed, indeed, a braid +over each shoulder, her hands folded, her legs straight down the middle +of the bed making a single ridge that terminated in a little peak where +her feet stuck up (the way heroines lie, it occurred to Rush, in the last +act of grand operas, when they are dead) and this effect was enhanced by +the new-laundered whiteness of the sheet, neatly folded back over the +blankets and the untumbled pillows. + +"You always look so nice and clean," he told her, and, forbearing to sit +on the edge of the bed as a pat of her hand invited him to, pulled up a +chair instead. It was going to be a real talk, not just a casual +good-night chat. + +"We were wondering what had become of you," he said. "Poor Graham +was worried." + +"Graham!" But she did not follow that up. "I decided we'd had temperament +enough for one evening," she explained in a matter-of-fact tone, "so when +I saw I was going to explode I came away quietly and did it in here. By +the time it was over I thought I might as well go to bed." + +"It doesn't look as if you'd exploded very violently," he observed. + +"Oh, I've cleared away the ruins," she said. "I hate reminders of a +mess." + +It was like her exquisiteness to do that and it tightened his throat to +think about it. He'd have liked to make sure what the cause of the +explosion had been, but thought he'd better wait a while for that. All he +ventured in the way of sympathetic approbation was to reach out and pat +the ridge that extended down the middle of the bed. "It certainly has +been one devil of an evening," he said. + +"I suppose it has," she agreed, thoughtfully. Then, noticing that this +had rather thrown him off his stride, she went on, "Tell me all that's +been happening since I ran away. How did Paula act when it was over?" + +"I haven't seen her," he said. "She never came down at all. Of course it +must have been--well, in a way, a devil of an evening for her, too. +Though I can't believe our being there cramped her style very much in +singing those songs. If it did, I'd hate to think what she would have +done if we hadn't been. I hope March liked his own stuff. He was there +all the while, you know. She must have had him tucked away in that little +old room of Annie's that opened off the nursery. Somewhere anyhow, +because long after every one else had gone, he came down-stairs with the +Frenchman. I got one surprise just then all right. He's a private +soldier, did you know that? Just a plain doughboy." + +"Overseas?" Mary asked. + +"As far as Bordeaux, with the Eighty-sixth. Saxaphone player with one of +the artillery bands. In a way I'm rather glad of it. That that's what he +turns out to be, I mean." + +"Why?" Mary made the word rather crisply. + +"Oh, well," Rush explained uncomfortably, "you know what it had begun to +look like. Paula quarreling with father about him and not going down to +dinner; and--cutting loose like that over his music. But of course there +couldn't be anything of that sort--with a chap like that." + +"What is the lowest military rank," Mary inquired, "that you think Paula +could fall in love with?" + +The satirical import of her question was not lost upon him but he held +his ground. "It may sound snobbish but it's true just the same," he +insisted. "A doughboy's a doughboy, and Paula wouldn't get mixed up with +one--any more than you would." + +There was a silence after that. + +"His music didn't sound to me like doughboy music," Mary observed at +last. "Nor his going to Walt Whitman to get the words." + +"Was that Walt Whitman? It sounded to me as if he was making it up as he +went along." He had the grace to grin at himself over that admission, +however. "Oh, well," he concluded, "Paula's all right anyhow. I think +she's--wonderful, myself. Only poor old dad! He is a peach, Mary. It's +funny how differently I remember him. He acted like one real sport +to-night." + +"Afterward, you mean." Mary, it seemed, would not have characterized her +father's behavior earlier in the evening in just that way. "Tell me all +about it. Only reach me a cigarette first." + +He obeyed the latter injunction with an air of protest. "It's the only +thing you do that I wish you didn't," he said. + +"Why? Do you think it's bad for me?" + +He wouldn't commit himself by answering that. The retort it offered her +was obvious. "It doesn't seem like you," he explained. + +"Very well," she said, taking a light from his match, "then I shall go on +just to keep you reminded that I'm not plaster of Paris. I like to have +somebody around who doesn't think that." + +"Father doesn't," Rush asserted, and got so eager a look of inquiry from +her that he regretted having nothing very substantial to satisfy it +with. "Oh, down there in the hall," he said, "after everybody but March +and the Frenchman had gone. Aunt Lucile began fussing about you. She was +rather up in the air, anyway. She'd done the nonchalant, all +right,--overdone it a bit in fact--as long as there was any one around +to play up to. But when we had got rid of the Novellis--they were the +last--she did a balloon ascension. She had a fit or two in general and +then came round to wondering about you. Wanted to know when we'd last +seen you--what _could_ have happened to you,--that sort of thing. I'd +been having a little talk with Graham so I supposed I knew. But of +course I said nothing about that." + +He was looking rather fixedly away from her and so missed her frown of +incomprehension. "Well, but father?" she asked. + +It had been coming over him that what his father had said was not just +what he wanted to report to Mary. Not while she felt about him as she +had confessed, down there in New York, she did. But he had let himself +in for it. + +"Why, it wasn't much," he said; "just that nothing could have happened to +you; that you wouldn't 'fall off anything and break.' What you said about +plaster of Paris made me think of it. He was only trying to get Aunt +Lucile quieted down." + +"While he had Paula on his mind, he didn't want to be bothered about me. +That's natural enough, of course." Her dry brittle tone was anything but +reassuring. Still without looking at her, he hurried on. + +"Well, it _is_ natural that he should be worried about Paula. I know +how I'd feel about a thing like that. It was rather weird while we +waited after Aunt Lucile went up to bed for those two to come down. +Old Nat was fussing around the drawing-room, shutting up and putting +things to rights. Dad sent him to bed, too, told him we'd do the +locking up ourselves. I got the idea that he was expecting Paula to +come sailing down, with March, you know, and perhaps didn't want any +one around. So I made a bluff of going to bed myself. But he told me +to stick; said we'd settle down and have a smoke presently. I don't +know how long it was before we heard LaChaise and March coming but it +seemed a deuce of a while. + +"Dad was right on the job then, calm as a May morning. He introduced +March and me and said something polite about his music, never a word +about his having been hiding all the evening. + +"Then LaChaise spoke to dad in French. Said there was some business he +wanted to talk with him about and that he'd like an appointment. I wasn't +sure that dad quite got him so I crashed in and interpreted. + +"Dad reached out and took hold of me, as if he was sort of glad that I +was there, and told me to tell Mr. LaChaise that we had plenty of time +right now, and if there was anything to discuss the sooner we got at it, +the better. + +"I handed that on in French--I tried not to lose any of the kick out of +it--and while I was doing that March made a move to go. + +"Dad told him not to. I wish you could have been there. I remember he +said after inviting him to stay, 'I imagine you are as much concerned in +this as any one.' It didn't faze March though. He said that he didn't +believe that what Mr. LaChaise had to say concerned him. Then he made a +stiff little bow for good night and went off down the hall to get his +hat. Oh, that wasn't like a doughboy, I'll admit. I went to the door +with him and we made a little conversation there for a minute or two just +to--take off the edge. That's when I found out where he'd been. + +"Father had taken LaChaise into the drawing-room when I got back but I +don't believe either of them had said three words. They were waiting for +me. Dad led off by asking what he thought of March, and LaChaise told +him, though you could see that wasn't what was on his mind. He said March +had a very strong and original talent and that he believed he had operas +in him. There was one about finished that he was going to look at +to-morrow. Then he pulled up short and said it was Paula he wanted to +talk about. + +"Dad caught that all right without waiting for me to translate it. What +he wanted to get at, right at the jump off, was whether Paula knew +LaChaise had come down to talk about her. Was he to consider Mr. +LaChaise her emissary? I took a chance on _emissaire_ for that and it +worked all right. + +"Well, the Frenchman said, as cool as you please, that he was. Said he +wouldn't have ventured to intrude otherwise:--and dad froze to ice right +there. But LaChaise went on and spoke his piece just the same. He said +he'd come to-night to verify the enthusiastic reports he had heard of her +singing but that she had outdone them all. He said the voice itself was +unusual, of great power and of beautiful quality, adequate in range for +anything that could be expected of her. But he said that was only the +beginning of it. The important things were that she was a real musician +in the first place and a woman with real passions in the second. + +"I didn't know whether to translate that to dad or to shut the Frenchman +up myself right there. I would have liked to take a punch at him. But, of +course, you're nothing but a part of the machinery when you are +interpreting, so I handed it on, without looking at dad. All he said was, +'We'll get to the point, if you please, Monsieur.' + +"LaChaise understood that without waiting for me. He said he had had no +hesitation in offering Paula a contract to sing the leading dramatic +soprano roles at Ravinia this summer and that he had told her if it +worked anywhere near as well as he expected it to there was no doubt of +her getting a good Metropolitan engagement next season. He finished up by +saying he had had to ask her to make a decision as soon as possible +because he was at that moment negotiating with some one else who couldn't +be put off very long. + +"Dad asked then whether Paula had given him an answer to-night. LaChaise +told him she had accepted--subject to his obtaining dad's consent. Then +he finished up with a full-dress bow. 'That is the point you have asked +me to come to, Monsieur,' he said. + +"Dad never said a word for a minute. You could see it must have been +ghastly for him. I guess LaChaise must have seen it himself, for he went +on and tried to soften it down a bit. Said he didn't want to seem to +_brusque_ the affair. All he wanted to ask dad to-night was that he +should agree to consider the matter, bearing in mind that a real artist +like _madame_, his wife, couldn't be kept shut up in a brass tower +indefinitely. + +"Dad cut him off rather short on that. He said that from a legal or +business point of view, which was all that could possibly concern +LaChaise, his consent wasn't necessary. If his wife signed a contract he +would put no obstacles in the way of her fulfilling it. Beyond that he +had obviously nothing to say. + +"Well, that was about all. They both put on all the trimmings saying good +night to each other and LaChaise thanked me very handsomely for +interpreting. I chucked him into his overcoat and let him out the front +door.--And bolted it after him, you bet! Lord, but I hated to go back to +dad after that. + +"I needn't have worried though. When we sat down for our smoke in the +library, it was exactly as if nothing had happened. I'd have been tearing +my hair but old dad.... He certainly is a peach." + +Rush paused there for some comment from her and when she made none, +looked around at her. Her hands were lightly clasped across her breast, +her eyelids nearly closed. Save for her barely perceptible breathing, she +lay dead still. + +"Have I talked you to sleep?" he asked. + +"No," she said, "I was thinking what a mixed-up thing life is. The way +you can't help liking and admiring the people you wish you could hate and +hating and hurting the ones you love." Then her eyes came open with a +smile and she held out a hand toward him. "You don't have to answer that. +It's the sort of silly thing people say when they have been drinking gin. +What I was really wondering was whether there will be anything about Mr. +March's opera in that contract Paula signs with LaChaise?" + +This startled him. "I never thought of that," he answered. "Do you +suppose that's it? Oh, it can't be! She wouldn't chuck dad for that +doughboy piano tuner. Not Paula!" + +"Oh, no," said Mary. "She wouldn't do that. It wouldn't look to her like +that, anyhow. She's got enough, don't you see, for everybody; for dad +and--and the doughboy as well. Father wouldn't have any less, if he could +just make up his mind that he didn't have to have it all. And as for the +other, why, it might be the greatest thing that could possibly happen to +him;--being in love with Paula and writing operas for her and having her +sing them the way she sang those songs to-night. I suppose that's what a +genius needs. And you couldn't blame her exactly. At least there always +have been people like that and the world hasn't blamed them--no matter +how moral it pretends to be. It's the other sort of people, the ones who +won't take anything unless they can have it all and who can't give +anything unless they can give it all--those that haven't but one thing to +give--that are--no good." + +He didn't more than half understand her, which was fortunate, since he +was rather horrified as it was. He put it down broadly as the same sort +of nervous crisis that he had encountered in New York, a sort of +hypersensitiveness due to the strain of war work--the thing he had amused +her by speaking of as shell-shock. + +"I think perhaps I know what has upset you to-night," he said +uncomfortably. "At least Graham told me about it." + +She looked at him with a puzzled frown. It was the third time that he had +brought up the Stannard boy's name. What in the world...? + +"He's terribly distressed about it," Rush went on. In his embarrassment +he wasn't looking at her and she composed her face. "He didn't +mean to shock you or--or offend you. He says he gave you reason enough +to be offended, but only because you didn't understand. He says he +has always--cared for you a lot. He said he thought you were the +most--well, about the most perfect thing in the world. Only to-night +he said he got carried off his feet and went further than he had any +right to. And he simply can't bear to have you think that he meant +anything--disrespectful. He felt he had to apologize to you before he +went home, but you didn't come down so finally he told me about it and +made me promise that I'd tell you to-night. Of course, I don't know what +he did," Rush concluded, "but I can tell you this. Graham Stannard's a +white man; they don't make them whiter than that." + +Her reply, although it was unequivocally to the effect that it was all +right--Graham needn't worry--failed, altogether, to reassure him. Was +this, after all, he wondered, what she had exploded about? She prevented +further inquiry, however, by an abrupt change of the subject, demanding +to be told what it was that he and his father, all these hours, had been +talking about. + +He took up the topic with unforced enthusiasm. He had been surprised and +deeply touched over the discovery that his father did not require to be +argued out of the project either to send him back to Harvard or to start +him in at the bottom in Martin Whitney's bank. "If he'd just been +through it all himself, he couldn't have understood any better how I +feel about it." + +"Did you tell him about the farm?" Mary asked. + +This was an idea of Graham's which she and Rush had been developing with +him during the half hour in the drawing-room before they had gone down to +dinner. Young Stannard, during his two years on a destroyer, had +conceived an extraordinary longing for Mother Earth, and had filled in +his dream in tolerably complete detail. What he wanted was an out-of-door +life which should not altogether deprive him of the pleasures of an urban +existence; and he accomplished this paradox by premising a farm within +convenient motoring distance of Chicago, on one of the hard roads. +Somewhere in the dairy belt, out Elgin way perhaps. You could have +wonderful week-end house parties in a place like that, even in winter, +with skiing and skating for amusements, and in summer it would be simply +gorgeous. And, of course, one could always run into town for the night if +there was anything particular to come for. + +Mary had volunteered to keep house for them and they had talked a lot of +amusing nonsense as to what her duties should be. Graham, too, had a kid +sister, only seventeen, who fitted admirably into the picture. She loved +the country, simply lived in riding breeches and rode like a man--a sight +better than most men--and drove a car like a young devil. There was +nothing, in fact, she couldn't do. + +Graham was altogether serious about it. He had been scouting around +during the fortnight since his return and had his eyes on two or three +places that might do. There was one four-hundred-acre property that was +altogether desirable, ideal in fact, except for the one painful +particular that the cost of it was just about twice as much as Graham's +father was willing to run to. But if Rush would go in with him they need +seek no further. The thing was as good as settled. + +"I did talk to father about it," Rush now told Mary. "The thing is a real +idea. Graham and I talked seriously about it while we were smoking before +we went up-stairs. The scheme is to run a dairy, hog and poultry +combination on a manufacturing basis and then sell our whole product +direct to two or three customers in town, one or two of the +clubs--perhaps a hotel. Deliver by motor truck every day, you see, and +leave the middleman out entirely. It's the only way to beat the game. +Father saw it like a shot. He said it would take a lot of money, of +course, but he thought he could manage my share." + +Mary relaxed just perceptibly deeper in the pillows and her eyelids +drooped again. "It's getting awfully late," Rush said; "don't you want to +go to sleep?" But he needed no urging to go on when she asked him to tell +her all about it, and for another half hour he elaborated the plan. + +He was still breezing along on the full tide of the idea, when, +happening to glance at her little traveling clock, he pulled himself up +short, took away her extra pillows, switched off her night lamp and +ordered her to go to sleep at once. Her apparent docility did not +altogether satisfy him and two or three times during the hour before he +himself fell asleep, he sat up to look under the door and see whether +she had turned the light on again. + +He was right about that, of course. The enforced calm Mary had imposed +upon herself as a penance for the tempest of emotion she had +indulged--she had lain without moving, hardly a finger, from the time she +remade that bed and crept back into it until hearing Rush coming she +switched on the light--had had a sort of hypnotic effect upon her. So +long as her body did not move, it ceased to exist altogether and set her +spirit free, like a pale-winged luna moth from its chrysalis to adventure +into the night. The light it kept fluttering back to was that blinding +experience with March while the music of his song had surged through her +and her hand had been crushed in his. + +Rush's coming in had brought her back to that tired still body of hers +again; his voice soothed, his presence comforted her; at his occasional +touch she was able to relax. (If only there were some one who loved her, +who would hold her tight--tight--) She hoped he would go on talking to +her; on and on. Because while he talked she could manage to stop +thinking--by the squirrel-like process of storing away all the ideas he +was suggesting to her for consideration later. + +But when the respite was over and she lay back in the dark again, she +made no effort to deny admission to the thoughts that came crowding so +thickly. She must think; she must, before the ordeal of the next +breakfast table, have taken thought. She must have decided if not what +she should do, at least what she could hope for. She was much clearer and +saner for the little interlude with Rush. + +Suppose in the first place;--suppose that Paula's rebellion was serious. +Suppose the Tower of Brass violated and the Princess carried away by the +_jinn_ or upon the magic carpet--whichever it was--to a world where none +of them could follow her. Suppose John Wollaston bereft again. Would not +Mary's old place be hers once more? Would not everything be just as it +had been during those two years before her father went to Vienna? + +But some instinct in her revolted utterly at that. It was an instinct +that she could not completely reason out. But she knew that if such a +calamity befell, her old place would not exist or would be intolerable +if it did. + +Suppose again:--suppose that Paula's rebellion could be somehow +frustrated. Would it be possible to save Paula for her father by saving +March from Paula? In plain words, by diverting him from Paula to herself. + +That was a disgustingly vulgar way of putting it. But wasn't it what she +meant? And if she couldn't be honest with her own thoughts.... Well then, +were her powers of attraction great enough, even if they were consciously +exerted to the utmost, to outpull Paula's with a musician, with a man +whose songs she could sing as she had sung to-night? + +That moment in Annie's old bedroom off the nursery supplied concretely +enough the answer to her question. They had been soul to soul in there, +they two. There was no language to describe the intimacy of it, except +perhaps the hackneyed phrases of the wedding service which had lost all +their meaning. And while they had stood together in the half dark, Paula +had opened the door, bringing the light in with her. She had taken him +confidently in her strong hands and kissed him and led him away without +one hesitating backward thought. + +And the truth seemed clear enough, incandescent, now she looked back at +it, that it was Paula who had possessed him all along. That moment which +she had called her own had been Paula's. Mary had got it because she had +happened to come in and sit down beside him. She had, as it were, picked +his pocket. She stood convicted the moment the rightful owner appeared. +That was how much her chance of "saving" March from Paula amounted to. + +What a hypocrite she had been to use that phrase even in her thoughts. +Save him from Paula, indeed! Paula could give him, even if she gave only +the half loaf, all he needed. She could inspire his genius, float it +along on the broad current of her own energy. Compared to that, what +could Mary give? What would it, her one possible gift, amount to? + +She pulled herself up short. Wallowing again! No more of that. She'd +leave March alone, and on that resolution she'd stop thinking about him. +She'd think about Rush and Graham and the farm. + +Graham! They didn't come, Rush had said, any whiter than that. Probably +he was right about it. It was a wonderful quality, that sort of +whiteness. What was it he had done (she didn't even remember!) that had +caused him such bitter self-reproach? You couldn't help liking him. It +ought not to be hard to fall sufficiently in love with him. And out on a +farm... A farmer's wife certainly had enough to do to keep her from +growing restless. With a lot of children, four to half a dozen,--no one +could call that a worthless life. + +And it was practicable. With an even break in the luck, she could +accomplish the whole of it. A man like Graham she could make happy. Her +one gift would be enough for him; all he'd want. What was it he had told +Rush to-night? That he had always thought her the most perfect... + +At that, appallingly, she was seized in the cold grip of an unforeseen +realization. She couldn't marry a boy like that--she couldn't marry any +man who regarded her like that--without first telling him what she was; +what she was not! She would have to make clear to him--there was simply +no escape from that--the nature of the thing that had happened in that +tiny flat in New York where she had lived alone so long. + +It was possible, of course, oh, more than that, probable even, that after +hearing the story he would still want to marry her. That he might regard +her, no matter what she said, as having been wronged; her innocence, +though once taken advantage of by a scoundrel, intact. His love would be +reenforced by pity. He'd think of nothing, in the stress of that moment, +but the desire to protect her, to provide a fortress for her. + +But would she dare, on these terms, marry him, or any other man for that +matter, no matter how ardently he professed forgiveness? It wouldn't be +until after the marriage was an accomplished thing, its first desires +satisfied, its first tension relaxed, that the story of her adventure +would begin to loom black and thunderous over the horizon of his mind. +(Who was the man? How could it have happened? In what mood of madness +could she have done such a thing? Might it ever,--when might it +not--happen again?) No! Marriage was difficult enough without being +handicapped additionally by a perennial misgiving like that. No +thoroughfare again! + +She started once more around the circle, but one can not keep at that +sort of thing forever. About sunrise she fell asleep. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE DUMB PRINCESS + + +None of his own family knew quite what to make of Anthony March. All of +them but his mother disapproved of him, on more or less mutually +contradictory grounds. Disapproved of him more than they did of one +another, though he occupied a sort of middle ground between them. It is a +possible explanation to the paradox that each of them regarded him as a +potential ally and so spent more time trying to change his ways, scolding +at him, pointing out his derelictions and lost opportunities, than it was +worth while spending on the others who were hopeless. + +I shall be a little more intelligible, perhaps, if I tell you briefly +who they were. The father, David March, and Eveline, his wife, were New +Englanders. They both came, as a matter of fact, from within ten miles +of Glastonbury, Connecticut, though they didn't discover this fact until +after they'd met a number of times in the social and religious +activities of the Moody Institute. The lives of both had been woven in +the somber colors of Evangelical religion. With him this ran close to +fanaticism and served as an outlet for a very intense emotional life. +She was not highly energized enough to go to extremes in anything, but +she acquiesced in all his beliefs and practises, made him in short, a +perfectly dutiful wife according to the Miltonian precept, "He for God +only, she for God in him." + +Back in New England she probably would not have married him for she was a +cut or more above him socially, the played-out end of a very fine line, +as her beautiful speech would have made evident to any sensitive ear. But +in Chicago, the disheveled, terrifying Chicago of the roaring eighties, +to all intents and purposes alone, clinging precariously to a +school-teacher's job which she had no special equipment for, she put up +only the weakest resistance to David March's determination that she +should be his wife. + +He was a skilled artisan, a stringer and chipper in a piano factory +(chipping, if you care to be told, is the tuning a piano gets before its +action is put in). One would hardly have predicted then, considering the +man's energy and intelligence, that he would remain just that, go on +working at the same bench for thirty-five years. But, as I have said, his +energy found its main outlet in emotional religion. + +Their first child, born in 1886, was a girl whom they named Sarah. +Anthony came two years later and for twelve years there were no more. +Then came the late baby, whom they appropriately named Benjamin and +allowed a somewhat milder bringing up than the iron rule the elder ones +had been subjected to. + +It was the dearest wish of David's life to make a preacher of Anthony +and he must have got by way of answers to his prayers, signs which +reconciled him to the sheer impossibility of this project. The boy's +passion for music manifested itself very early and with this David +compromised by training him for the higher reaches of his own craft. He +got employment for Anthony in the piano factory for a year or two after +his graduation from high school and then sent him on for a liberal two +years in a school in Boston where the best possible instruction in piano +tuning was to be had. + +Sarah was half-way through high school when her brother Benjamin was born +and for two years after she graduated, her mother's ill health, the +familiar breakdown of the middle forties, kept her at home. Then she +defied her father and took a job in a down-town office. What he objected +to, of course, was not her going to work but the use she made of the +independence with which self-support provided her. The quarrel never came +to a real break though often enough it looked like doing so, and except +for the brief period of her marriage Sarah always lived at home. + +When Anthony came back from Boston, he revolted, too. He had not been a +prodigal; indeed, during his second year in the East, he had in one way +or another, earned his own living and he had learned even beyond his +father's hopes to tune pianos. But he did it at an incredibly small +expense in time and energy. What his heart went into during those two +years was the study of musical theory and composition, and, thanks to a +special aptitude which rose to the pitch of genius, he managed to make +the comparatively meager training he could get in so short a time, +suffice to give him the technical equipment he needed. + +He came home armed, too, with a discovery. The discovery that a man not +enslaved by a possessive sense, a man whose self-respect is not dependent +upon the number of things he owns, a man able therefore to thumb his nose +at all the maxims of success, occupies really a very strong position. + +He didn't like the factory, though he gave it what he considered a fair +trial. He didn't like the way they tuned pianos in a factory. The dead +level of mechanical perfection which they insisted upon was a stupid +affront to his ear. And, of course, the strict regimentation of life at +home, the, once more, dead level of the plateau upon which life was +supposed to be lived, was distasteful to one with a streak of the nomad +and the adventurer in him. + +Thanks to his discovery he was able to construct an alternative to a life +like that. A skillful piano tuner could earn what money he needed +anywhere and could earn enough in a diligent week to set him free, his +simple wants provided for, for the rest of the month. + +But even a wanderer needs a base, a point of departure for his +wanderings, and his father's house could not be made to serve that +purpose, so Anthony domiciled himself, after a long quest, in the half +story above a little grocery just off North LaSalle Street and not far +from the river. + +It happened when Anthony had been living there a year or more that the +grocer, with whom he was on the friendliest of terms, got, temporarily, +into straits at precisely the time that Anthony had three hundred +dollars. He had won a prize of that amount offered by a society for the +encouragement of literature for the minor orchestral instruments, with a +concerto for the French horn. The grocer offered his note for it, but +Anthony thought of something better. He bought his room. It was to be his +to live in, rent free, for as long as time endured. + +He took a childlike pleasure in this lair of his. It accumulated his +miscellaneous treasures like a small boy's pocket. He made a mystery of +it. He never gave it as his address. Not even his family knew where it +was, nor, more than vaguely, of its existence. The address he had given +Paula was the one he gave every one else, his father's house out on the +northwest side, just off Fullerton Avenue. This room, in a sense seldom +attained, was his own. When he came back from France, the day Lucile saw +him sitting on the bench in the park, he found it exactly--save for a +heavy coating of dust--as he had left it, in 1917, when he went down to +Camp Grant. + +A good philosophy, so John Wollaston with a touch of envy had +admitted--if you can make it work. Where it breaks down with most young +men who set out so valiantly with it, is the point where one sees the +only girl in the world and recognizes the imperious necessity of winning +her, of holding out lures for her, of surrounding her, once won, with the +setting her superlative worth demands. That this did not happen to +Anthony March was due to the fact that the young woman he--not so much +saw as gradually perceived, was his sister Sarah's friend, Jennie +MacArthur. + +Independence had been forced upon Jennie so early that she never was +called upon to decide whether she liked it or not. She had an inquiring +mind--perhaps experimental would be the better word for it--abundant +self-confidence and a good stiff backbone. It was easy to make the +mistake of thinking her hard. She was not a pretty woman, with her +sandy hair and rather striking freckles, but she was well formed, she +dressed always with that crisp cleanliness which is the extravagant +standard of young women who work in good offices, and her voice had an +attractive timbre. + +To Sarah March (who, having fought for independence, was a little at a +loss what to do with it) Jennie's experience and her rather interesting +range of friends were a Godsend. It was at one of Jennie's parties in the +tiny pair of rooms where she lived alone that Sarah met Walter Davis, a +mechanical draftsman by day and an ardent young Socialist by night, whom +she afterward married. + +On the other hand, the home which Sarah was sometimes rather dubious +about the advantage of possessing, was to Jennie a delightful place to be +a familiar visitor in. She liked old David, who was a surprisingly +charming person when he had no authority over you, she liked Mrs. March, +she adored little Ben--young Ben he was now rapidly growing up to be--and +finally, she began taking an interest which eventually outweighed all the +rest, in the family black sheep, Anthony. + +The intimacy between them which began around the time of Sarah's marriage +continued intermittently for nearly four years. It had not, indeed, been +definitely broken off when he went into the army. + +When the attraction faded as it had definitely begun to do some months +before he went to Camp Grant, it left their friendship unimpaired, +enriched on the contrary. He could talk to her more easily, confide his +thoughts to her more freely than to any one else he knew. + +This ability to be confided in and depended upon was one of her special +talents. She had emerged, years before, from the crowded stenographers' +room in a big engineering concern into the private office of the chief. +He was an erratic genius, brilliant, irritable, exacting, tireless, all +but impossible to maintain any consistent relation with but one of bitter +enmity. He had about made up his mind that a fresh stenographer every +morning was all he could hope for, when Jennie became his Scheherazade. +By the time the war broke out she was as indispensable to him as his +hands. He had made her an officer of the company and paid her a salary of +six thousand dollars a year, but she went on remembering his engagements, +writing his letters and soothing the outraged feelings of his clients +just as she had done in humbler days. She was, in the good, old-fashioned +sense, his better half. Her amusement was the stock market and she played +it cannily and with considerable success with his rather diabolic +encouragement. + +She was in New York when March got home, and he saw her for the first +time since his return at his father's house on a Sunday morning more +than a fortnight after the evening at the Wollastons' when Paula had +sung his songs. + +It was his first appearance anywhere since the afternoon in Novelli's +studio when he had shown his opera to La Chaise and Paula. It had been +agreed among them that with certain important changes, it would make an +admirable vehicle for Paula's return to the operatic stage, and being a +small affair from the producer's point of view, involving only one +interior set, would be practicable for production during the summer at +Ravinia in case the project for Paula's singing there went through. March +had agreed to the changes and withdrawn into his stronghold over the +grocery store with a determination not more than to come up for air until +he had worried the thing into the shape they wanted. + +He didn't know it was Sunday--having attributed the peacefulness he +found pervading Fullerton Avenue to his own good conscience, a purely +subjective phenomenon--until in the parlor of his father's house the +sight of his brother Ben at the piano playing a soundless tune upon +the tops of the keys, brought it home to him. When he inquired for the +rest of the family, he learned that they were up-stairs getting ready +for church. + +"I hope," he said, with a grin at his younger brother, "that you aren't +suffering from that old hebdomadal sore throat of yours." + +"No, it's all right," Ben said, declining though to be amused. "I've got +a gentleman's agreement with Sarah. Every other Sunday. Father's well +enough satisfied now if he gets one of us. When they're all gone, I can +slip out and buy a Sunday paper--jazz up the piano--have a regular orgy. +Every other Sunday! Gee, but it's fierce!" + +"It's pathetic," March said. "Poor father! I don't suppose there's any +help for it." + +What struck him was the pitiful futility of his father's persistence in +trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly +growing into full independence. The only sanction he had was a tradition +daily becoming more fragile. He was in for the bitterness of another +disappointment. That was what there was no help for. + +Naturally young Ben didn't interpret it this way. "You're a nice one +to talk like that," he said resentfully. "You've always done whatever +you pleased." + +"There's nothing to prevent you from doing the same thing if you look at +it that way," Anthony observed. "You've got a job a man could live on, +haven't you?" + +"Live on? Fifteen dollars a week?" + +And it may be admitted that Ben's sense of outrage had some foundation. +Years ago he had made up his small young mind that he would never work in +the factory and he settled the question by getting himself a job in one +of the piano salesrooms on Wabash Avenue. He wasn't precisely a salesman +yet, he might perhaps have been spoken of by an unkind person as an +office boy. But it was essential that he look like a salesman and act +like a salesman, even in the matter of going to lunch. Some day soon, he +was going to succeed in completing a sale before some one else came +around and took it out of his hands, and he could then strike for a +regular commission. + +In the meantime with shoes and socks and shirts and neckties costing what +they did, the suggestion that his salary was adequate to provide a +bachelor's independence was fantastic and infuriating. + +"Yes," he grumbled, "if I wanted to live in a rat hole and look +like a tramp." + +"My rat hole isn't so bad to live in," Anthony said, "but I'd be sorry to +think I looked like a tramp. Do I, for a fact? I haven't had this suit on +since I went into the army but I thought it looked all right." + +"Oh, there's a big rip in the back of the shoulder where the padding is +sticking through and your cuffs are frayed and your necktie's got a hole +worn plumb through it where the wing of your collar rubs. You don't look +like a tramp, of course, because you look clean and decent. It would be +all right if you had to be like that. Only it's all so darned +unnecessary. You could make good money if you'd only live like a regular +person. Every day or two, somebody telephones to know if you aren't home +and if there isn't some way we can get word to you, and it's kind of +humiliating to have to say there isn't;--that we don't know where you +are, haven't seen you for a week,--things like that. Of course, it's none +of my business, but _I'm_ trying to pull out of this. I'd like to _be_ +somebody someday and it would be a darn sight easier if you were trying +to pull the same way instead of queering us all the time." + +"Yes, I know," Anthony said thoughtfully. "But then there's Sarah on the +other hand who can't forgive me for not putting on a red necktie and +going Bolshevik. She'd have me put in my time trying to upset the +bourgeois applecart altogether." + +Ben grinned. "You ought to have heard her go on about the limousine that +came and left a note for you the other day. Lady inside, chauffeur in a +big fur coat. He came up to the door and asked whether you were home and +left the note when Sarah said you weren't. Last Thursday, I think that +was, just before supper. It's over there on the mantel, I guess. Sarah's +afraid you're going to turn into a little brother of the rich." + +"You tell Sarah," Anthony said off the top of his mind, the rest of it +obviously engaged with the note,--"you tell Sarah there's nothing +capitalistic about this. This is from her Doctor Wollaston's wife. +Certainly he earns his living if anybody does." + +"Do they want their piano tuned again?" Ben asked. + +"They don't mention it. They want to know if I'll come to lunch to-day. +I'm going to telephone to see if the invitation has expired." + +"Good lord!" said Ben, "what have you got to wear? You can't go looking +like that!" He meant to go into particulars when his brother came back +from the telephone. But by that time he had something of nearer concern +to himself to think about. Anthony found him staring out the window with +an expression of the liveliest dismay. + +"Oh, look who's here!" he said. "Can you beat it?" + +Anthony looked and saw a little Ford coupe pulling up to the curb in +front of the house; looked more closely at the person at the wheel +and blinked. + +"Jennie MacArthur! I thought she was still in New York. But what's she +doing in that car?" + +"Oh, she bought it last fall," Ben said. "She's getting rich. But can't +you see what it means? She's coming around to see Sarah and that'll give +Sarah an excuse for staying home from church. And that means that _I'll_ +have to go." + +"Don't worry about that," Anthony said, catching up his hat. "I'll head +her off. Tell mother I'll be around to-night." + +He intercepted Jennie at the car door, caught both her hands and pressed +them tight, pushed her back into her seat as he did so, climbed in and +sat down beside her. "I'm supposed to be saving Ben from the horrible +fate of getting dragged to church when it's really Sarah's Sunday," he +said. "If you'll just drive me around the corner, I'll explain." + +But she prevented him with a little laugh when he would have begun. "This +is good enough for me. I don't want any explanation." + +"It's pretty good," he agreed. "Stop a minute now we're safely around the +corner and let me have a look at you." + +She obeyed him, literally, pulling up to the curb again, accorded him the +look he wanted and took, meanwhile, one of her own at him. Neither of +them, however, seemed to find just the phrase in which to announce the +result of this scrutiny. She started on again presently and he relaxed +against the cushion. "This is more like being home again than anything +that's happened yet," he said. "Are we to have a real visit?" + +She was free till lunch she told him, and he, after saying "Well, that's +something," admitted his own engagement. "However, that's the best part +of two hours. The thing is not to waste any of it." + +Naturally enough they wasted a good deal of it. They talked about the +little car they were riding in, how she had learned to drive, why she had +bought it; how Mr. Ferris, her boss, had said he wouldn't be any good for +the day after coming down-town in a tight jammed elevated train and how, +having tried the new method of transportation she had agreed with him; +how it was as easy to run as a typewriter. + +A few minutes more of that, she thought, and she'd begin telling Ford +jokes, so she wrenched around to a new subject and asked him how much +he'd seen of France; what he thought of the French; how long he'd been +home; and what it seemed like to be in civilian clothes again;--topics +upon which he enlarged as well as he could. She had driven meanwhile, +north to Diversey Boulevard and had then turned west, around the ring. +They were out in the middle of Garfield Park when she said after a hard, +tight silence, "Isn't this perfectly ghastly?" + +"It's awful," he agreed. "I don't know what's the matter with us--or +whose fault it is. But I certainly didn't mean to get started like this." + +"I expect that's it," she told him. "Haven't you been trying to treat +me just exactly right? Make me feel perfectly comfortable? Haven't you +been--being tactful, with all your might, ever since we started? +Because I have." + +"Well, then, for heaven's sake," he said, "let's quit! Quit trying so +infernally hard, I mean. It's too nice a morning to spoil. You know, if +the sun manages to come out, as it's trying to, it will be a very +handsome April day." + +"I don't think talking about the weather is much of an improvement," she +commented. "Tony, let's give it up, for to-day I mean. We'll try again +sometime from a fresh start. This is perfectly hopeless." + +He tried to pretend that she didn't mean it but she made it clear even +with a touch of asperity that she did. "Oh, all right," he growled and +reached for the handle to the door. + +"Don't be silly," she commanded. "I'm not going to leave you out here in +the wilds of Garfield Park. Where do you want to go? Is it too early for +your lunch?" + +"Mrs. Wollaston told me to come at one," he said. "You aren't supposed to +be ahead of time for a thing like that, are you? Anyhow, I've got to go +back to my room first." + +She caught up the name. "Sarah told me about your going there. First to +tune the piano and then the evening when she sang your songs. Sarah's +quite eloquent about it." + +"Yes, poor Sarah, I know. Ben was quoting her this morning. However, that +won't make the least difference with what I'm going to do." + +"What are you going to do?" she asked. + +"Why, I suppose," he said, "that I'm going to do what people speak of as +settling down. What they mean by that is taking an interest in +consequences--more of an interest in what things lead to than in what +they are. Well, that's what I'm at now." + +"That's a change, all right, for you," she said. + +He agreed with her. "I knew when it happened," he added. "It happened +when I heard Paula Carresford sing one of my songs. Do you remember the +story that used to be in the school reader about the tiger that tasted +blood and ate up the princess? You know, Jennie, it's practically true +that up to that night I'd never heard any of my music at all--except +mutilated fragments of it as I played it myself. And I'll tell you it was +a staggering experience. The queerest experience I ever had in my life, +too. I'll tell you about that sometime. But I changed right there, just +the way the tiger did. I don't happen to want a fur overcoat nor an +automobile nor an apartment on the Drive. I honestly don't want them. +They aren't a part of my dreams--never were. But I do want to hear my own +music. I want to hear it done for all it's worth. I want to hear +orchestras play it and singers as good as Paula Carresford sing it. And +in order to do that I've got to look ahead a little. I've got to stop +doing always exactly as I damned please. I've got to do things because +somebody besides myself wants them done." + +"Have you got something like that to do to-day--with an eye to the +consequences?" she asked. + +He looked sharply around at her. She was very intent on her driving just +then. "That's a remarkably good guess in a way," he said. "I dread going +to that house to lunch. A month ago I'd have refused--or pretended I +hadn't got the invitation until too late. And I'd have pretended to +myself that it was because I didn't care to play the social game; didn't +want to take on obligations of a kind I couldn't meet. But now I've told +Mrs. Wollaston I'd come, I know the real reason why I don't want to. + +"I said just now I didn't want a fur overcoat nor an automobile, and +that's eighty percent true. And yet, there's a crawly little snob +inside me that's in a panic right now because I haven't got proper +clothes to wear and because I'm going to have to sit down in front of a +lot of funny shaped forks that I don't know the special uses of. + +"Oh, there's more to it than that of course. It's rather a cross-grained +situation. Wollaston doesn't like me. He thinks I'm responsible for his +wife's having kicked over the traces and signed up to sing at Ravinia +this summer. In a way, I suppose I am. She's planning to use that opera +of mine, you remember,--_The Outcry_ we called it--for a novelty, +provided they like the way I've padded up her part. The big role in it is +really for the baritone, of course. That's what I've been slaving over +for the last two weeks. If she makes a hit with it, she'll take it to the +Metropolitan next winter. Of course, there's no reason in God's world why +she shouldn't do that if she can get away with it. She hasn't any +children to look after; she told me she didn't even keep house for her +husband. All the same he regards me as a sort of potential homewrecker." + +"You can't quite blame him for that, can you?" Jennie suggested. "If you +began reading a story about a beautiful young opera singer who left her +husband to go back on the stage again and sing an opera by a musical +genius she'd discovered, wouldn't you expect them to fall in love with +each other?" + +"That shows what nonsense stories are," he said. "That couldn't happen to +us in a thousand years. She's beautiful, and kindly, and affectionate. +She's got temperament enough to blow the cork out of any bottle you tried +to hold it down in. But I couldn't fall in love with her if I tried. It +doesn't happen on that basis. Besides which, it's my belief that she's +altogether in love with her husband. All the same, she's taken me up. She +means to push me for all she's worth and let her husband like it or lump +it as he pleases. She's got some plans, I don't know just what, for +showing me off to one or two of the 'right' people to-day. You can +imagine what it will be like, can't you?" + +"I should think it would be rather good fun--that sort of game," she +commented. + +"That's where the forks come in," he said. "And not having a proper +coat. That sort of social skill is the suit of armor those people wear. +I've got to go back to my room and sew up the rip Ben told me about and +trim my cuffs and try to tie my necktie so that the worn-out spots won't +show-and make them do." + +It was but a few minutes later--they had been silent ones--that she +stopped her car in front of the little grocery store where the rickety +outside stair led up to his door. + +"I'll come in with you and sew up the rip in your coat," she said. + +She wouldn't have made that offer, indeed would hardly have driven him up +to his own door, if she had not been a young woman with steady nerves and +a level head, and an abundant confidence in both. Because that dingy +little wooden building with its outside stair to his attic, was the +nucleus of memories that had by no means lost their poignancy. It was +not, after all, so many years ago that she had mounted that stair for the +first time, and it couldn't be considered strange that her heart +quickened a little as she climbed it now. + +The room startled her by being so utterly unchanged. Not only the major +articles in it; the stove, the iron bed, the deal table he wrote at, the +carpenter's bench, the half invented musical typewriter that he had once +attempted to convert an old square piano into, the hollow-backed easy +chair,--but the quite minor and casual trifles as well. On top of the set +of home-made shelves that served for his music and his books was a sort +of still-life composed of a meerschaum pipe with a broken stem and an +empty goblet of pressed glass, standing upon a yellow paper-covered copy +of Anatole France's _Thais_, that had been just like that the last time +she was here. She had stuck a bunch of sweet peas she was wearing into +that goblet. It made an uncannily short bridge to the past, a trivial +reminder like that. + +Evidently he felt it, too. Perhaps he had followed her glance toward that +dusty shelf corner. Because, a moment after he had shut the door behind +them, opened a window and taken a look at the fire, he came hesitantly +and a little awkwardly up to her and took her by the shoulders as if to +draw her into an embrace. He was very gentle about it. + +Also he was ludicrously tentative. If she'd wanted to let herself go she +could have laughed rather hysterically about that. She disengaged herself +from his hands, decisively, indeed, yet without any air of pique. + +"Oh, no, my dear," she said. "Take off your coat and let me get to work. +Where's your sewing kit?" + +He produced it instantly (the room was not in real disorder; it only +looked like that to one who did not understand its system), gave her his +coat, wandered restlessly about for a few minutes and presently came to +rest at the deal table where he had spent the greater part of the last +fortnight, turning over, discontentedly, the sheets of score paper he had +left there. + +Over her sewing she let her mind run free, forgetting this present Sunday +with its problems, mixing a pleasant amalgam of the past. She wasn't +heartbroken, you know, hardly regretful. She had life about as she wanted +it. She never had been in love with March in the accepted meaning of the +phrase--she had never even thought she was--and it is altogether probable +that if she had found him eager to resume the old relation, she would +have felt a certain reluctance about taking it up again. Life changed +with the years and some of its old urgencies quieted down--for the time +anyhow. Still the night when she had worn those sweet peas remained a +fragrant memory. She was recalled to the present by the violent gesture +he made over the score on his work table. + +"This damned thing is rotten," he said with angry conviction. "I knew +it,--I knew it while I wrote it. It may be what they want, but it's +rotten. Straight into the stove is where it ought to go." + +"Is that what you're writing for Mrs. Wollaston?" she asked. + +He nodded. "I was trying to make up my mind whether to take this with me +to-day or not. If she's the musician I think she is, she'll tell me to +carry it out to the ash can." + +"Well, that will be better than putting it in the stove yourself," she +observed, going back with an air of placidity to her sewing, "because +then you'll know it's bad and if you burn it up now, you won't. You +haven't even heard it." + +"I heard it before I wrote it," he argued. "I hear it again when I read +it. That's a silly argument. Of course I know it." + +"You said a little while ago that you'd never heard any of your music +until Mrs. Wollaston sang those songs. They sounded better than you +thought they would." + +"That's different," he protested. "I knew they were good, damned good. +Only I didn't quite realize how good they were. I suppose I won't realize +until I hear her sing this how rotten it is. But I don't need to. I know +well enough right now." + +He went on turning the pages back and forth with gloomy violence, reading +a passage here and another there and failing to get the faintest ray of +comfort out of any of it, even out of the old soiled quires which +belonged obviously to the original score. + +"Is it all bad?" she asked. "Or just the new part." + +"The whole thing," he grunted. + +"That's that Belgian thing, isn't it?" + +"That's the one." + +"Well," she pointed out to him, "you thought that was good once. If it +all looks alike to you this morning, perhaps what you've just been +writing is as good as that, and it's just your mood to-day that makes it +look rotten." + +He closed the score and slapped his hand down upon it with a gesture of +dismissal. Then he rose and leaned back against the edge of the table. +"That's good logic, my dear," he conceded, "but it doesn't cover the +ground. The old stuff was good in a way. I really meant it and felt it +and I managed to get it down on paper. And the new stuff is like it, in +that it's a damned clever imitation of it. I had to do it that way +because I couldn't get back into the old mood. I'm sick of atrocities and +horrors--everything that's got the name of war in it, even though I was +never under fire myself. Well, writing the imitation has made me hate the +thing I was trying to imitate. I stuck at it for the reason I told you +this morning. But, good God, when it results in stuff like this...! +Jennie, what shall I do about it? Shall I take this thing now and chuck +it into the stove and then tell La Chaise and Mrs. Wollaston to go to the +devil? Or shall I tuck it under my arm like a good little boy and see if +I can get away with it?" + +She looked at him thoughtfully. "What is the new thing you want to +write?" she asked. + +He smiled. "You're a wonder, Jennie," he said. "There is a new thing. +I'm simply swamped in it. It won't let me alone. It's been driving me +pretty nearly crazy. That's why it's been such perfect hell sticking to +this other thing. Jennie, it's another opera. A big one, full size. A +romantic fairy opera. I haven't got it in order yet. It isn't fit to +talk about. But it's about a princess, a little blue-eyed, pale-haired +princess, who is under a spell. She's dumb. She's dumb except in the +presence of her true lover. Do you see? They are trying to cure her and +they can't. But mysteriously in the night they hear her singing. Her +lover is with her, and they try to solve the mystery. Maybe they kill +him, I don't know. Or maybe they make him faithless to her. I don't know +whether there is a fairy story like that or whether I just made it up. +And I haven't worked it out at all. I haven't any words for it, no book, +nor anything. But I tell you it comes in waves, whole scenes from it. +I'd like a hundred hands to write it down with. I'd like to take one +header into it and never come up. And meanwhile I'm slugging away at +that other damned thing because Mrs. Wollaston and LaChaise want +it,--because it's the main chance." + +She asked why he didn't tell them about the new idea and get them to +adopt it instead, but he greeted this suggestion with an impatient laugh. + +"It would be absolutely impossible for Ravinia in the first place," he +said. "The thing would need as big a production as, oh, _Pelleas and +Melisande_. And then this woman could never sing it. She isn't the type. +This is different altogether from anything she could do. Oh, no, it's +quite hopeless until after I've succeeded with something else. But, oh, +my God, Jennie, if you could hear it!" + +She had finished her repairs on his coat and rising now held it up to +him. While he was groping for the sleeves, she asked quietly, "Who is the +princess, Tony? The dumb little princess with the blue eyes." + +For a second he stood just as he was, like one suddenly frozen, then he +settled into his coat, walked over to his work chair and dropped into it, +leaning forward and propping up his head with his hands. "Yes," he said. +"In a way, perhaps, there is some one. That's what I was going to tell +you about. She came in as quiet as a little ghost, just as Mrs. +Wollaston was beginning to sing and she sat down beside me without a +word. And somehow while we listened, we--we were the same person. I can't +make you understand that. It never happened to me before, nothing in the +least like it, nothing so--intimate. I felt that song go vibrating right +through her. She didn't speak at all, even after it was over, except to +say that we mustn't talk--while we were waiting for the people in the +other room to go away. And then Mrs. Wollaston came and got me. She +didn't see her at all. She had disappeared somehow by that time." + +He stopped but Jennie, it seemed, had nothing to say just then. She +turned away to her outdoor wrap but she laid it down again and stood +still when he went on. + +"You don't want to run away with the idea that I'm in love with her," he +said. "That isn't it. That's particularly--not it. I haven't an idea who +she is nor any intention of trying to find out. Even if I knew the way to +begin getting acquainted with her, I'm inclined to think I'd avoid it. +But as an abstraction--no, that's not what I mean--as a symbol of what +I'll find waiting for me whenever I get down to the core of things ... +I've got a sort of--superstition if I don't do anything to--to break the +spell, you know, that sometime she'll come back just the way she came +that night." + +With a little exaggeration of the significance of the act, she put on the +coat she had crossed the room to get. He got up and came over to help her +but he stopped with a sudden clenching of the hands, and a wave of color +in his face as he saw the look in hers. At that she came swiftly to meet +him, pulled him up in a tight embrace and kissed him. + +"Good luck, my dear," she said. "I must be running and so must you. I'd +take you with me only we go different ways. Carry your score along to the +Wollastons. That's the first step to the princess, I guess." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +IN HARNESS + + +The episode upon which March had built the opera he called _The Outcry_, +was one that was current during the autumn of 1914. A certain Belgian +town had been burnt and it had been officially explained that this was +done because the German officer who was billeted upon the burgomaster had +been shot. The story was that the burgomaster's son shot him because he +had raped his sister. The thing got complete possession of March's mind. +At first just the horror of it and later its dramatic and musical +possibilities. He saw, in orchestral terms, the sodden revelry in that +staid house--with its endless cellars of Burgundy. He saw the tight-drawn +terror in the girl's room where she lay in bed. He saw the room lighted +fitfully by the play of searchlights over the city; the sinister entrance +from a little balcony through the French widow, of the officer in +uniform, his shadow flung ahead of him by the beam of the searchlight. He +saw the man, blood--as well as wine--drunk, garrulous and fanatic with +the megalomania of the conquering invader. He saw the man's intention +made clear from the first, but the execution of it luxuriously postponed. +Safely postponed because of the terrified girl's acceptance of his +assurance that if anything happened to him, if a hand were raised against +him, her father and a dozen more hostages would be shot and the town +burned to the ground. Then came the girl's irrepressible outcry when he +first touched her; the brother's knock at the door; her frantic effort to +reassure him frustrated by the officer's drunken laugh; the forcing of +the door and the fight half in the dark; the killing of the girl and then +of her ravisher. + +The thing that wouldn't let March alone, that forced him into the +undertaking, was the declaration of the brutal philosophy of the +conqueror made by the officer while he gloated over the girl who was to +be his prey; the chance to put into musical terms that paranoiac delusion +of world conquest. One recognized in it, vaguely, some of 'Wagner's +themes and some of Straus', distorted and grown monstrous. + +The thing had haunted March, as I have said, and he had tried to find +somebody who would write him the book, the indispensable preliminary to +his getting to work. Failing here, he had audaciously made up his mind to +write it himself. It was not his first attempt to do, in the mere light +of nature, a thing commonly supposed to be impossible except at the end +of painful instruction. He had once experimented at painting in oils, he +had tried his hand at the stylus, he had made a few figurines in +modeling-wax. He wrote his play, then, by the simple process of building +first with painstaking accuracy, a model of his stage, the girl's room in +that burgomaster's house with the French windows giving upon the little +balcony. He modeled the furniture in plastiscene. He bought three little +dolls to represent his characters. And then he reported what he saw +happening in that room; what his characters did and what they said. By +the time he had finished this work, the music was all in his head. He +couldn't write it down fast enough. + +It had been one of the great experiences of his life, writing that opera. +Jennie's reminder that he had once believed it good, was a conservative +statement. LaChaise and Paula were deeply impressed by the power, both of +its music and its drama and saw possibilities in it for a sensational +success. The drawback, fatal unless it could be overcome, lay in the fact +that the dominant role in it was that of the baritone. Dramatically the +soprano's part was good enough, but there was nowhere near enough for +her to sing. There was no reason though, they both asserted, and sent +March away from their conference at least half convinced, why the girl's +part could not be greatly amplified. There were various expedients;--a +preliminary scene between the girl and her brother; an apostrophe to an +absent lover; a prayer. Also instead of being frozen into terror-stricken +silence by her ravisher's monstrous purpose, she could just as well be +represented as making a desperate resistance. She could plead with him, +denounce him; attempt to take advantage of his drunkenness and trick him. +It could be made as good a woman's part as the big act of _Tosca_. + +March had assented to all this and gone to work. + +Paula did not tell him, as he had gloomily prophesied to Jennie, to take +the new first scene he brought her that Sunday out to the ash can. And, +indeed, it sounded so much better when they read it over together, that +he was for the moment reassured. But her attitude toward the opera was +different from the one she had taken toward the group of Whitman songs, +and this difference grew more marked at their subsequent sessions over +it. There had been about the songs the glamour of discovery. One does not +hasten to apply the assayer's acid to treasure trove. And, too, it was an +altruistic impulse which had prompted her to take up the songs. + +There aren't many people who can travel steadily, or very far, on that +motivation, and Paula was not one of them. From the moment when she took +the plunge, ignored--all but defied--her husband's wishes, and signed the +Ravinia contract, she ceased to be concerned for anything, broadly +speaking, but her own success. March's opera, then, was not, to her, the +expression of his genius but a potential vehicle for hers. She was +acutely critical of it. She knew what she wanted and it was not +thinkable that she should put up with anything less. + +She was not aware of this change of attitude. She was blessed with a +vigorous non-analytical mind that asked no awkward questions, +suggested no paralyzing doubts. The best thing that could possibly +happen to March's opera was that it should be made to fit her; that it +should demand precisely all her resources and nothing that was beyond +them. Obviously, since it was going to be her opera, a thing she was +going to wear. + +Had she been, as many eminent persons in her profession are, a mere +bundle of insensate egotisms complicated by a voice, she would have +driven March to flat rebellion in a week, all his good resolutions +notwithstanding. What made it tolerable was that she had a good musical +intelligence of her own, and a real dramatic sense. He could recognize, +what she wanted as an intelligible thing, consistent with itself. Only, +it was not his thing-not the thing he saw. By reason of its very +consistency it was never the thing he saw. + +"She wouldn't do it that way," he would protest. + +"I would," Paula would tell him. "I wouldn't lie there, whimpering." + +He was always arguing with her--wrangling, it almost came to, +sometimes--in defense of his own conception. For a sample: + +"Look at what she is; a burgomaster's daughter. That means prosperous, +narrow-minded, middle-class people. She's convent-bred, devout. She's +still young or she'd be married. She's altogether without experience. +She's frightened just as a child would be over what's going on in the +house. And the prayer she says when she goes to bed would be just the +nice little prayer a child would say, an Our Father or a Hail Mary, +whatever it might be. As simple as possible, on the surface, but with an +undertone of overmastering terror. The sort of Promethean defiance you're +talking about would be inconceivable to a child like that." + +"I suppose it would, to most of them," she admitted, "but this one's +going to be different. After all, it's the exceptional ones that usually +have operas written about them. I don't believe all the dancers in +Alexandria were like Thais, nor all the gipsy cigar-makers in Seville +like Carmen. I don't believe many little Japanese girls would feel about +Pinkerton the way Cio Cio San did. Why can't our Dolores be an +exception, too?" + +The only answer he could make to that was that it spoiled the other +figure, reduced him from a sort of cosmic monster to the mere custom-made +grand-opera villain. + +"What if it does?" she retorted. "This isn't being written for Scotti or +Vanni Marcoux. It's being written for me." That was the tonic chord they +always came back to. It was Paula's opera. + +March presently began to feel, too, that he was growing to be nothing +more than Paula's composer. It was important to the success of their +enterprise that his reputation should be intensively exploited among the +rich and influential who figured as patrons of the Ravinia season. She +went at the task of building it as ruthlessly as she remodeled his opera. + +Her demands upon him were explicit. In the first place he was to bring +her all his music, early as well as late, trivial as well as important, +in order that she might select from it what, if anything, might be +exploited at once. She had promised to give a recital just before Easter, +in aid of one of the local charities--it was one that boasted an +important list of patronesses--and if she could make an exclusive program +of his songs she would like to do so. Then, while it was too late to get +any of his compositions performed by the orchestra this season, it would +be a good thing to get Mr. Stock to read something in the hope of his +taking it for next year. An announcement, even a mere unofficial +intimation, that Anthony March (whose opera ... and so on)--was to be +represented on the symphony programs next season, would help a lot. + +What dismayed him most was her insistence--she was clear as a bell about +this--that he himself get up the accompaniments to some of the simpler of +his songs so that when she took him out to meet people who wanted to hear +a sample of his music then and there, they could manage, between them, +some sort of compliance. He nearly got angry, but decided to laugh +instead, over her demand that he be waiting, back stage, when she gave +her recital of his songs (which she did with great success) to come out +at the end and take his bow in his now discarded uniform. It was the only +reference she ever made to his shabby appearance. + +(It was steadily growing shabbier, too, since she left him hardly any +time at all for tuning pianos. She would have been utterly horrified had +she known what tiny sums he was living on from week to week. And it never +occurred to her when she suggested that a certain score of his ought to +be copied, that he could not afford to take it out to a professional +copyist and so sat up nights doing it himself. He did it rather easily, +to be sure, since it was one of the numerous things at which he had +earned a living.) + +There was only one of her many demands that he persistently refused to +comply with. And she took this refusal rather hard; acted more hurt than +angry about it, to be sure, but came back to it again and again. When she +discovered that he made no pretense of living at his father's house, she +asked for his real address so that she could always be sure of getting +at him when she wanted him. This he would not give her. If he did, he +said, it would only result in his staying away from there and doing his +work somewhere else. It was one of his simple necessities to know that he +couldn't be got at. He would make every possible concession. Would go, or +telephone, at punctiliously regular and brief intervals, to his father's +house to learn whether she had sent for him, but give up the secrecy of +his lair he would not. It wasn't possible. + +I think she compensated herself for this refusal by sending for him +sometimes when she did not really need him, just to be on the safe side, +and, on the same basis, engaged his attendance ahead from day to day. +Anyhow, she occupied, in one way or another, practically the whole of his +time; and the dumb little blue-eyed princess knocked at his door in vain. +Only in those hours when sheer fatigue had sent him to bed had she any +opportunity of visiting him. Sometimes she made white nights for him by +haunting those hours, refusing to go away; sometimes, by not coming at +all, she filled him with terror lest she had gone for good--would not +come back even when he was ready for her. When that panic was upon him he +hated Paula with a devouring hatred. + +Of the human original of his blue-eyed princess, he saw during those +weeks, nothing. On that first Sunday when he lunched at the house he +heard them speak of a member of the family, a daughter of John Wollaston, +named Mary, who had been living in New York and had recently returned but +was not lunching at home that day. He got the idea then that she might be +the girl who had so mysteriously come in and sat beside him while Paula +sang; and without any evidence whatever to support this surmise, it +became a settled conviction. But an odd shrinking, almost superstitious, +as he had confessed to Jennie, from doing anything that might break the +spell kept him from asking any questions. + +During the first week of his almost daily visits to the house, he got +repeated intimations of her, a glimpse once through an open door on the +third floor into a room that struck him as being, probably, hers. The +impression, once more, when he was coming down from the music room that +this was the door which he had just heard softly shut as if some one, the +princess herself, of course, who had stood listening to the music for a +while, had withdrawn there when she heard his step on the stairs. Once on +the settee in the hall he saw a riding crop and a small beaver hat that +he felt a curious certainty belonged to her and once out of a confusion +of young voices in the drawing-room, and a dance tune going on the +Victrola, he heard some one call out her name, hers he was sure though he +didn't hear her answer. Perhaps she had answered without speaking. The +dumb princess again. + +Then suddenly even these faint hints of her presence ceased, and he +remarked their absence with a troubled wonder until one day Paula +volunteered the statement that Mary had gone away on a visit for a month +or two, out to Wyoming, where a great friend of hers, Olive Corbett, and +her husband had a ranch. + +By asking a few intelligent questions, he could have found out a lot +more about her from Paula for she was disposed to talk freely enough +about the family life she was so oddly enclosed in, and their perpetual +quarrels about the opera never carried over into their breathing spells. +In the long hours of their almost daily sessions the occasional rests +made up quite a total and March accumulated a lot of information about +Paula herself. + +Indeed it was not quite as idle as that sounds. Paula talked to him +thirstily, gave him somehow the impression that she had had no one for a +good many years with whom she could converse without reservation in her +own idiom. + +She came, he learned, of a Virginia family which had migrated during her +early childhood to California. It was obvious that they were well-bred, +but equally so that they were not very competent. The victims, he judged, +of a lot of played-out southern ideas and traditions. They were still +living and March allowed himself to guess that they were one of the minor +reasons why Doctor John had to earn a lot of money. + +Paula with her splendid physique and gorgeous voice must have looked to +them like the family hope. They had managed at considerable sacrifice to +send her abroad, but evidently without any idea of the time and the money +it takes to erect even the most promising material into a genuine +success. After a year or two, she had been abandoned to make her way as +best she could. + +Even now that they were safely consigned to the past, Paula could not +talk about the shifts and hardships of that time with any relish. The +discouragements must have sunk in pretty deep. She hinted--it was not +the sort of topic she could discourse candidly about--that the +blackest of those discouragements had come from the amorous advances +of men who had it in their power to open opportunities to her but +wanted a _quid pro quo_. + +He asked her in that connection whether during those hard times she had +never felt inclined to fall in love on her own account. + +"I never cared a snap of my fingers for any man," she said with obvious +sincerity, "until I saw John." + +This slowness of her erotic development surprised him rather until he +evoked the explanation that her energies had been concentrated upon her +musical ambition. Music, since she was a real musician, had been a +genuine emotional outlet for her. + +March speculated rather actively upon the relation between Paula and her +husband. There was no dark room in the composer's mind. He was the other +pole from Aunt Lucile. All human problems set his mind at work. He was +not widely read in the literature of psychology and he had a rough +working theory which he regarded as his own, a dynamic theory. People got +started off in life with a certain amount of energy. It varied immensely +between individuals, of course, but one couldn't alter the total of his +own. Upon that store you ran until you were spent. What channels this +stream of energy cut for itself was partly a matter of luck, partly one +of self-determination. The important fact was that there was only so much +and that what went down one way did not also go down another. It might be +a hundred rivulets or one river, it couldn't be both. This philosophy was +largely responsible for the ordering of his own life, for his doing +without possessions, for the most part without friends, for his keeping +the brake set so tightly upon his sex impulses. + +John must have come into Paula's life, he reflected, at a time when the +musical outlet to her energies had been dammed up. Her main stream, like +that of the Mississippi, had cut a new channel for itself. Had there +been, he wondered, some similar obstruction in the main channel of John +Wollaston's emotional life? Anyhow, there was no doubt that for the five +years since this cataclysm had occurred, the course of true love had run +smooth and deep. But suppose now that, through LaChaise's intervention, +Paula's musical career was again opened to her, would the current turn +that way? Would John be left stranded? Had Paula herself any misgivings +to this effect? + +That she was deeply troubled about her present relation with John and in +general about John himself, would have been plain to a less penetrating +eye than Anthony's. There was no open quarrel between them. Wollaston +dropped into the music room sometimes, late in the afternoon, to ask how +the opera was getting along. His manner to March on these occasions was +one of, perhaps, slightly overwrought politeness, but the intention of it +did not seem hostile. Toward Paula he presented the image of humorous, +affectionate concern, the standard behavior of the perfect husband. + +It was Paula, on these occasions, who gave the show away, betraying by a +self-conscious eagerness to make him welcome, the fact that he was not. +She made the mistake of telling him he looked tired and worried, facts +too glaringly true to be bandied about in the presence of a stranger. He +looked to March as if he were approaching the elastic limit of complete +exhaustion. That it looked pretty much like that to Paula herself was +made evident from the way she once spoke about him, her eyes full of +tears, after he had left the room. + +"He's working so insanely hard," she said. "Nights as well as days. I +don't believe he's had five hours' consecutive sleep this week." + +When March wanted to know why he did it, she hesitated, but gave him, at +last, a candid answer. No one else would have answered it at all. + +"I don't think it can be because he feels he has to," she said. "To earn +the money, I mean. Of course, he's been buying a big farm, half of it, +for Rush. But he said the other day that if I needed any extra money for +this"--she nodded toward the score on the piano--"I was to let him know. +Of course, he isn't happy about it and I suppose it makes him take +things harder." + +Naturally enough, March agreed with her here. John Wollaston was clearly +a member of the gold coast class. It wasn't thinkable that his financial +difficulties could be real. The unreality of them was, of course, the +measure of the genuineness of his fear of losing Paula,--of seeing the +main current of her life shift once more to its old channel. Did Paula +see that, March wondered? What was it she foresaw? + +He got a partial answer one day in the course of one of their quarrels +about the opera. He had unguardedly given expression to his growing +despondency about it. + +"This thing can't go," he had said. "It's getting more lifeless from week +to week. We're draining all the blood out of it and this stuff we're +putting in is sawdust." + +She whipped round upon him in a sudden tempest. "It's got to go," she +said. "It's got to be made to go. If what you're putting into it is +sawdust, take it out. Put some heart into it." + +He had been staring gloomily at the score. Now he turned away from it. +"That's what I don't seem able to do," he said. + +She came up and took him by the shoulders so violently that it might +almost be said she shook him. "You can't let go like that. It's too late. +Everything I've got in the world is mixed up in it." She must have read +his unspoken thought there for she went on, "Oh, I suppose you'd say I'd +still have John if I did fail. Well, I wouldn't. He's mixed up in it, +too. He'd never forgive me if I failed. It's the fear I'll fail and make +myself look cheap and ridiculous that makes him hate it so. Well, I'm not +going to. Make up your mind to that!" + +Later, when he was leaving, under a promise to improve some of the +passages they had been arguing about, she reverted to this aspect of the +matter and added something. "John can see what a failure would mean. But +what the other thing--the big real success--would mean to both of us, he +hasn't the faintest idea of. He won't till I get it." + +"He's a famous person, himself, of course," March observed, not without a +gleam of mischief. + +She echoed the word quite blankly, and he went on to amplify. + +"That European Medical Commission that was out here a few weeks ago +attended some of his clinics in a body. I don't suppose there's a +first-class hospital anywhere in this country or in Europe where his name +isn't known. That operation he did on Sarah turned out to be a classic, +you know. He used a new technique in it which has become standard since." + +But it seemed to him that she still looked incredulous when he went away, +incapable of really digesting that idea at all. No, he wouldn't have bet +much on the chance that any great success of hers could reunite them. The +love life that they had been enjoying this last five years hadn't thrown +out any radicles to bind them together--children for instance. + +March wondered why there had been no children. He was not inclined to +accept the obvious explanation that she hadn't wanted any. She had spoken +once of her childlessness in a tone that didn't quite square with that +explanation. Nor had she said it quite as she would, had she felt that +her husband shared equally in her disappointment. It was all very +intangible, of course, just the way she inflected the sentence, "You see, +I haven't any children." Was it John that didn't want them? Well, he had +two of his own, of course. Had he shrunk from having this new passion of +his domesticated? And then he was a gynecologist. Was he, perhaps, afraid +for her? That explanation had a sort of plausibility about it for Anthony +March. If that were true, his caution had only brought him face to face +with a greater risk. March felt sorry for John Wollaston. + +But it quite truly never occurred to him to hold himself in the smallest +degree responsible for the husband's troubles. To a man with a better +developed possessive sense, it might have occurred that he was poaching +in another's preserves. When a husband made it plain that he chose to +keep a particularly rare and valuable possession such as a wife like +Paula must be considered, in the tower of brass LaChaise had talked +about, it became the duty of every other well-disposed male to take pains +to leave no keys, rope ladders or files lying about by which she might +effect her escape. But a consideration of this sort would not even have +been intelligible to March, let alone troublesome. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AN INTERVENTION + + +Mary could not have described the thing there was about old Nat's manner +of going by her door that led her to halt him and inquire what he was up +to. One sees, sometimes, one of his children gliding very innocently +along toward the nearest way out with an effect of held breath that +prompts investigation. In this sixty-year old child, upon whom the terror +of John Wollaston's desperate illness lay more visibly than on any other +member of the household, this look of gusto was especially striking. +Mary's question was prompted by no more serious an impulse than to share +with him a momentary escape from the all-enveloping misery. + +But she found old Nat unwilling to share his source of satisfaction with +her. He protested, indeed, with an air of deeply aggrieved innocence, +that nothing of the sort existed. A man was waiting now in the lower hall +who had come to make the customary inquiries. Nat had conveyed them to +Paula and was returning with her answer. This was so flagrantly +disingenuous that Mary smiled. + +"Who is the man?" she asked. + +The old servant shuffled his feet. "It's that good-for-nothing piano +tuner, Miss Mary," he told her reluctantly. "I reckon you don't know much +about him. He's been coming around a lot since you've been away. He's +been sticking to Miss Paula like a leech, right up to the day your father +got sick. Then he didn't come any more and I thought we were done with +him. But he came back to-day and asked me if Miss Paula was up in the +music room. He'd have gone right straight up to that room where Doctor +John is fighting for his life if I hadn't stopped him." + +"Did you tell him father was ill?" she asked, and was astonished at the +flare of passion this evoked from him. + +"It ain't no business of his, Miss Mary," he said grimly. "Nothing about +this family is any business of his." Then as if anxious to prevent the +significance of that from reaching her, he hurried on. "He was so sure +Miss Paula wanted to see him, I told him if he'd wait, I'd inform her +that he was here. I've done told her and she said he was to go away. She +couldn't be bothered with him. And then she said to me with tears in her +eyes, 'I wish I'd never seen him, Nat.' Those were her words, Miss Mary. +'I wish my eyes had never beheld him!' That's what she said to me not a +minute ago. I'm going down to fix him so she'll never see him again." + +"You needn't go down," Mary said decisively. "I'll see him myself." + +She had got home that morning summoned by a telegram, one of those +carefully composed encouraging telegrams that are a simple distillate of +despair. During the three days it had taken to accomplish her journey +from the ranch, she had gradually relinquished all hope of finding her +father alive. Rush, who met the train, had reassured her. It was a bad +case of double pneumonia. They were expecting the crisis within +twenty-four hours. The doctors gave him an even chance, but the boy was +more confident. "They don't know dad," he said. "He isn't going to die." + +On the way back to the house he had outlined the facts for her. His +father had driven out to the farm in his open roadster a week ago Sunday +to see how he and Graham were getting on--driven out alone, though he had +spoken the night before, over the telephone, of bringing Paula with him. +For some reason that hadn't come off. Dad had seemed well enough, then, +though rather tired and dispirited. The day had begun as if it meant to +be fine, for a change, but it had turned off cold again and begun to rain +while they were walking over the place. His father, he was afraid, had +got pretty wet. When they got back to the farm-house they found a +telephone message urgently summoning him to town, and he had driven away, +in the open car, without changing. + +Rush had meant to telephone but had neglected this--they were terribly +busy, of course, trying to get things done without any labor to do them +with. He had come home Wednesday, on a promise to Graham's kid sister +that he would attend a school dance of hers. He had dressed at home but +not dined there and had seen nothing of his father until very late, about +two o'clock in the morning, when he noticed a light in his room as he +passed on the way to his own. + +"I don't know why I stopped," he said. "He was talking and his voice +didn't sound natural, not as if he was telephoning nor talking to any +one in the room, either. He was trying to telephone--to the hospital to +send an ambulance for him. He hadn't any breath at all, even then, and +the thermometer he'd been taking his temperature with read a hundred +and four." + +"But--the _hospital_?" + +"I know," Rush agreed. "It's pretty rum. He stuck to it. Wanted to be got +straight out of the house without rousing anybody. He was a little bit +delirious, of course. I agreed to it to pacify him, but I telephoned +straight to Doctor Darby and he told me not to do anything till he got +around. It wasn't more than ten minutes before he came. Paula had roused +by that time, and she persuaded Darby against the hospital. She suggested +the music room herself and as soon as he saw it he said it was just the +place. They've got a regular hospital rigged up for him there and two men +nurses. But the main person on the job is Paula herself. The two men keep +watch and watch, but she's there practically all the time. They say she +hasn't slept in more than half-hour snatches since that first night. She +won't let any of us come near him--and Darby backs her up. The doctors +are all crazy about her. Say it'll be her doing if dad pulls through. +Well--she'd better make it!" + +There wasn't time to explore the meaning of that last remark for they +were then pulling up at the door. She laid it aside for future reference, +however. She was so fortunate as to meet Doctor Darby on the stairs and +so to get at once the latest and most authoritative report. + +He brightened at the sight of her but she thought he didn't look very +hopeful. He said though, that he believed her father was going to get +well. "Medically, he hasn't more than an even chance. He hasn't much +fight in him somehow. But that stepmother of yours means to pull him +through. She doesn't mean to be beaten and I don't believe she will be. +I've never seen the equal of her. It shows they're born, not made. She's +never had, your aunt assures me, any nursing experience whatever." + +Mary thought she detected a twinkle in Darby's eye over this mention of +Aunt Lucile, but it was gone before she could make sure. + +"You're to go up and see him for five minutes," he went on. "Paula's +keeping a look-out for you. He mustn't be allowed to talk, of course, but +she wants him to know you're back. She has an idea, and she's probably +right, that he is worrying about you." + +"What is there that I can do?" she asked. "To help, I mean." + +"Hope," he told her bluntly. "Pray if you can. Cheer up your aunt a bit, +if possible; she's in despair. Only don't try to take away any of her +occupations. That's about all." + +"In other words, nothing," she commented. + +"Well, none of us can do much more than that," he said, "excepting +always, Paula." + +It was not until she had spent that heart-tearing five minutes at her +father's bedside, while she talked cheerful little encouraging futilities +in a voice dry with the effort she had to make to keep it from breaking, +that she saw her aunt--and felt grateful for Doctor Darby's warning. Mary +had never thought of Lucile before as an old woman, but she seemed more +than that now,--broken and, literally, in despair--of her brother's life. +And beyond this there was a bitterness which Mary could not, at first, +account for. + +"Paula, I hear, has allowed you to see him. For five minutes! Well, that +is more than she has allowed me. Or any of us. It was a chance for +showing off, I suppose, that was more than she could resist." + +"I was a little afraid it might be that," Mary admitted. "Afraid of +finding her--carefully costumed for the part, you know. But she wasn't. +She didn't come into the room with me at all; just told me not to show I +was shocked by the way he looked and not to let him talk. And she seemed +glad I was back; not for me but because it might help him. It seems a +miracle that he's still alive, after almost a week of that, and I guess +it is she who has done it. They all say so." + +"Men!" the old woman cried fiercely. "All men! The two nurses as well. +There's something about her that makes idiots of all of them. She knows +it. And she revels in it. It's the breath of life to her. She has played +fast and loose with your father's happiness for it. And now she's playing +with his life as well. And feeling, all the while, that it is a very +noble repentance!" + +"Repentance for what?" Mary asked. "Rush said something like that. I +thought, before I went away, that father was getting reconciled to the +Ravinia idea. Do you think it was worrying about ..." + +"No, I don't," Lucile interrupted shortly. "Your father was exposed, +soaking wet, to a cold north wind, while he was driving forty miles in an +open car. That's the reason he took pneumonia. And it's the only reason. +I don't know what Rush may have been saying to you, but I've known your +father ever since he was born, and I can tell you that Paula might have +gone on making a fool of herself to the end of time without his dying of +it. He was--fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that +she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she +hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this +emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.--Meanwhile, +she is adding to her collection five new men!" + +"I don't believe," said Mary quietly, "that there is one of them she +knows exists. Or wouldn't poison," she added with a smile, "to improve +father's chance of getting well." + +This won a nod of grim assent. "There are plenty of them. She could +replace them easily enough. But her hunger for their worship is +insatiable. For a while your father's--infatuation satisfied her. She may +have tried to pull herself up to his level. I dare say she did. But even +at that time she could not abide Wallace Hood, though he was kindness +itself to her, simply because he kept his head. Unfortunately, this poor +young musician was not able to keep his." + +It seemed to Mary, even when allowance was made for the bitterness of the +desperate old woman, who then went on for the better part of an hour with +her bill of particulars, that this must be true. Paula must have lost her +head, at any rate. What Mary herself had seen the beginning of, must +have gone on at an accelerated speed until it was beyond all bounds. +There had been few hours when March might not come to the house and none +to which he did not stay. There were whole days when Paula was hardly out +of his company. She took him about with her to people's houses. She +talked about him when she went alone. Those who had at first not known +what to think, at last had come to believe that there was only one thing +they could. + +"I tried to suggest to her, quite early, before it had gone so far, that +she was in danger of being misunderstood. It only made her furious. And +John was hardly less so when I mentioned to him that I had spoken to her. +He would see nothing; kept a face of granite through it all." + +"Aunt Lucile," Mary asked, after a little silence, "do you think she has +really been--unfaithful to father?" + +Miss Wollaston hesitated. "Should you consider the conduct I have +described, to be an example of fidelity?" + +"I mean, in the divorce court sense," Mary persisted. + +"That," her aunt said, more nearly in her old manner than anything that +Mary had yet seen--"that is a matter upon which I have no opinion." + +It was a possibility that Mary had contemplated as early as that first +night of all, when Paula, having sung his song, had come herself to +find him in Annie's old bedroom where she had him hidden and with a +broken laugh had pulled him up in her arms and kissed him, unaware that +she was not alone with him. One kiss, as an isolated phenomenon, didn't +mean much, Mary allowed, but when a man and a woman who were going to +be left alone together a lot, started off that way, they were likely +to--get somewhere. And where the man was the composer of that love song +and the woman the singer of it, it was almost a foregone conclusion +that they would. + +But this was not the conclusion that she had come to when she stopped +old Nat on his way down-stairs to turn March out of the house. The +evidence, Rush's and Aunt Lucile's, might seem to point that way but it +didn't, somehow, make a convincing picture. I think, though, that in any +case, she would have gone down to see him. + +He had found himself a seat on a black oak settee in the hall around the +corner of the stairs and his attitude, when she came upon him, was very +like what it had been the other time, bent forward a little, his hands +between his knees, as if he were braced for something. + +"Mrs. Wollaston won't be able to see you to-day," she said. He sprang to +his feet and she added instantly, "I'm her stepdaughter, Mary Wollaston. +Won't you come in?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned and led the +way into the drawing-room. + +So far it had been rehearsed, on her way down-stairs, even to the chair +in the bow window which she indicated, having seated herself, for him to +sit down in. She had up to that point an extraordinarily buoyant sense of +self-possession. This left her for one panicky instant when she felt him +looking at her a little incredulously as if, once more, he wondered +whether she were really there. + +"I think, perhaps, you haven't heard of father's illness," she began--not +just as she had expected to. "Or did you come to ask about him?" + +"No," he said. "I hadn't heard. Is it--yes, of course it must +be--serious. I'm sorry." + +She was struck by the instantaneous change in his manner. From being, +part of him, anyhow, a little remote--wool-gathering would have been Aunt +Lucile's term--he was, vividly, here. It wasn't possible to doubt the +reality of his concern. As a consequence, when she began informing him of +the state of things she found herself pulled away, more and more, from +the impersonal phraseology of a medical bulletin. She told how the attack +had come on; how they had put up a bed for him in the music room, where +there was the most air, and begun what it was evident from the first +would be a life-and-death struggle; she quoted what Rush had told her +when he met the train. "I agree with Rush," she concluded. "They let me +see him, for a few minutes, this morning, just so he'd know that I had +come back. Yet it isn't possible not to believe that he will get well." + +When she had squeezed away the tears that had dimmed her eyes, she saw +that his own were bright with them. "He's more than just a great man," he +said gravely. Then, after a moment's silence, "If there's anything I can +do... It would be a great privilege to be of service to him. As errand +boy, any sort of helper. I had some hospital experience at Bordeaux." + +It was, on the face of it, just such an offer as any kindly disposed +inquirer would have made. Such as Wallace Hood, for example, had, in +fact, made, only rather more eloquently less than an hour ago. But Mary's +impulse was not to answer as she had answered Wallace with a mere polite +acknowledgment of helpless good intentions. In fact, she could find, for +the moment, no words in which to answer him at all. + +He said then, "I mustn't keep you." + +Even in response to that she made no movement of release. "There's +nothing, even for me to do," she said, and felt from the look this drew +from him that he must, incredibly, have caught from her some inkling of +what her admission really meant. + +He did not repeat his move to go, nor speak, and there was silence +between them for, perhaps, the better part of a minute. It was +terminated, startlingly, for her, by her brother's appearance in the +doorway. He had on his raincoat and carried his hat and an umbrella in +his hands. + +"Mary, I'm just going out" ... he began, then broke off short, stared, +and came on into the room. March rose, but Mary, after one glance at +Rush's face, sat back a little more deeply in her seat. Rush ignored her +altogether. + +"My sister has been away during the last few weeks," he said to March. It +had, oddly, the effect of a set speech. "If she had not been, I'm sure +she would have told you, as I do now ..." He stumbled there, evidently +from the sudden blighting sense that he was talking like an actor--or an +ass. "This isn't the time for you to come here," he went on. "This house +isn't the place for you to come. When my father's well enough to take +matters into his own hands again, he'll do as he sees fit. For the +present you will have to consider that I'm acting for him." + +Mary's eyes during the whole of that speech never wavered from March's +face. There was nothing in it at all at first but clear astonishment, but +presently there came a look of troubled concern that gave her an impulse +to smile. Evidently it disconcerted her brother heavily for at the end of +an appalling silence, not long enough however, to allow March to get his +wits together for a reply, Rush turned about abruptly and strode from the +room. A moment later they heard the house door close behind him. + +The two in the drawing-room were left looking at each other. Then, +"Please sit down again," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +NOT COLLECTABLE + + +The effect of Rush's interruption was rather that of a thunderclap, +hardly more. Recalling it, Mary remembered having looked again into +March's face as the street door banged shut to see whether he was +laughing. She herself was sharply aware of the comic effect of her +brother's kicking himself out of the house instead of his intended +victim, but she could not easily have forgiven a sign of such awareness +from March. + +He had betrayed none, had tried, she thought--his amazement and concern +had rendered him pretty near inarticulate--to tell her what the look in +his face had already made evident even to Rush; his innocence not only of +any amorous intent toward Paula but even of the possibility that any one +could have interpreted the relation between them in that way. He might +have managed some such repudiation as that had she not cut across his +effort with an apology for her brother. + +It had been a terrible week for them all, she said. Especially for Rush +and for his Aunt Lucile, who had been here from the beginning. Even the +few hours since her own return this morning had been enough to teach her +how nearly unendurable that sort of helplessness was. + +It must have been in this connection that he told her what had not got +round to her before, the case of his sister Sarah whom they had watched +as one condemned to death until John Wollaston came and saved her. "He +simply wouldn't be denied," March said. "He was all alone; even his +colleagues didn't agree with him. And my father, having decided that she +was going to die and that this must, therefore, be the will of God, +didn't think it ought to be tampered with. + +"I remember your father said to him, 'Man, the will of God this morning +is waiting to express itself in the skill of my hands,' and it didn't +sound like blasphemy either. He carried father off in his apron, just as +he was, to the hospital and I went along. I scraped an acquaintance +afterward with one of the students who had been there in the theatre +watching him operate and got him to tell me about it. They felt it was a +historic occasion even at the time; cheered him at the end of it. And +that sort of virtuosity does seem worthier of cheers than any scraping of +horsehair over cat-gut could ever come to. I wonder how many lives there +are to-day that owe themselves altogether to him just as my sister +does.--How many children who never could have been born at all except for +his skill and courage. Because, of course, courage is half of it." + +Upon Mary the effect of this new portrait of her father was electrifying; +eventually was more than that--revolutionary. These few words of March's +served, I think, in the troubled, turbid emotional relation she had got +into with her father, as a clarifying precipitant. + +But that process was slower; the immediate effect attached to March +himself. The present wonder was that it should have been he, a stranger, +equipped with only the meagerest chances for observation, who, turning +his straying search-light beam upon the dearest person to her in the +world, should thus have illuminated him anew. Even after he had gone it +was the man rather than the things he had said that she thought about. + +Amazingly, he had guessed--she was sure she had given him no hint--at the +part Paula was playing in their domestic drama. It had come pat upon what +he had told her of the lives her father had plucked from the hand of +death, the ironic, "he saved others, himself he can not save," hanging +unspoken in their thoughts. + +"Paula will be fighting for his life," he said. "Magnificently. That must +be one of your hopes." + +She had confirmed this with details. She got the notion, perhaps from +nothing more than his rather thoughtful smile, that he comprehended the +whole thing, even down to Aunt Lucile. Though wasn't there a phrase of +his,--"these uninhibited people, when it comes to getting things _done_ +..." that slanted that way? Did that mean that he was one of the other +sort? Wasn't your ability to recognize the absence of a quality or a +disability in any one else, proof enough that you had it yourself? It +would never, certainly, occur to Paula to think of any one as +"uninhibited." + +But the opposed adjective didn't fit him. She couldn't see him at all as +a person tangled, helpless, in webs of his own spinning;--neither the man +who had written that love song nor the man who had sat down in his chair +again after Rush had slammed the door. + +He wasn't even shy but he was, except for that moment when a vivid +concern over John Wollaston's illness brought him back, oddly remote, +detached. He might have been a Martian, when in response to her leading +he discussed Paula with her; how good a musician she was; how splendidly +equipped physically and temperamentally for an operatic career. "She has +abandoned all that now, I suppose," he said. "Everything that goes with +it. She would wish, if she ever gave us a thought, that LaChaise and I +had never been born." + +Mary would have tried to deny this but that the quality and tone of his +voice told her that he really knew it and that, miraculously, he didn't +care. She had exclaimed with a sincerity struck out of her by amazement, +"I don't see how you know that." + +"Paula's a conqueror," he had answered simply, "a--compeller. It's her +instinct to compel. That's what makes her the artist she is. Without her +voice she might have been a tamer of wild beasts. And, of course, a great +audience that has paid extravagantly for its pleasure is a wild beast, +that will purr if she compels it, snarl at her if she doesn't manage to. +She's been hissed, howled at. And that's the possibility that makes +cheers intoxicating. Left too long without something to conquer, she +feels in a vacuum, smothered. Well, she's got something now; the greatest +thing in the world to her,--her husband's life. She's flung off the other +thing like a cloak." + +Without, at the moment, any sense of its being an extraordinary question, +Mary asked, "Are you glad? That she has forgotten you, I mean." + +She was not able, thinking it over afterward, to recall anything that +could have served as a cue for so far-fetched a supposition as that. It +could have sprung from nothing more palpable than the contrast suggested +between Paula, the compeller, the _dompteuse_, and the man who had just +been so describing her. He was so very thin; he was, if one looked +closely, rather shabby, and beyond that, it had struck her that a haggard +air there was about him was the product of an advanced stage of +fatigue,--or hunger. But that of course, was absurd. Anyhow, not even the +sound of her question startled her. + +Nor did it him. There was something apologetic about his smile. "It _is_ +a reprieve," he admitted. "I left her a week ago," he went on to +explain,--"it must have been the day Doctor Wollaston fell ill--on a +promise not to come back until I had got this opera of mine into the +shape she wants. I came back to-day to tell her that it can't be +done--not by me. I have tried my utmost and it isn't enough. I haven't +improved it even from her point of view let alone from mine. She isn't an +easy person to come to with a confession of failure." + +"She's spoiling it," Mary said. "Why do you let her?" + +But March dissented from that. "If we agree that the thing's an +opera--and of course that's what it is if it's anything--then what she +wants it made over into is better than what I wrote. She's trying to put +the Puccini throb into it. She's trying to make better drama out of it. +LaChaise agrees with her. He said at the beginning that I relied too much +on the orchestra and didn't give the singers enough to do. And, of +course, it's easy to see that what a woman like Paula said or did would +be more important to an audience than anything that an oboe could +possibly say. When I'm with her, she--galvanizes me into a sort of belief +that I can accomplish the thing she wants, but when I go off alone and +try to do it...." He blinked and shook his head. "It has been a +first-class nightmare, for a fact, this last week." + +But Mary demanded again. "Why do you let her?" + +"I made a good resolution a while ago," he said. "It was--it was the +night she sang those Whitman songs. You see I've never been tied to +anything; harnessed, you know. Somehow, I've managed to do without. But +I've had to do without hearing, except in my own head, any of the music +I've written. There was an old tin trunk full of it, on paper, that +looked as if it was never going to be anywhere else. Well, I came to a +sort of conviction after I went away from here that night, that those two +facts were cause and effect; that unless I submitted to be harnessed I +never would hear any of it. And it seemed that night that I couldn't +manage to do without hearing it. Keats was wrong about that, you +know,--about unheard melodies being sweeter. They can come to be clear +torment. So I decided I'd begin going in harness. I suppose it was rather +naive of me to think that I could, all at once, make a change like that. +Anyhow, I found I couldn't go on with this. I brought it around +to-day,--it's out there in the hall--to turn it over to Paula to do with +as she liked. That's why it was so--incredible, when you came down the +stairs instead." + +He sprang up then to go, so abruptly that he gave her the impression of +having abandoned in the middle, the sentence he was speaking. This time, +however, rising instantly, she released him and in a moment he was gone. +There had been a word from him about her father, the expression of +"confident hopes" for his recovery, and on her part some attempt, not +successfully brought off she feared, to assure him of his welcome when he +came again. She didn't shake hands with him and decided afterward that it +must have been he who had avoided it. + +She was glad to have him go so quickly. She wanted him to go so that she +could think about him. It was with a rather buoyant movement that she +crossed the room to the piano bench and very lightly with her finger-tips +began stroking the keys, the cool smooth keys with their orderly +arrangement of blacks and whites, from which it was possible to weave +such infinitely various patterns, such mysterious tissue. + +A smile touched her lips over the memory of the picture her fancy had +painted the night Paula sang his songs, the sentimental notion of Paula's +inspiring him with an occasional facile caress to the writing of other +love songs. She might have been a boarding-school girl to have thought of +that. She smiled, too, though a little more tenderly, over his own +attempt--naive he had called it--to go in harness, like a park hack, +submissive to Paula's rein and spur. Pegasus at the plow again. She +smiled in clear self-derision over her contemplated project of saving +him from Paula. He didn't need saving from anybody. He was one of those +spirits that couldn't be tied. Not even his own best effort of submission +could avail to keep the harness on his back. + +It was most curious how comfortable she had been with him. During the +miserable month she had spent at home before she went to Wyoming with the +Corbetts, she had dreaded a second encounter with March and had +consciously avoided one. To meet and be introduced as the strangers they +were supposed by the rest of the family to be, to elaborate the pretense +that this was what they were--they who had shared those flaming moments +while Paula sang!--would be ridiculous and disgusting. But anything else, +any attempt to go on from where they had left off was unthinkable. In the +privacy of her imagination she had worked the thing out in half a dozen +ways, all equally distressing. + +She had not made good her resolution to quit thinking about him. She was +not able and did not even attempt to dismiss her adventure with him as a +mere regrettable folly to be forgotten as soon as possible. It had often +come back to her during sleepless hours of the long nights and had always +been made welcome. She didn't wish it defaced as she had felt it +necessarily must be by the painful anti-climax of a second meeting. + +The impulse upon which she had taken him out of old Nat's hands was +perhaps a little surprising now she looked back on it, but it had not +astonished her at the time. Of course, there, there was something +concretely to be done, an injustice to be averted from a possibly +innocent head. She doubted though if it had been pure altruism. + +Whatever its nature, the result of it had been altogether happy. She +_was_ glad she had come down to see him. There need be no misgiving now +about the quality of their future encounters, were there to be any such. +They were on solid ground with each other. + +How had that been brought about? How had they managed to talk to each +other for anyway fifteen or twenty minutes without either a reference to +their adventure or a palpable avoidance of it? It wasn't her doing. From +the moment when she got to the end of the lines she had rehearsed coming +down the stairs, the lead had been in his hands. Indeed, to the latter +part of the talk, what she had contributed was no more than a question or +two so flagrantly personal that they reminded her in review of some of +her childish indiscretions with Wallace Hood. How had he managed it? + +He hadn't been tactful. She acquitted him altogether of that. She +couldn't have endured tact this afternoon from anybody. Of course, the +mere expressiveness of his face helped a lot. The look he had turned on +Rush for example, that had stopped that nerve-racked boy in full career. +Or the look he gave her when he first learned of her father's illness. +That sudden coming back from whatever his own preoccupation might have +been to a vivid concern for her father. + +Well, there, at last, it was. That was his quality. A genius for more +than forgetting himself, for stepping clean out of himself into some one +else's shoes. Wasn't that just a long way of saying imagination? He had +illuminated her father for her and in so doing had given her a ray of +real comfort. He had interpreted Paula--in terms how different from those +employed by Aunt Lucile! He had comprehended Rush without one momentary +flaw of resentment. Last of all, he had quite simply and without one +vitiating trace of self-pity, explained himself, luminously, so that it +was as if she had known him all her life. + +One thing, to be sure, she didn't in the least understand--the very +last thing he had said. "That's why it was so incredible when you came +down the stairs instead." That had been to her, a complete non sequitur, +an enigma. But she was content to leave it at that. + +Such a man, of course, could never--belong to anybody. He was not +collectable. There would always be about him, for everybody, some last +enigma, some room to which no one would be given the key. But there was a +virtue even in the fringe of him, the hem of his garment. + +Was she getting sentimental? No, she was not. Indeed, precisely what his +little visit had done for her was to effect her release from a tangle of +taut-drawn sentimentalities. She hadn't felt as free as this, as +comfortable with herself, since she came home with Rush from New York. + +She had no assurance that he'd come to the house again of his own accord +or that Paula would send for him. But she was in no mood to distress +herself just now, even with that possibility. + +She crossed the room and got herself a cigarette, and with it alight she +returned to her contemplation of the piano keyboard. She didn't move nor +speak when she heard Rush come in but she kept an eye on the drawing-room +door and when presently he entered, she greeted him with a smile of +good-humored mockery. He had something that looked like a battered school +atlas in his hand. + +"What do you suppose this is?" he asked. "It was lying on the bench in +the hall." + +She held out a hand for it and together they opened it on the lid of the +piano and investigated. + +"It's the manuscript of his opera," she said. "He brought it around to +leave with Paula. To tell her he had done with it. He's been trying to +spoil it for her but he can't." + +"I suppose I made an infernal fool of myself," he remarked, after a +little silence. + +She blew, for answer, an impudent smoke ring up into his face. + +He continued grumpily to cover his relief that she had not been more +painfully explicit,--"I suppose I shall have to make up some sort of +damned apology to him." + +"I don't know," she said. "That's as you like. I don't believe he'd +insist upon it. He understood well enough." + +He looked at her intently. "Has there been any better news from father +since I went out?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "Except that there's been none. Every hour now that +we aren't sent for counts. What made you think there might have been?" + +He said he didn't know. She looked a little more cheerful somehow, +less--tragic. Evidently her visit to the Corbetts had done her good. + +His eye fell once more on the manuscript. "Did he go off and forget +that?" he asked. "Or did he mean to leave it for Paula? And what shall we +do with it,--hand it over to her or send it back?" + +Thoughtfully Mary straightened the sheets and closed the cover. "I'll +take care of it for him," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +HICKORY HILL + + +Pneumonia, for all it is characterized by what is called a crisis, has no +single stride to recovery, no critical moment when one who has been in +peril passes to safety. Steinmetz and Darby were determined that Mary and +all the household should understand this fully. She had waylaid them in +the hall as they were leaving the house together--this was seventy-two +hours or so after Anthony March's call--and demanded the good news she +was sure they had for her. There was a look about them and a tone in +their voices that were perfectly new. + +They would not be persuaded to say that her father was out of danger. +There was very little left of him. His heart had been over-strained and +this abnormal effect was now, in due course, transferred to the kidneys. +All sorts of deadly sequellae were lying in ambush. + +But the more discouraging they were, the more she beamed upon them. She +walked along with them to the door, slipping her arm inside Doctor +Darby's as she did so. "If you only knew," she said, "what a wonderful +thing it is to have the doctors stop being encouraging and try to +frighten you, instead. Because that means you really do think he's +getting well." + +"The balance of probability has swung to that side," Steinmetz admitted +in his rather affected staccato. "At all events he's out of my beat." His +beat was the respiratory tract and his treatment the last word in +vaccines and serums. + +She held Darby back a little. "Must we go on feeling," she asked, +"that anything could happen any minute? Or--well, could Rush go back +to the farm? Graham Stannard has gone to New York, I think, they're +partners, you know, so he must be rather badly wanted. And this +waiting is hard for him." + +Rush could go, of course, Darby assured her. "For that matter," he went +on with a quick glance at her, "why don't you go with him? Take your aunt +along, too. For a few days, at least. You couldn't do better." + +She demurred to this on the ground that it didn't seem fair to Paula. If +there was a period of Arcadian retirement down on the books for anybody, +it was Paula who was entitled to it. + +But Paula, as Darby pointed out, wouldn't take it in the first place, +and, surprisingly, didn't need it in the second. "She told me just now +that she'd slept eighteen hours out of the last twenty-four and was ready +for anything. She looked it, too." + +He understood very well her irrepressible shrug of exasperation at that +and interrupted her attempt to explain it. "It's another breed of animal +altogether," he said. "And at that, I'd rather have had her job than +yours. You're looking first rate, anyhow. But your aunt, if she isn't to +break up badly, had better be carried off somewhere." He glanced around +toward Steinmetz who had withdrawn out of ear-shot. "There are some +toxins, you know," he added, "that are even beyond him and his +microscopes." + +Mary had meant to broach this project at dinner but changed her mind and +waited until Aunt Lucile had withdrawn and she and Rush were left alone +over their coffee cups for a smoke. + +"Poor Aunt Lucile! She has aged years in the last three weeks. And it +shows more, now the nightmare is over, than it did before." + +"Is it over? Really?" he asked. + +"Well, we don't need miracles any more for him. Just ordinary good care +and good luck. Yes, I'd say the nightmare was over." + +"Leaving us free," he commented, "to go back to our own." + +"You can go back to the farm, anyhow," she said. "I asked Doctor Darby, +especially, and he said so. He wants me to go along with you and take +Aunt Lucile. Just for a week or so. Is there any sort of place with a +roof over it where we could stay?" + +He said, "I guess that could be managed." But his tone was so absent and +somber that she looked at him in sharp concern. + +"You didn't mean that the farm was your nightmare, did you?" she asked. +"Has something gone terribly wrong out there?" + +"Things have gone just the way I suppose anybody but a fool would have +known they would. Not worse than that, I guess." + +He got up then and went over to the sideboard, coming back with a +decanter of old brandy and a pair of big English glasses. She declined +hers as unobtrusively as possible, just with a word and a faint shake of +the head. But it was enough to make him look at her. + +"You didn't drink anything at dinner, either, did you?" he asked. + +She flushed as she said, "I don't think I'm drinking, at all, just now." + +"Being an example to anybody?" he asked suspiciously. + +She smiled at that and patted his hand. "Oh, no, my dear. I've enough to +do to be an example to myself. I liked the way it was out at the +Corbetts'. They've gone bone-dry. And,--oh, please don't think that I'm a +prig--I am a little better without it--just now, anyway. Tell me what's +gone wrong at the farm." + +"This is wonderful stuff," he said, cupping the fragile glass in his two +hands and inhaling the bouquet from the precious liquor in the bottom of +it. "It's good for nightmares, at any rate." After a sip or two, he +attempted to answer her question. + +"Oh, I suppose we'll come out all right, eventually. Of course, we've got +to. But I wish Martin Whitney had done one thing or the other; either +shown a little real confidence and enthusiasm in the thing or else +stepped on it and refused to lend father the money." + +"Lend?" Mary asked. "Did he have to borrow it?" + +He dealt rather impatiently with that question. "You don't keep sixty or +eighty thousand dollars lying around loose in a checking account," he +said. "Of course, he had to borrow it. But he borrowed it of Whitney, +worse luck--and Whitney being an old friend, pulls a long face over it +whenever we find we need a little more than the original figures showed. +That's enough to give any one cold feet right there. + +"Graham's father is rich, of course, but he's tighter than the bark on a +tree. He's gone his limit and he won't stand for anything more. He can't +see that a farm like that is nothing but a factory and that you can't run +it for any profit that's worth while without the very best possible +equipment. He wanted us to pike along with scrub stock and the old tools +and buildings that were on the place and pay for improvements out of our +profits. Of course, the answer to that was that there wouldn't be any +profits. A grade cow these days simply can't earn her keep with the price +of feed and labor what it is. We didn't figure the cost of tools and +modern buildings high enough--there _was_ such a devil of a lot of +necessary things that we didn't figure on at all--and the consequence +was that we didn't put a big enough mortgage on the place. Nowhere near +what it would stand. And now that we want to put a second one on, Mr. +Stannard howls like a wolf." + +The mere sound of the word mortgage made Mary's heart sink. She looked so +woebegone that Rush went on hastily. + +"Oh, that'll come out in the wash. It's nothing to worry about really, +because even on the basis of a bigger investment than we had any idea of +making when we went in, it figures a peach of a profit. There's no +getting away from that. That's not the thing about it that's driving +Graham and me to drink." + +He stopped on that phrase, not liking the sound of it, and in doubt about +asking her not to take it literally. She saw all that as plainly as if +she had been looking through an open window into his mind. He took +another deliberate sip of the brandy, instead, and then went on. + +"Why, it's the way things don't happen; the way we can't get +anything done." + +He did not see the sympathetic hand she stretched out to him; went back +to the big brandy glass instead, for another long luxurious inhalation +and a small sip or two. "It's partly our own fault, of course," he went +on, presently. "We've made some fool mistakes. But it isn't our mistakes +that are going to beat us, it's the damned bull-headed incompetence of +the so-called labor we've got to deal with." + +He ruminated over that in silence for a minute or two. "They talk about +the inefficiency of the army," he exclaimed, "but I've been four years in +two armies and I'll say that if what we've found out at Hickory Hill is a +fair sample of civilian efficiency, I'll take the army way every time. +There are days when I feel as if I'd like to quit;--go out West and get +a job roping steers for Bob Corbett, even if he is bone-dry." + +She thought if he played any longer with that brandy glass she must cry +out, but he drained it this time and pushed it away. With an effort of +will she relaxed her tight muscles. + +"I suppose I must have looked to you like a hopeless slacker," he said, +"or you wouldn't have asked Darby to send me back to work. No,--I didn't +mean to put it that way. I look like one to myself, that's all, when I +stop to think. Only you don't know how it has felt, this last six weeks, +to go on getting tighter and tighter in your head until you feel as if +you were going to burst. I went out and got drunk, once,--just plain, +deliberately boiled--in order to let off steam. It did me good, too, for +the time being." + +She didn't look shocked at that as he had expected her to--gave him only +a rather wry smile and a comprehending nod. "We're all alike; that's the +trouble with us," she said. "But you will take us out to Hickory Hill, +won't you? Aunt Lucile and I. I'll promise we won't be in the way nor +make you any more work." + +She saw he was hesitating and added, "At that, perhaps, I may be some +good. I could cook anyhow and I suppose I could be taught to milk a cow +and run a Ford." + +He laughed at that, then said a little uncomfortably that this wasn't +what he had been thinking about. "I suppose you're counting on Graham's +being in New York. He isn't. At least, he telegraphed me that he'd be +back at Hickory Hill to-morrow morning. I knew you'd been rather keeping +away from him and I thought perhaps..." + +"No, that's all right." She said it casually enough, but it drew a keen +look of inquiry from him, nevertheless. "Oh, nothing," she went on. "I +mean I haven't made up with him. Of course, I never quarreled with him +as far as that went. Only it's what I meant when I said just now that we +were all alike, father and you and I. We all get so ridiculously--tight +about things. Well, I've managed to let off steam myself." + +He patted her hand approvingly. "That trip to Wyoming did you a lot of +good," he observed.--"Or something did." + +"They're wonderfully easy people to live with, Olive and Bob," she said. +"They're immensely in love with each other I suppose, but without somehow +being offensive about it. And they have such a lot of fun. Olive has a +piebald cayuse, that she's taught all the _haute ecole_ tricks. He does +the statuesque poses and all the high action things just as seriously as +a thoroughbred and he's so short and homely and in such deadly earnest +about it that you can hardly bear it. You laugh yourself into stitches +but you want to cry too. And Bob says he's going to train a mule the same +way. If he ever does that pair will be worth a million dollars to any +circus.--Well, we'll be doing things like that out at Hickory Hill some +day. Because there is such a thing as fun left in the world." + +"We'll have some of it this week," he agreed, and in this rather +light-headed spirit they arranged details. + +The only building at Hickory Hill that had been designed for human +habitation was the farm-house and it was at present fully occupied and +rather more by a camp cook and his assistant, the farm manager and half +a dozen hands. The partners themselves slept in a tent. There was also a +cook tent near the house where three meals a day were prepared for +everybody, including the carpenters, masons, concrete men and well +diggers who were working on the new buildings. They drove out in Fords +from two or three near-by towns in time for breakfast and didn't go home +till after supper. The wagon shed of the old horse barn served as a +mess hall. + +There were some beds, though, two or three spare ones, Rush was sure, +that had never been used. Given a day's start on his guests, he would +promise some sort of building which, if they would refrain from inquiring +too closely into its past, should serve to house them. + +"A wood-shed," she suggested helpfully, "or a nicely swept-out hennery. +Even a former cow stable, at a pinch. Only not a pig-pen." + +"If our new hog-house were only finished, you could be absolutely +palatial in it. But I think I can do better than any of those. You leave +that to me.--Only, how about Aunt Lucile? She's--essential to the scheme, +I suppose. Can you deliver her?" + +"She'll come if it's put to her right,--as a sporting proposition. +She really is a good sport you know, the dear old thing. You leave +her to me." + +"Lord, I feel a lot better than I did when I sat down to dinner," he told +her when they parted for the night, and left her reflecting on the folly +of making mountains out of mole-hills. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LOW HANGS THE MOON + + +He broke his promise to be waiting for them Friday morning at the farm. +It was Graham who caught sight of their car, as it stopped in front of +the farm-house, and came plunging down the bank to greet them and explain +how unavoidable it had been that Rush should go to Elgin. + +He was somewhat flushed and a little out of breath but he seemed, after +the first uncomfortable minute, collected enough. He mounted the +running-board and directed the chauffeur to drive on across the bridge +and fork to the right with the main road up to a small nondescript +building on the far side of it. + +It was a part of the farm, he explained, indicating the wilderness off to +the left,--a part of what must once have been a big apple orchard. +Indeed, exploring it yesterday for the first time, he had found a +surprising number of old trees, which, choked as they were with +undergrowth, looked as if they were still bearing fruit. The building, +which they had never even entered until yesterday, had served as a +sorting and packing house for the crop, though the old part of +it--paradoxically the upper part--appeared to have been built as a +dwelling by some pioneer settler. A second story had been added +underneath by digging out the bank. + +It stood well back from the road, a grass grown lane with a turning +circle leading to it. It had what had once been a loading platform, wagon +high, instead of a veranda. The lower story, a single room which they +peered into through a crack in a warped unhinged door, seemed unpromising +enough, a dark cobwebby place, cumbered with wooden chutes from the floor +above by which, Graham explained, they rolled the apples down into +barrels after they had been sorted up-stairs. A carpenter had been busy +most of the morning, he added, flooring over the traps from which these +chutes led down. + +Mary, though, fairly cried out with delight, and even Miss Wollaston +beamed appreciation when, Graham, having led them up the bank and around +to the back of the building, ushered them in, at the ground level up +here, to the upper story of the building. There was a fireplace in the +north end of it with twin brick erections on either side which they +thought must have been used for drying apples. The opposite end, +partitioned off, still housed a cider mill and press, but they had +contrived, he said, a makeshift bedroom out of it. + +Along the east side of the room were three pairs of casement windows +which commanded a view of the greater part of the farm; across the road, +across Hickory Creek, across the long reach of the lower pasture and the +seemingly limitless stretches of new plowed fields. The clump of farm +buildings, old and new, was in the middle of the picture. Over to the +left not quite a mile away, behind what looked like nothing more than a +fold in the earth (the creek again, Graham explained. It swung an arc of +two hundred degrees or so, about the main body of their tillable land) +rose the heavily wooded slopes of Hickory Hill. + +"We were surprised at this place," he said, "when we opened it up +yesterday. It's the best view on the farm. It will be a fine place +to build a real country house, some day, if we ever make money +enough to do that." + +"It is a real country house already," Mary told him briskly. "You two, +living in a tent with a lovely old place like this just waiting for you! +Wait until Aunt Lucile and I have had a day at it and you'll see." + +He looked as if he believed her. Indeed, he looked unutterable things, +contemplating her, there in that mellow old room,--wrinkling her nose a +little and declaring that she could still smell apples. But all he said +was that he supposed the roof leaked, but it couldn't be very bad because +everything seemed quite decently dry and not at all musty. He added that +he must be getting back to work, but that an odd-job man, capable more or +less of anything, was at her disposal for as long as she wanted him. + +She went with him to the door when he made his rather precipitate +departure and stood, after she had waved him a temporary farewell, gazing +up at the soft sun-bathed slope with its aisles of gnarled trees. She +smiled at the sight of a decrepit long-handled wooden pump. She took a +long breath of the smell of the month of May. Then she turned, with Aunt +Lucile, to such practical matters as bedding, brooms and tea-kettles. + +There was more to do than a first look had led them to suppose, and +their schemes grew ambitious, besides, as they advanced with them, so +that, for all the Briarean prodigies of Bill, the odd-job man, they went +to bed dog tired at nine o'clock that night with their labors not more +than half complete. They slept--Mary did, anyhow, the deepest sleep she +had known in years. + +She waked at an unearthly--a heavenly hour. The thin ether-cool air was +quivering with the dissonance of bird calls; the low sun had laid great +slow-moving oblongs of reddish gilt upon the brown walls of the big room. +(She had left her aunt in undivided possession of the extemporized +bed-chamber.) She rose and opened the door and looked out into the +orchard. But what her eye came to rest upon was the old wooden pump. + +It was a triumph of faith over skepticism, that pump. Graham had +contemned it utterly, hardly allowing, even, that it was picturesque, but +Bill, the odd-job man had, with her encouragement, spent a patient hour +over it and in the teeth of scientific probability, lo, it had given +forth streams of water as clear as any that had ever miraculously been +smitten out of a rock. The partners had forbidden her to drink any of it +except boiled, until it had been analyzed. + +She looked about. She had the world to herself. So she carried her rubber +tub, her sponge and a bath-towel out to the warped wooden platform and +bathed _en plein air_, water and sun together. She came in, deliciously +shuddering, lighted a fire, already laid, of shavings and sticks, put the +kettle on to boil and dressed. She felt--new born that morning. + +This sensation made the undercurrent of a long fully filled day. She +almost never had time to look at it but she knew it was there. It +enabled her to take with equanimity the unlooked-for arrival (so far as +she and her aunt were concerned) of Graham's young torn-boy sister, +Sylvia. It made it possible for her to say, "Why, yes, of course! I'd +love to," when Graham, along in the afternoon asked her if she wouldn't +go for a walk over the farm with him. They spent more than an hour at +it, sitting, a part of the time, side by side atop the gate into the +upper pasture, yet not even then had the comfortable sense of pleasant +companionship with him taken fright. It was a security that resided, she +knew, wholly in herself. + +He was holding himself, obviously, on a very tight rein, and it was quite +conceivable that before her visit ended, he would bolt. There was a +moment, indeed--when he came with Rush to supper at the apple house and +got his first look at the transformation she had wrought in it--when that +possibility must have been in the minds of every one who saw his face. + +She had dramatized the result of her two days' labor innocent of any +intention to produce an effect like that. The partners when they came +dropping in from time to time had, learned nothing of her plans, seen +none of their accomplishments, so to-night the old-fashioned settle +which Bill had knocked together from lumber in the packing room and she +had stained, two of the sorting tables, fitted into the corners beside +the fireplace to make a dais, the conversion of another into a capital +dining table by the simple expedient of lengthening its legs, the rag +rug, discovered in the village, during a flying trip with Sylvia this +morning in her car and ravished from the church fair it had been +intended for, the sacks of sheeting Aunt Lucile had been sewing +industriously all day, covered with burlaps and stuffed with hay to +serve as cushions, the cheese-cloth tacked up in gathers over the +windows and hemmed with pins,--all this, revealed at once, had the +surprise of a conjurer's trick, or, if one were predisposed that way, +the entrancement of a miracle. + +She was a little entranced, herself, partly with fatigue for she had put +in, one after the other, two unusually laborious days, but partly no +doubt with her own magic, with this almost convincing simulation of a +home which she and her assistants had produced. It didn't matter that she +had gone slack and silent, because Sylvia, who just before supper had +shown a disposition to dreamy elegiac melancholy, rebounded, as soon as +she was filled with food, to the other end of the scale altogether and +swept Rush after her into a boisterous romp, which none of Aunt Lucile's +remonstrant asides to her nephew was effectual to quell. + +She was an amazing creature, this product of the latest generation to +begin arriving at the fringes of maturity, a reedy young thing, as tall +as Graham, inches taller than Rush. She had the profile of a young Greek +goddess and the grin of a gamin. She was equally at home in a +ballgown--though she was not yet out--or in a pair of khaki riding +breeches and an olive drab shirt. She was capable of assuming a manner +that was a genuine gratification to her great aunt or one that startled +her father's stable men. She read French novels more or less at random, +(unknown to her mother. She had a rather mischievous uncle who was +responsible for this development) and she was still deadly accurate with +a snowball. A bewildering compound of sophistications and innocence, a +modern young sphinx with a riddle of her own. + +Mary watched her tussling and tumbling about with Rush, pondering the +riddle but making no great effort to find an answer to it. Was she child +or woman? To herself what was she? And what did Rush think about her? +They were evidently well established on some sort of terms. Rush, no +doubt, would tell you--disgustedly if you sought explanation--that Sylvia +was just a kid. That he was fond of her as one would be of any nice kid +and that her rough young embraces, her challenges and her pursuits, meant +precisely what those of an uproarious young--well, nephew, say,--would +mean. Only his eagerness to go on playing the game cast a doubt upon that +explanation. + +They went out abruptly after a while, just as it was getting dark, to +settle a bet as to which of them could walk the farthest along the top +rail of a certain old fence. Miss Wollaston saw them go with unconcealed +dismay, but it was hard to see how even a conscientious chaperon could +have prevented it so long as the child's elder brother would do nothing +to back her up. To Mary, half-way in her trance, it didn't seem much to +matter what the relation was or what came of it. It was a fine spring +night and they were a pair of beautifully untroubled young animals. Let +them play as they would. + +Their departure, did, however, arouse Graham to the assumption of his +duties as host and he launched himself into a conversation with Miss +Wollaston; a fine example, Mary thought, of what really good breeding +means. Her aunt's questions about life in the navy were not the sort that +were easy to answer pleasantly and at large. They drew from him things he +must have been made to say a hundred times since his return and sometimes +they were so wide of the mark that it must have been hard not to stare or +laugh. He must have been wishing, too, with all his might down in the +disregarded depths of his heart, that the old lady would yield to the +boredom and fatigue that were slowly creeping over her. Soon! Before that +pair of Indians came back. But by nothing, not even the faintest +irrepressible inflection of voice was that wish made manifest. + +It broke over Mary suddenly that this would never happen. Aunt Lucile +might die at her post, but she'd never, in Graham's presence, retire +through a door which was known to lead to her bedroom. She rose and going +around to her aunt's chair, laid a light hand on her shoulder. But she +spoke to Graham. + +"Let's go out and bring in the wanderers," she said. "Aunt Lucile has had +a pretty long day and I know she won't be able to go to sleep until +Sylvia is tucked in for the night." + +When the door had closed behind them and they stood where the path, +already faintly indicated, led down to the road, he stopped with a jerk +and mutely looked at her. + +"Do you know where that fence of theirs is?" she asked. + +"Yes, I guess so," he said. Then--it was almost a cry--"Must we go there? +Right away?" + +"I don't know that we need." (Why should he be tortured like that! What +did it matter if the rigidity of some of her nightmare-born resolutions +got relaxed a little?) "Where do you want to go with me?" + +He didn't answer for a minute, but when he did speak his voice was +steady enough. "There's a place up on the top of this hill where the +trees open out to the east, a lovely place. I went up there last night +after Rush had turned in. There'll be a moon along in a few minutes and +you can see it come up, from there. Could we wait for it?--I suppose Miss +Wollaston..." + +"No, she'll be all right," Mary said. "Now that she thinks we're looking +for them." + +As she moved up the slope she added, "I've a sort of interest in the +moon, myself, to-night." + +"Perhaps if you'll take my hand--" he said stiffly. "It is dark here +under the trees." + +Her single-minded intention had been to make him a little happier. She +liked him better to-night than ever, and that was saying a lot. But this +elaborate covering up of what he really wanted under the pretended need +of guiding her, tried her patience. The pretense was for himself, too, as +much as for her. He was holding her off at arm's length behind him as if +they were scaling an Alp! + +In the spirit of mischief, half irritated, half amused, she crowded up to +his side and turned her hand so that their palms lay together. And she +said in a voice evenly matter-of-fact, "That's nicer, isn't it?" + +He didn't succeed in producing anything audible in answer to that, but he +began presently, and rather at random, to talk. As if--she reflected, +mutinously,--some fact that must on no account be looked at would emerge, +un-escapable, the moment he stopped. + +But the bewitching loveliness of the place he led her to made amends, +sponged away her irritation, brought back the Arcadian mood of the day. A +recently fallen apple tree just on the crest of the hill, offered in its +crotched arms a seat for both of them. With an ease which thrilled her he +lifted her in his hands to her place and vaulted up beside her. His arm +(excusably, again, for the hand was seeking a hold to steady him), crept +around behind her. + +Once more he began to talk,--of nature, of the farm, of how it was the +real way to live, as we were meant to. One couldn't, of course, cut off +the city altogether. There were concerts and things. And the +companionship of old friends. Even at that it would be lonely. They had +felt it already. That was why it was such a marvelous thing to have her +here. She made a different world of it. Just as she had made what seemed +like a home out of that old apple house. No one could do that but a +woman, of course ... + +She was no longer irritated by this. She barely listened, beyond noting +his circuitous but certain approach to the point of asking her, once +more, to marry him. + +Her body seemed drugged with the loveliness of the night, with fatigue, +with him, with the immediacy of him,--but her mind was racing as it does +in dreams. + +Nature was not, of course, the gentle sentimentalist Graham was talking +about, but one did get something out of close communion with her. A sense +of fundamentals. She was a--simplifier of ideas. Plain and +straightforward even in her enchantments. That moon they were waiting +for.... Already she was looking down upon a pair of lovers, somewhere,--a +thousand pairs!--with her bland unseeing face. And later to-night, long +after she had risen on them, upon a thousand more. + +Of lovers? Well perhaps not. Not if one insisted upon the poets' +descriptions. But good enough for nature's simple purposes. Answering to +a desire, faint or imperious, that would lead them to put on her harness. +Take on her work. + +Anthony March had never put on a harness. A rebel. And for the price of +his rebellion never had heard his music, except in his head. Clear +torment they could be, he had told her, those unheard melodies. Somehow +she could understand that. There was an unheard music in her. An +unfulfilled destiny, at all events, which was growing clamorous as the +echo of the boy's passion-if it were but an echo-pulsed in her throat, +drew her body down by insensible relaxations closer upon his. + +The moon came up and they watched it, silent. The air grew heavy. The +call of a screech-owl made all the sound there was. She shivered and he +drew her, unresisting, tighter still. Then he bent down and kissed her. + +He said, presently, in a strained voice, "You know what I have been +asking. Does that mean yes?" + +She did not speak. The moon was up above the trees, yellow now. She +remembered a great broad voice, singing: + +"Low hangs the moon. It rose late. +It is lagging-O I think it is heavy with love, with love" + +With a passion that had broken away at last, the boy's hands took +possession of her. He kissed her mouth, hotly, and then again; drew back +gasping and stared into her small pale face with burning eyes. Her head +turned a little away from him. + +"... Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me + My mate back again if you only would, + For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look. + O rising stars!..." + +The languor was gone. She shivered and sat erect, he watching her in an +agony of apprehension. She looked slowly round at him. + +"You haven't answered!" His voice broke over that into a sob. "Will you +marry me, Mary?" + +"I don't know," she said dully, like one struggling out of a dream. "I +will if I can. I meant to for a while, I think. But ..." + +He leaped to the ground and stood facing her with clenched hands. "I +ought to be shot," he said. "I'm not fit to touch you--a white thing like +you. I didn't mean to. Not like that. I meant ..." + +She stared for an instant, totally at a loss for the meaning--the mere +direction of what he was trying to say. Then, slipping down from the +branch, she took him by the arms. "Don't!" she cried rather wildly. +"Don't talk like that! That's the last impossibility. Listen. I'm going +to tell you why." + +But he was not listening for what it might be. He was still morosely +preoccupied with his own crime. He had been a beast! He had bruised, once +more, the white petals of a flower! + +It was not that her courage failed. She saw he wouldn't believe. That he +couldn't be made to believe. It was no use. If he looked at her any +longer like that, she would laugh. + +She buried her face in her arms and sobbed. + +He rose to this crisis handsomely, waited without a word until she was +quiet and then suggested that they go and find Rush and Sylvia. And until +they were upon the point of joining the other pair nothing more was said +that had any bearing on what had happened in the apple tree. But in that +last moment he made a mute appeal for a chance to say another word. + +He reminded her that she had said she would marry him if she could. This +was enough for him. More than he deserved. He was going back to the +beginning to try to build anew what his loss of self-control had wrecked. +She need say nothing now. If she'd wait, she'd see. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +A CLAIRVOYANT INTERVAL + + +It was still May and the North Carolina mountain-side that John Wollaston +looked out upon was at the height of its annual debauch of azalea blooms, +a symphonic romance in the key of rose-color with modulations down to +strawberry and up to a clear singing white. For him though, the invalid, +cushioned and pillowed in an easy chair, a rug over his knees, these +splendors and the perfume of the soft bright air that bathed them had an +ironic significance. + +He had arrived with Paula at this paradise early in the week, pretty well +exhausted with the ordinary fatigues of less than a day's journey in the +train. They were feeding him bouillon, egg-nogs and cream. On Paula's arm +he had managed this afternoon, his first walk, a matter of two or three +hundred yards about the hotel gardens, and at the end of it had been glad +to subside, half reclining into this easy chair, placed so that through +the open door and the veranda it gave upon, he could enjoy the view of +the color-drenched mountain-side. + +He had dismissed Paula peremptorily for a real walk of her own. He had +told her, in simple truth, that he would enjoy being left to himself for +a while. She had taken this assurance for an altruistic mendacity, but +she had yielded at last to his insistence and gone, under an exacted +promise not to come back for at least an hour. + +It offered some curious compensations though, this state of +helplessness--a limpidity of vision, clairvoyant almost. For a fortnight +he had been like a spectator sitting in the stalls of a darkened theatre +watching the performances upon a brilliantly lighted stage, +himself--himselves among the characters, for there was a past and a +future self for him to look at and ponder upon. The present self hardly +counted. All the old ambitions, desires, urgencies, which had been his +impulsive forces were gone--quiescent anyhow. He was as sexless, as cool, +as an image carved in jade. + +And he was here in this lover's paradise--this was what drew the tribute +of a smile to the humor of the high gods--with Paula. And Paula was more +ardently in love with him than she had ever been before. + +The quality of that smile must have carried over to the one he gave her +when she came back, well within her promised hour, from her walk. One +couldn't imagine anything lovelier or more inviting than the picture she +made framed in that doorway, coolly shaded against the bright blaze that +came in around her. She looked at him from there, for a moment, +thoughtfully. + +"I don't believe you have missed me such a lot after all," she said. +"What have you been doing all the while?" + +"Crystal-gazing," he told her. + +She came over to him and took his hands, a caress patently enough through +the nurse's pretext that she was satisfying herself that he had not got +cold sitting there. She relinquished them suddenly, readjusted his rug +and pillows, then kissed him and told him she was going to the office to +see if there were any letters and went out again. She was gone but a +moment or two; returning, she dropped the little handful which were +addressed to him into his lap and carried one of her own to a chair near +the window. + +He dealt idly with the congratulatory and well-wishing messages which +made up his mail. There was but one of them that drew even a gleam of +clearly focused intelligence from him. He gave most of his attention to +Paula. She was a wonderful person to watch,--the expressiveness of her, +that every nerve and muscle of her body seemed to have a part in. She +had opened that letter of hers with nothing but clear curiosity. The +envelope evidently had told her nothing. She had frowned, puzzled, over +the signature and then somehow, darkened, sprung to arms as she made it +out. She didn't read it in an orderly way even then; seemed to be trying +to worry the meaning out of it, like one stripping off husks to get down +to some sort of kernel inside. Satisfied that she had got it at last, +she dropped the letter carelessly on the floor, subsided a little deeper +into her chair and turned a brooding face toward the outdoor light and +away from him. + +"Are you crystal-gazing, too?" he asked. Unusually, she didn't turn at +his voice and her own was monotonous with strongly repressed emotion. + +"I don't need to. I spent more than a week staring into mine." + +That lead was plain enough, but he avoided, deliberately though rather +idly, following it up. The rustle of paper told her that he had turned +back to his letters. + +"Anything in your mail?" she asked. + +"I think not. You can look them over and see if I've missed anything. To +a man in my disarticulate situation people don't write except to express +the kindness of their hearts. Here's a letter from Mary designed to +prevent me from worrying about her. Full of pleasant little anecdotes +about farm life. It's thoroughly Arcadian, she says. A spot designed by +Heaven for me to rusticate in this summer when--when we go back to town. +Somehow, I never did inhabit Arcady. There's a letter from Martin +Whitney, too, that's almost alarmingly encouraging in its insistence that +I mustn't worry. If only they knew how little I did--these days!" + +"Well, that's all right then," she said. "Because those were Doctor +Darby's orders. You weren't to be excited or worried about anything. But, +John, is it really true that you don't? Not about anything?" + +The fact that her face was still turned away as she asked that question +gave it a significance which could not be overlooked. + +"It's perfectly true," he asserted. "I don't believe I could if I +tried. But there's something evidently troubling you. Let's have it. +Oh, don't be afraid. You've no idea what an--Olympian position one +finds himself in when he has got half-way across the Styx and come +back. Tell me about it." + +"You know all about it already. I told you the first day you could +talk--that I was going to give up singing altogether except just for +you,--when you wanted me to. I knew I'd been torturing you about it. I +thought perhaps you'd get well quicker,--want to get well more--if you +knew that the torture wasn't to go on. It was true and it is true. +Perhaps you thought it was just one of those lies that people tell +invalids--one of those don't-worry things. Well, is wasn't. + +"But you made me promise I wouldn't do anything--wouldn't break my +Ravinia contract--until we could talk it all out together. Your +temperature went up a little that afternoon and when Doctor Darby asked +me why, I told him. He said I mustn't, on any account, speak again to you +about it until you brought the subject up yourself. I don't know whether +he'd call this bringing it up or not, but anyway that's it. I've kept my +promise to you though," she concluded. "I haven't written. They still +think I am going to sing this summer." + +"I am very glad of that," he said quietly. "I thought the thing was +settled by our first talk. I didn't realize that you had taken it merely +as an--adjournment." + +She was still turned rigidly away from him, but the grip of one of her +hands upon the arm of a chair betrayed the excitement she was laboring +under, while it showed the effort she was making to hold it down. + +"I didn't think, though," he went on, "that that resolution of yours to +give up your whole career,--make ducks and drakes of it, in obedience to +my whim--was nothing more than one of those pious lies that invalids are +fed upon. I knew you meant it, my dear. I knew you'd have done +it--then--without a falter or a regret." + +"Then or now," she said. "It's all the same. No, it isn't! Now more than +then. With less regret. Without a shadow of a regret, John,--if it would +bring you back to me." + +The last words were muffled, for she had buried her face in her hands. + +He had heard the ring of undisguised passion in her voice without an +answering pulse-beat, sat looking at her thoughtfully, tenderly. The +reflection that occupied his mind was with what extravagant joy he would +have received such an assurance only a few weeks ago. On any one of those +last days before his illness fastened upon him;--the Sunday he had gone +to Hickory Hill alone because Paula had found she must work with March +that day; the evening when he had made his last struggle against the +approaching delirium of fever in order to telephone for an ambulance to +get him out of that hated house. What a curious compound of nerve ends +and gland activities a man's dreams--that he lived by, or died for--were! + +She pulled him out of his reverie by a deliberate movement of resolution, +taking her hands away from her face, half rising and turning her chair so +that she faced him squarely. + +"I want to know in so many words," she said, "why you're glad that I'm +still bound to that Ravinia thing. You seem to want me to sing there +this summer, as much as you hated the idea of my doing it before. Well, +why? Or is it something you can't tell me? And if I sing and make a +success, shall you want me to go on with it, following up whatever +opening it offers; just as if--just as if you didn't count any more in my +life at all?" + +Before he could answer she added rather dryly, "Doctor Darby would kill +me for talking to you like this. You needn't answer if it's going to +hurt you." + +"No," he said, "it isn't hurting me a bit. But I'll answer one question +at a time, I think. The first thing that occurred to me when you spoke of +the Ravinia matter was that I didn't want you to break your word. You had +told them that they could count on you and I didn't want you, on my +account, to be put in a position where any one could accuse you of having +failed him. My own word was involved, for that matter. I told LaChaise I +wouldn't put any obstacles, in your way. Of course, I didn't contract +lobar pneumonia on purpose," he added with a smile. + +The intensity of her gaze did not relax at this, however. She was waiting +breathlessly. + +"The other question isn't quite so easy to answer," he went on, "but I +think I would wish you to--follow the path of your career wherever it +leads. I shall always count for as much as I can in your life, but +not--if I can help it--as an obstacle." + +"Why?" she asked. "What has made the perfectly enormous difference?" + +It was not at all an unanswerable question; nor one, indeed, that he +shrank from. But it wanted a little preliminary reflection. She +interrupted before he was ready to speak. + +"Of course, I really know. Have known all along. You haven't +forgiven me." + +He echoed that word with a note of helplessness. + +"No," she conceded. "That isn't it, exactly. I can't talk the way you and +Mary can. I suppose you have forgiven me, as far as that goes. That's the +worst of it. If you hadn't there'd be more to hope for. Or beg for. I'd +do that if it were any good. But this is something you can't help. You're +kind and sweet to me, but you've just stopped caring. For me. What used +to be there has just--gone snap. It's not your fault. I did it myself." + +"No," he said quickly. "That's where you're altogether wrong. You didn't +do it. You had nothing to do with the doing of it." + +She winced, visibly, at the implication that, whoever was responsible, +the thing was done. + +"Paula, dearest!" he cried, in acute concern. "Wait! There are things +that can't be dealt with in a breath. That's why I was trying to think a +little before I answered." + +Even now he had to marshal his thoughts for a moment before he could go +on. It was too ridiculous, that look of tragic desperation she wore while +she waited! He averted his eyes and began rather deliberately. + +"You are dearer to me now--at this moment, as we sit here--than ever +you've been before. I think that's the simple literal truth. This matter +of forgiveness--of your having done something to forfeit or to destroy +my--love for you... Oh, it's too wildly off the facts to be dealt with +rationally! I owe you my life. That's not a sentimental exaggeration. +Even Steinmetz says so. And you saved it for me at the end of a period of +weeks--months I guess--when I had been devoting most of my spare energies +to torturing you. Myself, incidentally, but there was nothing meritorious +about that. In an attempt to assert a--proprietary right in you that you +had never even pretended to give me. That I'd once promised you I never +would assert. The weight of obligation I'm under to you would be +absolutely crushing--if it weren't for one thing that relieves me of it +altogether. The knowledge that you love me. That you did it all for the +love of me." + +She moved no nearer him. These were words. There was no reassurance for +her in them. One irrepressible movement of his hands toward her, the mere +speaking of her name in a voice warmed by the old passion, would have +brought her, rapturous, to his knees. + +"There's no such thing as a successful pretense between us, I know," he +said. "So I'll talk plainly. I'm glad to. I know what it is you miss in +me. It's gone. Temporarily I suppose, but gone as if it had never been. +That's a--physiological fact, Paula." + +She flushed hotly at that and looked away from him. + +"I don't know exactly what a soul is," he went on. "But I do know that a +body--the whole of the body--is the temple of it. It impenetrates +everything; is made up of everything. Well, this illness of mine has, for +these weeks, made an old man of me. And I'm grateful to it for giving me +a chance to look ahead, before it's too late. I want to make the most of +it. Because you see, my dear, in ten years--or thereabouts--the course of +nature will have made of me what this pneumonia has given me a foretaste +of. Ten years. You will be--forty, then." + +She was gazing at him now, fascinated, in unwilling comprehension. "I +hate you to talk like that," she said. "I wish you wouldn't." + +"It's important," he told her crisply. "You'll see that in a minute, if +you will wait. Before very long--in a month or so, perhaps--I shall be, I +suppose, pretty much the same man I was--three months ago. Busy at my +profession again. In love with you again. All my old self-assurance back; +the more arrogant if it isn't quite the real thing. So now's the time, +when the fogs one moves about in have lifted and the horizon is sharp, to +take some new bearings. And set a new course by them. For both of us. + +"There is one fact sitting up like a lighthouse on a rock. I'm +twenty-four years older than you. Every five years that we live together +from now on will make that difference more important. When you're +forty-five--and you'll be just at the top of your powers by then--I shall +be one year short of seventy. At the end, you see, even of my +professional career. And that's only fifteen years away. Even with good +average luck, that's all I can count on. It's strange how one can live +along, oblivious to a simple sum in arithmetic like that." + +She had been on her feet moving distractedly about the room. Now she came +around behind his chair and gripped his body in her strong arms. + +"You shan't talk like that!" she said. "You shan't think like that! I +won't endure it. It's morbid. It's horrible." + +"Oh, no, it's not," he said easily. "The morbidity is in being afraid +to look at it. It was morbid to struggle frantically, the way I did all +the spring, trying to resist the irresistible thing that was drawing +you along your true path. It was a cancerous egotism of mine that was +trying to eat you up, live you up into myself. That, thank God, has +been cut out of me! I think it has. Don't misunderstand me, though. I'm +not going to relinquish anything of you that I can keep;--that I ever +had a chance to keep." + +He took her hands and gently--coolly--kissed them. + +"Then don't relinquish anything," she said. "It's all yours. Can't you +believe that, John?" + +He released her hands and sank back slackly in his chair. "Victory!" he +said, a note of inextinguishable irony in his voice. "A victory I'd have +given five years of my life for last March. Yet I could go on winning +them--a whole succession of them--and they could lead me to nothing but +disaster." + +She left him abruptly and the next moment he heard her fling herself down +upon his bed. When he rose and disengaged himself from his rug, she said, +over an irrepressible sob or two, that he wasn't to mind nor come to her. +She wasn't going to cry-not more than a minute. + +He came, nevertheless, settled himself on the edge of the bed and took +possession of her hands again. + +"I wouldn't have told you all this," he said--"for you don't need any +lessons in arithmetic, child--if I dared trust myself to remember, after +the other thing had come back. Now I'm committed--don't you see?--not to +play the fool, tragically or ludicrously, as the case might be, trying to +dispute the inevitable. And I shall contrive to keep a lot, my dear. More +than you think." + +Later, the evening of that same day, he asked her what was in the letter +that had provoked their talk. Did they want her back in Chicago for +rehearsals or consultations? Because if they did there was no reason in +the world why she should not go. At the rate at which he was gaining +strength there would not be the slightest reason--he gave her his +professional word of honor--why she should not go back in a day or two. + +"I should have to go back," she said, "if I were going to sing March's +opera. There is such a lot of work about a new production that there +would be no time to spare." + +"But," he asked, "isn't March's opera precisely what you are going to +sing?" + +"No," she said rebelliously. "It's not. There wasn't anything in the +contract about that. I'll carry out the contract this summer. I'll keep +my word and yours, since that is what you want me to do. But I won't sing +'Dolores' for anybody." + +He did not press her for the reason. + +After a little silence, she said, "Lucile thought I'd fallen in love with +him. So did Rush, I guess,--and poor old Nat. Did you, John?" + +"I tried to, hard enough," he confessed. + +She stared. "Tried to!" + +"That would have been the easier thing to fight," he said. "There's +nothing inevitable about a man,--any man. I'd have stood a chance at +least, of beating him, even though he had a twenty-year handicap or so. +But the other thing,--well, that was like the first bar of the Fifth +Symphony, you know; Fate knocking at the door. Clear terror that is until +one can get the courage to open the door and invite Fate in." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE END OF IT + + +About a week later--just at the beginning of June, this was--Paula did go +back to Chicago, leaving her husband to go on gaining the benefit, for +another ten days or so, of that wine-like mountain air. It was an +unwelcome conviction that he really wanted her to go, rather than any +crying need for her at Ravinia that decided her to leave him. The need +would not be urgent for at least another fortnight since it had been +decided between her and LaChaise that she should make her debut in +_Tosca_, an opera she had sung uncounted times. + +Since their momentous conversation in which John had attempted to revise +the fundamentals of their life together, they had not reverted to the +main theme of it; had clarified, merely, one or two of its more immediate +conclusions. Paula was to carry out in spirit as well as in letter the +terms of her Ravinia contract exactly as if it were still to be regarded +as the first step of her reopened career. What she should do about the +second step in case it offered itself to her was a bridge not to be +crossed until they came to it. + +John had professed himself content to let it remain at that, but she +divined that there was something hollow in his profession. It was +possible, of course, that his restlessness represented nothing more than +a new stage in his convalescence. It didn't seem possible that after the +candors of that talk he could still be keeping something back from her. +Yet that was an impression she very clearly got. Anyhow, her presence was +doing him no good, and on that unwelcome assurance, she bade him a +forlorn farewell and went home. + +It was a true intuition. John heaved a sigh of relief when she was +gone. In his present enfeebled state she was too much for him. The +electrical vitality of her overpowered him. Even before his illness he +had had moments--I think I have recorded one of them--when her ardent +strength paralyzed him with a sort of terror and these moments were more +frequent now. + +There was, too, a real effort involved in presenting ideas to her +(intellectual ideas, if they may be so distinguished from emotional +ones). He didn't know, now, whether she had fully understood what he had +been driving at that day; whether anything had really got through to her +beyond a melancholy realization that his love had cooled. He had always +been aware of this effort, but in the days of his strength he hadn't +minded making it. + +Now he was conscious of wishing for some one like Mary,--indeed, for Mary +herself. They talked the same language, absolutely. Their minds had the +same index of refraction, so that thoughts flashed back and forth between +them effortlessly and without distortion. He thought of her so often and +wished for her so much during the first two days of his solitude that it +seemed almost a case for the psychical research people when he got a +telegram from her. + +It read: "Aunt Lucile worried you left alone especially traveling. Shall +you mind or will Paula if I come down and bring you back, Mary." + +There was a situation made clear, at all events. He grinned over it as +he despatched his wire to her. "Perfectly unnecessary but come +straight along so that we can play together for a week or two before +starting home." + +Play together is just what they did. Enough of his strength soon came +back to make real walks possible and during the second week, with a +two-horse team and a side-bar buggy, they managed, without any ill +effect upon him, an excursion across the valley and up the opposite +mountainside to a log cabin road-house where they had lunch. + +Mary, a born horsewoman, did the driving herself, thus relieving them of +the impediment to real companionship which a hired driver would have +been. In an inconsecutive, light-hearted way difficult to report +intelligibly, they managed to tell each other a lot. She let him see, +with none of the rhetorical solemnities which a direct statement would +have involved, her new awareness of his professional eminence. A dozen +innuendoes, as light as dandelion feathers, conveyed it to him; swift +brush-strokes of gesture and inflection sketched the picture in; an +affectionate burlesque of awe completed it, so that he could laugh at her +for it as she had meant he should. + +She told him during their drive what the source of her illumination was; +described Anthony March's visit on that most desperate day of all, the +vividness of his concern over the outcome of the fight and his utter +unconcern about the effect of it upon his own fortunes. She had been +reading Kipling aloud, out at the farm, to the boys and Aunt Lucile and a +memory of it led her to make a comparison--heedless of its +absurdity--between the composer and Kirn's lama. "He isn't, anyhow, tied +to the 'wheel of things' any more than that old man was." + +"I'd like to have come down that day and heard him talk," John said. +"Because it's the real thing, with him. Not words. He wouldn't be a bad +person to go to," he added musingly, "if one had got himself into a +real _impasse_--or what looked like one. Paula has chucked his opera, +you know." + +She nodded, evidently not in the least surprised and, no more, perturbed +by this intelligence. "He won't mind that," she explained. "The only +thing he really needs, in the world, is to hear his music, but this, you +see, wasn't his any more. He had been trying to make it Paula's. He had +been working over it rather hopelessly, because he had promised, but it +was like letting him out of school when he found that she had forgotten +all about him;--didn't care if she never saw him again." + +She caught, without an explanatory word, the meaning of the glance her +father turned upon her, and went straight on. "Oh, it seems a lot, I +know, to have found out about him in one short talk, but there's +nothing--personal in that. He doesn't, I mean--save himself up for +special people. He's there for anybody. Like a public drinking fountain, +you know. That's why he would be such a wonderful person--to go to, as +you said. No one could possibly monopolize him." + +She added, after a silence, "It seems a shame, when he wants so little +that he can't have that. Can't hear, for example, that opera of his the +way he really wrote it." + +"We owe him something," her father said thoughtfully. "He got rather +rough justice from Paula, anyhow. I suppose a thing like that could, +perhaps, be managed--if one put his back into it." + +She understood instantly, as before, and quite without exegesis, the +twinge of pain that went across his face. "You _will_ have a back to +put into things again, one of these days. It wants only courage to wait +for it, quite patiently until it comes. You've plenty of that. That's +one of he things Mr. March told me about you," she added with the +playful purpose of surprising him again. "Only I happened to know that +for myself." + +"It's more than I can be sure of," he said. "I've been full of bravado +with Paula, telling her how soon I was going to be back in harness again; +cock-sure and domineering as ever, so that she'd better make hay while +the sun shone. But it was I, nevertheless, who made her go home so that +she could start to work--when the whistle blew. Some one was going to +have to support the family, I told her, and it didn't look as if it were +going to be me." + +This speech, though it ended in jest, had begun, she knew, in earnest. He +meant her to understand that, and left her to judge for herself where the +dividing line fell. She answered in a tone as light as his, "Paula could +do it easily enough." But she was not satisfied with the way he took it. +The mere quality of the silence must have told her something. She turned +upon him with sudden intensity and said, "Don't tell me you're +worrying--about three great healthy people like us. You have been, +though. Whatever put it into your mind to spend half a thought on that?" + +"Why, it was a letter from Martin Whitney," he said. "Oh, the best meant +thing in the world. Nothing but encouragement in it from beginning to +end, only it was so infernally encouraging, it set me off. No, let me +talk. You're quite the easiest person in the world to tell things to. +I've been remiss, there's no getting away from that. I've never taken +money-making very seriously, it came so easily. I've spent my earnings +the way my friends have spent their incomes. Well, if I'd died the other +day, there wouldn't have been much left. There would have been my life +insurance for Paula, and enough to pay my debts, including my engagements +for Rush, but beyond that, oh, a pittance merely. Of course with ten +years' health, back at my practise, even with five, I could improve the +situation a lot." + +She urged as emphatically as she dared--she wanted to avoid the +mistake of sounding encouraging--that the situation needed no +improvement. The income of fifty thousand dollars would take care of +Paula, and beyond that,--well, if there were ever two healthy young +animals in the world concerning whom cares and worries were +superfluous, they were herself and Rush. + +He told her thoughtfully that this was where she was; wrong. "Rush, to +begin with, isn't a healthy young animal. That's what I couldn't make +Martin Whitney understand. He's one of the war's sacrifices precisely as +much as if he had had his leg shot off. He needs support; will go on +needing it for two or three years, financial as well as moral. He mustn't +be allowed to fail. That's the essence of it. He's--spent, you see; +depleted. One speaks of it in figurative terms, but it's a physiological +thing--if we could get at it--that's behind the lassitude of these boys. +It all comes back to that. That they're restless, irresolute. That they +need the stimulus of excitement and can't endure the drag of routine. +They need a generous allowance, my dear,--even for an occasional failure +in self-command, those two boys out at Hickory Hill." + +She had nothing to say to that, though his pause gave her opportunity. A +sudden surmise as to the drift of that last sentence, silenced her. And +it was a surmise that leaped, in the next instant, to full conviction. He +was pleading Graham's cause with her! Why? Was it something that had been +as near his heart as that, all along? Or had some one--Rush--or even +Graham himself--engaged his advocacy? + +She said at last, rather breathlessly (it was necessary to say something +or he would perceive that his stratagem had betrayed itself): "Well, at +the gloomy worst, Rush is taken care of. And as for me, I'm not a war +sacrifice, anyhow. That's not a possible conception--even for a worried +convalescent. Did you ever _see_ anything as gorgeous as that tree, even +in an Urban stage setting?" + +"No," he said, "the war wasn't what you were sacrificed to." + +She held her breath until she saw he wasn't going on with that. But he +seemed willing to follow her lead to lighter matters, and for the rest +of their excursion they carried out the pretense that there was nothing +like a cloud in their sky. + +That evening, though, after she had bidden him good night, she changed +her mind and came back into his room. There had been something wistful +about his kiss that, determined her. + +"Which of them wrote to you about me?" she asked. + +"Both," he told her. "Of course I should have known you'd guess. Forgive +me for having tried to--manage you. I'll show you both their letters if +you like. It's a breach of confidence, of course, but I don't know that I +could do better." + +"I'll read Rush's," she said. "Not the other." + +She carried it over to the lamp, and for a while after she had taken in +its easily grasped intent she went on turning its pages back and forth +while she sought for an end of the tangled skein of her thoughts to +hold on by. + +Finally, "Do you want me to marry him, dad?" she asked. Then, before he +could answer she hurried on. "I mean, would it relieve you from some +nightmare worry about me if I did?--This has to be plain talk, doesn't +it, if it is to get us anywhere?" + +"That's a fair question of yours," he said. But he wasn't ready at once +with an answer. "It _would_ be such a relief, provided you really wanted +to marry him. That goes to the bottom of it, I think. My responsibility +is to make it possible for you to--follow your heart. To marry or not as +you wish. To marry a poor man if you wish. But if Graham is your choice +and all that holds you back from him is some remediable +misunderstanding--or failure to understand ..." + +"I don't know whether it's remediable or not," she said; and added, "I +told him I would marry him if I could. Did he tell you that?" + +It was a mistake to have quoted that expression to her father. He took +it just as Graham had. Of course! What else could he think? She sat with +clenched hands and a dry throat, listening while he tried to enlighten +what he took to be her innocent misunderstanding. + +They had never spoken, she realized, about matters of sex. For anything +he really knew to the contrary she might have been as ignorant as a +child. He was actually talking as one talks to a child;--kindly, +tolerantly, tenderly, but with an unconscious touch of patronage, like +one trying to explain away--misgivings about Santa Claus! There were +elements, inevitably, in a man's love for a woman, that a young girl +could not understand. Nothing but experience could bring that +understanding home to her. This was what in one way after another, he was +trying to convey. + +But the intuition which, in good times or bad, always betrayed their +emotions to each other, showed him that he was, somehow missing the mark. +Her silence through his tentative little pauses disconcerted him heavily. +He ran down at last like an unwound clock. + +It was only after a long intolerably oppressive silence that she found +her voice. "The misunderstanding isn't what you think," she said. "Nor +what Graham thinks. It's his misunderstanding, not mine. He thinks that I +am--a sort of innocent angel that he's not good enough for. And the fact +is that I'm not--not innocent enough for him. Not an angel at all. Not +even quite--good." + +But she got no further. The plea for comprehension, for an ear that would +not turn away from her plain story, never was made. In a smother of words +he halted her. Affectionately, with a gentleness that achieved absolute +finality. She was overwrought. She carried paradox too far. In her +innocence she used a form of speech that she didn't know the meaning of, +and should be careful to avoid. Her troubles, with patience, would work +themselves out in the end. Meanwhile let her as far as possible stop +thinking about them. + +But she had got, during the intaken breath before he began to speak, a +sensation,--as sharp and momentary as the landscape revealed in a +lightning flash,--of a sudden terror on his part; as of one finding +himself on the edge of an abyss of understanding. For that one glaring +instant before he had had time to turn his face away he had known what +she meant. But he never would look again. Never would know. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +FULL MEASURE + + +Ravinia is one of Chicago's idiosyncrasies, a ten-weeks' summer season of +grand opera with a full symphony orchestra given practically +out-of-doors. Its open pavilion seats from fifteen hundred to two +thousand people and on a warm Saturday night, you will find twice as many +more on the, "bleachers" that surround it or strolling about under the +trees in the park. The railroad runs special trains to it all through the +season from town, and crammed and groaning interurbans collect their toll +for miles from up and down the shore. + +It had begun as an amusement park with merry-go-rounds, Ferris-wheels and +such--to the scandalized indignation of numerous super-urban persons +whose summer places occupied most of the district roundabout. They took +the enterprise into their own hands, abolished the calliope, put a +symphony orchestra into the bandstand and, eventually, transformed the +shell into a stage and went in for opera; opera popularized with a blue +pencil so that no performance was ever more than two hours long, and at +the modest price of fifty cents. + +Its forces, recruited chiefly from among the younger stars at the +Metropolitan, give performances that want no apologetic allowance from +anybody. It has become an institution of which the town and especially +the North Shore is boastful. + +Paula foresaw no easy conquest here. Her social prestige, part of which +she enjoyed as John Wollaston's wife and part of which she had earned +during the last four years for herself, counted as much against her as it +did in her favor. It was evident from the way the announcements of her +prospective appearance at Ravinia had been elaborated in the society +columns of the newspapers that it would arouse a lot of curiosity. It +would be one of the topics that everybody, in the social-register sense +of the word, would be talking about and in order to talk authoritatively +everybody--four or five hundred people this is to say--would have to +attend at least one of her performances. + +Nothing less than a downright unmistakable triumph would convince them. +She was a professional in the grain and yet in this adventure she would +be under the curse of an amateur's status, a thing she hated as all +professionals do. + +It was evidently from an instinct to cut herself off as completely as +possible from these social connections of hers that she rented for the +summer, a furnished house in the village of Ravinia, within a mile or so +of the park. John was rather disconcerted over this when she told him +about it. She greeted him with it as an accomplished fact upon his +return to Chicago with Mary. She made a genuine effort to explain the +necessity, but explanations were not in Paula's line and she didn't +altogether succeed. + +She made it clear enough, though, that she didn't want to be fussed by +the attentions of friends or family, of her husband least of all. She +didn't want to be congratulated nor encouraged. She didn't want to be +asked to little suppers or luncheons nor to be made the objective of +personally conducted tourist parties back stage. She didn't want to be +called to the telephone, ever, except on matters of professional business +by her Ravinia colleagues. + +All of this, John pointed out, could be accomplished at home. He, +himself, could deal with the telephoners and the tourists. This was about +all apparently that he was going to be good for this summer; but a +watchdog's duties he could perform in a highly efficient manner. + +"But a home and a husband are the very first things I've got to forget +about," cried Paula. "Oh, can't you see!" + +Darkly and imperfectly, he did. The atmosphere of the home in which one +has been guarded and pampered as a priceless possession was--must +be--enervating, and to one who was screwing up her powers to their +highest pitch for a great effort like this, it would be +poisonous--malarial! He would have been clearer about it, though, but for +the misgiving that, consciously or not, Paula was punishing him for +having insisted that she carry her contract through. Or--if that were too +harsh a way of putting it,--that she was coquetting with him. Having told +her down there in the South that he didn't care for her in a loverlike +way, he might now have an opportunity of proving that he did--over +obstacles! + +It gave him a twinge, for a fact, but he managed to ask good-humoredly if +this meant that he was to be barred from the whole show, from +performances as well as from rehearsals and the Ravinia house. + +"I won't care," she said with a laugh of desperation, "after I've once +got my teeth in. But until then... Oh, I know it sounds horrible but I +don't want even to--feel you; not even in the fringe of it. + +"I'll tell you who I would like, though," she went on over a palpable +hesitation and with a flush of color rising to her cheeks. "I can't live +all alone up there of course. I could get along with just a maid, but it +would be easier and nicer if I could have some one for a--companion. And +the person I'd choose, if she'd do it, is Mary." + +He said, not quite knowing whether to be pleased or not, that they could +ask her about it at all events. They were rather counting on her out at +Hickory Hill but he didn't know that that need matter. Only wasn't +Mary--family, herself, a reminder of home? + +"Not a bit," said Paula, with a laugh. "Not but what she likes me well +enough," she went on, trying to account for her preference (these +Wollastons were always concerned about the whys of things) "but she +stands off a little and looks on; without holding her breath, either. And +then, well, she'd be a sort of reminder of you, after all." + +Put that way, he couldn't quarrel with it, though there was a +challenge about it that chilled him a little. Watched over by his own +daughter (this was what it came to) Paula would be beyond +suspicion--even of Lucile. + +Mary, when the scheme was put up to her was no less surprised than +John had been, but she was pleased clear through, and with a +clean-cutting executive skill he had hardly credited her with, she +thought out the details of the plan and revised the rest of their +summer arrangements to fit. + +The Dearborn Avenue house should be closed and her father should move out +to the farm. The apple house was now remodeled to a point where it would +accommodate him as well as Aunt Lucile very comfortably. The boys and the +servants could live around in tents and things. She'd want only one maid +for the cottage at Ravina and the small car which she'd drive herself. + +The sum of all the activities that Mary proposed for herself added up to +a really exacting job; housekeeper, personal maid, chauffeur, chaperon +and secretary. It was with a rather mixed lot of emotions that John +thought of delivering her over to be tied to Paula's chariot wheels like +that. One of the two women who loved him serving the other in a capacity +so nearly menial! The thought of it gave him an odd sort of thrill even +while he shrank from it. Certainly, he would not have assented to it, had +it not been so unmistakably what Mary herself wanted. Her reasons for +wanting it he couldn't feel that he had quite fathomed. + +There was, as a matter of fact, nothing fine-spun about them. It was a +job in the first place and gave her, therefore, she mordantly told +herself, an excuse for continuing to exist. It was an escape from Hickory +Hill. (Clear cowardice this was, she confessed. That situation would have +to be met and settled one way or the other before long; but her dread of +both the possible alternatives had mounted since her frustrated attempt +to confide in her father.) The third reason which she avowed to +everybody, was simple excited curiosity for a look into a new world. The +mystery and the glamour of it attracted her. Paula's proposal gave her +the opportunity to see what these strange persons were like when they +were not strutting their little while upon the stage. + +Paula, of course, was, fundamentally, one of them. It was remarkable how +that simple discovery interpreted her. When you saw her surrounded by +them, working and quarreling with them, talking that horrible polyglot of +French, Italian and English, which she slipped into so easily, you +realized how exotic the environment of the Dearborn Avenue house must +have been to her and how strong a thing her passion for John Wollaston, +to enable her to endure five years of it,--of finikin social +observances,--of Aunt Lucile's standards of propriety! + +Mary took real comfort in her companionship; found an immense release +from emotional pressure in it. One might quarrel furiously with Paula +(and it happened Mary very nearly did, as shall be related presently, +before they had been in the cottage three days), but one couldn't +possibly worry one's self about her, couldn't torture one's self feeling +things with Paula's nerves. That was the Wollaston trick. What frightful +tangles the thing that goes by the name of unselfishness, the attempt to +feel for others, could lead a small group like a family into! + +Another thing that helped was that during the fortnight of rehearsal +before the season opened, there wasn't time to think. They were pelted +by perfectly external events, a necessity for doing this, an appointment +to do that, an engagement somewhere else. It was like being caught out +in a driving rain. You scuttled along-snatched a momentary shelter where +you could. + +Even getting the clothes Paula needed would have filled the time of a +woman of leisure to the brim. A bridal trousseau would have been nothing +to it. But with Paula these activities had to be sandwiched in with daily +rehearsals,--long ones, too,--hours with Novelli while she memorized +half-forgotten parts, interviews with reporters, struggles with +photographers, everything that the diabolic ingenuity of the publicity +man could contrive. He, by the way, regarded Paula as his best bet and +lavished his efforts upon her in a way that stirred her colleagues +(rivals, of course), to a frenzied exasperation, over his sinister +partiality to this "society amateur." + +(They all but enjoyed a terrible revenge, for as poetic justice narrowly +missed having it, the extent of her advance publicity and the beauty of +her clothes proved to be the rocks she went aground on. Only a lucky wave +came along and floated her off again.) + +Mary's quarrel with Paula, though it never came off,--never for that +matter got through to Paula's consciousness, even as an approach to +one,--had, all the same, a chain of consequences and so deserves to be +recorded. The opera management was supposed to supply Paula with a piano +and they found one already installed in the Ravinia house when they moved +in, a small grand of a widely advertised make. Paula dug half a dozen +vicious arpeggios out of it and condemned it out of hand. Then in the +midst of a petulant outburst which had, nevertheless, a humorous savor +(the management would promise and pretend till kingdom come. They'd even +take real trouble to get out of complying with her simple request for a +new piano), she pulled herself up short and stared at Mary. + +"What idiots we are! I am, anyhow. I'd forgotten all about March. He can +make a piano out of anything. When he's tuned this, I won't want another. +I've got his telephone number somewhere. You don't happen to remember it, +do you?--Why? What makes you look like that?" + +For Mary was staring at her--speechless. Paula's affairs had driven her +own pretty well out of her mind. She had stopped thinking about Graham. +She'd given over worrying about Rush. But she had not forgotten Anthony +March. The alternative possibility that Paula might have gone on with his +opera, that he might have been, but for what her father spoke of as rough +justice, attending rehearsals of it, hearing that big orchestra making a +reality of its unheard melodies, had been much in her mind. She had +wondered whether it was not really in Paula's. Along with a regret for +his downcast hopes. He was, in a way, the ladder she had climbed by. +Hearing her sing those wonderful songs of his was what had led LaChaise +to offer her this opportunity. And Paula didn't know, Mary was sure, of +anything that mitigated his disappointment. To her, he was merely one who +had tried and, pitiably, failed. She must, it seemed, have felt sorry +about it and Mary had considerately avoided all reference to him. + +Now it appeared that Paula had blankly forgotten all about him. +Remembered him only when she wanted him to tune the piano. She callously +proposed to exact this service of him, and if possible, over the +telephone! + +"I suppose," Mary said, when she had found her voice, "that I look the +way I feel. Paula, you _wouldn't_ do that!" + +"Why not?" Paula demanded. And then with a laugh, "I wouldn't forget to +pay him this time. And it would be nice to see him again, too. Because I +really liked him a lot." + +"Well, if you do like him, you wouldn't, would you, want to do +anything--cruel to him? Anything that he might take as--a willful insult? +Because it could be taken like that, I should think." + +She spoke with a good deal of effort. Paula's surprise, the +incredulous way she had echoed the word cruel, the fact that there was +still an unshaken good humor in the look of curiosity that she +directed upon her stepdaughter, all but overwhelmed Mary with a sudden +wave of helpless anger. + +What could one do with a selfishness as insolent as that? What was +there to say? + +Paula got up, still looking at her in that puzzled sort of way, came over +to her chair, sat down on the arm of it and took her by the shoulders. + +"You're trembling!" she said. "I suspect I am working you too hard. You +mustn't let me do that, you know. John will never forgive me if I do. +Why, about March, did you mean because I wouldn't sing his opera? He knew +all the time I wouldn't unless he could get it right. And he knew he +wasn't getting it right. He wanted to give it up long before he did, only +I wouldn't let him. But as for being insulted, bless you, he isn't like +that. And perhaps if he came I could get him all the pianos out here to +keep in tune. There must be dozens!" + +At that Mary laughed in a recoil of genuine amusement. She could imagine +that Anthony March would laugh himself. In one particular Paula was +unquestionably right. He wouldn't feel insulted. He was just the last +person in the world to be accessible to such a petty emotion. + +She returned Paula's hug and extricated herself from the chair. + +"You needn't worry about me, at all events," she said. "I'm not tired a +bit. But could we worry a little about Mr. March? About his opera, I +mean? Don't you suppose we could get Mr. LaChaise to put it on? The way +he originally wrote it.--I mean for somebody else to sing." + +"Fournier could sing it in a rather interesting way," Paula remarked +speculatively. "Only I don't believe he'd sing in English. Certainly +there's nobody else." + +"Perhaps if he saw the score ..." Mary began. + +"Gracious!" Paula broke in, a little startled, not much. "I haven't an +idea where that score is. I may have sent it back to him, but I don't +believe I did." + +"No," Mary told her. "It's here. When I closed up the house, I brought it +along. He might be interested enough in it I should think," she +persisted, "if you and Mr. LaChaise told him how good it was,--to learn +it in English. Or it might, I suppose,--the whole thing I mean,--be +translated into French. There might, anyhow, prove to be something we +could do." + +"Good heavens, child!" Paula said, "we're up to the eyes now, all three +of us. Will be for weeks as far as that goes. We simply couldn't think of +it." Through a yawn she added, "Not that it wouldn't be a nice thing to +do if we had time." + +Paula's notion of getting March to come up and tune her piano was not +damped at all by the wet blanket of Mary's objection to it. From town +that day, Mary having driven her in for more fittings and photographers, +Paula telephoned to the Fullerton Avenue house and later told Mary in an +acutely dissatisfied manner that she had got simply nowhere with the +person with whom she had talked. "She pretends,--oh, it was his sister +or his mother, I suppose,--that they don't know anything whatever about +him. Haven't seen him for ever so long. Haven't an idea how to get word +to him. If only I had time to drive out there ... But I haven't a minute +of course." + +Mary observed that she didn't see what good it would do to be told in +person what Paula had just learned over the telephone. She could drive +out there herself if there was any point in it, during the hour when +Paula was engaged with her dressmaker. + +Paula jumped at this suggestion. She was one of those persons whom +telephones never quite convince. So Mary, rather glad of the errand, +though convinced of its futility so far as Paula's designs were +concerned, drove out to the Fullerton Avenue house and presently found +herself in a small neat parlor talking to a neat old lady who was not, +perhaps, as old as she looked, about Anthony March. + +For anything that bore upon the obtainability of his service for the +Ravinia piano the telephone conversation would have done as well. His +mother had seen him for only a short time, a little more than a week ago +and judged from what he then said that he was upon the point of going +away, though not for a long absence--a month, perhaps. She had not asked +where he meant to go and he had volunteered nothing. It was possible that +he did not know himself. + +Mary remained in doubt, for the first five minutes or so of her call, +whether the stiff guarded precision of this was a mark of hostility to +the whole Wollaston clan or whether it was nothing but undiluted New +England reserve. She ventured a tentative, "I suppose he didn't say +especially why he was going," and on getting a bare negative in reply, +went on, a little breathlessly:--"I didn't mean that impertinently;--only +all of us were very much interested in him and we liked him too well, +especially father and I, to be content to lose track of him. I hope he +wasn't ill;--didn't go away because of that." + +"He told me that he was not," Mrs. March answered. "Though if I might +have had my way with him, I would have put him to bed for a week. +However," she added, with a fine smile, "I never did have my way with him +and neither has his father had his. And I judge it to be as well that we +have not." + +No, there was no hostility about it. She perceived the genuineness in her +visitor's concern and was perhaps really touched by it. But even so she +was sparing of details. Anthony had never lived a life regulated by rule +and habit. He worked at his music much too hard when the call, as she +termed it, was upon him, and obviously quite forgot to take proper care +of himself. And then he went away, as on this occasion, to recuperate in +his own manner. + +Mary adventured again just as she was getting up to take her leave. "It +must want a good courage," she said, "to let him go like that; not to +keep trying, at least, to hold him back in sheltered ways." + +She got a nod of acknowledgment of the truth of this, but no words at +all. But she found herself, afterward, in possession of an impression so +clear that one would think it must have needed a long exchange of +unreserved confidences to have produced it. The man's mother loved him, +of course; one might take that for granted. And was proud of him; of +course--perhaps--again. But beyond all that, she rejoiced in him; in his +emancipation from the line and precept which had so tightly confined her; +in his very vagabondage. + +She was not much in his confidence, though. Mary had made that out from +the way she had received her own resume of the status of his opera. His +mother had known nothing of his hopes, neither when Paula raised them +up nor later when she cast them down. It was odd about that--and rather +pitiable. She would have welcomed her son's confidences, Mary was sure, +with so real a sympathy, if he could only have believed it. But the +crust of family tradition was too thick, she supposed, to make even the +attempt possible. + +This failure of his fully to understand the person traditionally the +nearest and dearest to him in all the world had, upon Mary's mind, the +effect of, somehow, solidifying him; making him more completely human to +her--where it might have been expected to work the other way. It proved +the last touch she needed to quicken the concern she had from the +beginning felt for him into an entirely real thing, a motivating +principle. If it was possible to get that opera of his produced, she was +going to do it. + +She stopped at the Dearborn Avenue house on her way down-town to get her +little portable typewriter and carry it out to Ravinia with her. In the +odd hours of the next few days she copied March's libretto in English, +triple spaced, out of his score and this, with a lead pencil, she took to +carrying around with her to Paula's rehearsals, to her dressing-room, +everywhere. A phrase at a time, syllable by syllable, she began putting +it into French. + +On the last Saturday night in June the Ravinia season opened with _Tosca_ +sung in Italian; Paula singing the title part and Fournier as "Scarpia." +A veteran American tenor, Wilbur Hastings, an old Ravinia favorite, sang +"Cavaradossi." Taken as a whole, the performance was quite as good as any +one has a right to expect any opening night to be. The big audience which +went away good-naturedly satisfied, had had its moments of really +stirring enthusiasm. Fournier scored a well deserved triumph with a +"Scarpia" that was characterized by a touch of really sinister +distinction. Hastings, incapable as he was of subtleties or refinements, +did as usual all the obvious things pretty well and got the welcome he +had so rightly counted upon. But Paula fell unmistakably short of winning +the smashing success she had so ardently hoped for. + +She did not, of course, fail. Wallace Hood, to take him for a sample of +her admiring friends, went home assuring himself that her success had +been all he or any of the rest of them could have wished. And he wrote +that same night a letter to John Wollaston out at Hickory Hill saying as +much. Her beauty, he told John, had been a revelation even to him and +there could be no doubt that the audience had been deeply moved by it. +Her acting also had taken him by surprise. It was a talent he had not +looked for in her and he was correspondingly delighted by this +manifestation of it. In the great scene with Fournier when he stated the +terms of his abominable bargain to her, Wallace had hardly been able to +realize it was Paula that he saw on the stage. + +When it came to her singing (he knew John would want his most impartial +honest judgment)--here where he had been surest of her, she came nearest +to disappointing him. It was a shame, of course, to subject a lovely +voice like hers to singing in the great vacancy of all outdoors, to say +nothing of forcing it into competition with a shouter and bellower like +Hastings. But he felt sure when she was a little better accustomed to her +surroundings, she would rise superior even to these drawbacks. + +This was somewhere near the facts, though stated with a strong friendly +bias. Paula was nervous, never really got into the stride of her acting +at all. The strong discrepancy between Fournier's methods and Hastings' +served perhaps to prevent her getting into step with either. And she sang +all but badly. There had been only one rehearsal in the pavilion and at +that she had been content merely to sketch her work in, singing off the +top of her voice. When she really opened up at the performance, the +unfamiliar acoustics of the place frightened her into forcing, with the +result that she was constantly singing sharp. + +Paula herself, though disappointed, didn't feel too badly about it, +knowing that all her difficulties were merely matters of adjustment, +until she read what the critics said about her in the papers the next +morning. What they said was not on the face of it, severe;--came, indeed, +to much the same thing as Wallace Hood's verdict. But the picture between +the lines which they unanimously presented, was of a spoiled beauty, +restless for the publicity that private life deprived her of, offering in +a winning manner to a gullible public, a gold brick. + +Paula was furiously angry over this, justifiably, too. Her work had +been professional even in its defects and deserved professional +judgment. The case was serious, too, for if that notion of her once got +fairly planted in the minds of her public, it would be almost +impossible to eradicate it. + +But Anthony March had not been mistaken when he spoke of her as a +potential tamer of wild beasts. Her anger was no mere gush of emotions, +to spend itself and leave her exhausted. It was a sort that hardened in +an adamantine resolution. The next chance she got, she'd show them! +Unluckily, she wasn't billed to sing again until toward the end of the +week. It happened, however, that the Sunday papers, taking away with one +hand, gave in a roundabout but effective fashion with the other. + +The opera billed for that night was _Pagliacci_. A young American +baritone with a phenomenal high A, was to sing "Tonio" and a new Spanish +soprano was cast for "Nedda." When this young woman saw the Sunday papers +she, too, went into a violent rage. Her knowledge of English was not +sufficient to enable her to draw any comfort from the subtle cruelties +which the critics had inflicted on Paula in the news section. But the +music and drama supplements which had been printed days before, devoted +as they were to the opening of the season, simply made Paula the whole +thing. The Spanish young lady's rage was of a different quality from +Paula's. She wept and stormed. She demanded like Herodias, the head of +that press agent on a charger. Simply that and nothing more. And when she +failed to get it, she went to bed. + +The management, disconcerted but by no means at the end of its resources, +decreed a change of the bill to _Lucia_. They were ready to go on with +_Lucia_ which had been billed for Tuesday night. All they needed was to +bring the scenery out from town in a truck. This they ordered done; but +at five o'clock, about two miles south of the park, the truck went +through a bridge culvert and rolled all the way to the bottom of a +ravine. The driver escaped with his life but the production of _Lucia_ +was smashed to splinters. + +Mary chanced upon this piece of information and brought it straight to +Paula. "Tell them to go ahead with _Pagliacci_, then," Paula said. "I'll +sing 'Nedda' myself. Get LaChaise on the phone and let me talk to him." + +She did sing it without any rehearsal at all. And she gave a performance +which for most of the persons who saw it, made her the, and the only, +"Nedda"; though--or perhaps, because--she didn't give the part quite its +traditional characterization; adapted it with the unscrupulousness of the +artist to her own purpose. + +Paula's "Nedda" was a sulky slattern, indifferent, lazy, smoldering with +passion,--dangerous. The sensuous quality of her beauty had never been +more apparent than it was in the soiled cheap mountebank fineries which +she had worn for so many performances of the part in Europe. And this +beauty, of course, did a lot of the work for her. Explained the tragedy +all by itself. And, indeed, tragedy hung visibly over her from the moment +of her first entrance upon the stage in the donkey cart. She was the sort +of woman men kill and are killed for. + +She played the part with an extreme economy of movement, with a kind of +feline stillness which made her occasional explosions into action, as +when she attacked Tonio with the whip, literally terrifying. She sang it +carelessly and therefore in a manner absolutely gorgeous. She swept them +all, critics as well as the immense audience, clean off their feet. + +Also, by way of a foot-note, the managerial announcement that Madame +Carresford had volunteered for the part at six o'clock, to rescue them +from the necessity of closing the park and was to sing it absolutely +without rehearsal, exploded for all time the notion that there was +anything of the amateur about her. + +"You can do anything," LaChaise told her as she came out into the wings. +And he kissed her on both cheeks rather solemnly, in the manner of one +conferring a decoration. In full measure pressed down and running over, +that was how Paula's success came to her. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE WAYFARER + + +By the time Paula had got back to her dressing-room after the long series +of tumultuous curtain calls was over, the rush of her friends to express +their congratulations in person had begun. After the _Tosca_, performance +she had been adamant about seeing anybody but to-night with a laugh she +said, "I don't care. For a few minutes. If they're people I really know." + +So Mary took her station beside the Rhadamanthus at the stockade gate--in +a proper opera-house, he would have been the stage door-keeper--to pick +out the sheep from the goat-like herd of the merely curious who, but for +firm measures, would have stormed the place. Those who came down again, +pushed out by the weight of new arrivals, lingered about the gate talking +things over with Mary. It amused her to see how radically their attitude +had changed. Such people as the Averys, the Cravens and the Byrnes, who +in a social way had known Paula well, seemed to regard her now as a +personage utterly remote, translated into another world altogether. And +when they asked about John Wollaston, as most of them did, there was an +undertone almost of commiseration about their inquiries, though on the +surface this didn't go beyond an expressed regret that he hadn't been +here to witness the triumph. + +Mary drove them all away at last, even the lingerers in Paula's +dressing-room, left her safely in the hands of her dresser and went out +into the automobile park to get her car. Coming up softly across the +grass and reaching in to turn on the lights, she was startled to discover +that there was a man in it. But before she had time more than to gasp, +she recognized him as her father. + +"I didn't want to push my way in with the mob," he explained, after +apologizing for having frightened her. "The car, when I spotted it, +seemed a safe place to wait. And the privacy of it," he added, "will be +grateful, too, since I'm not perfectly sure that Paula won't refuse +outright to see me." + +Mary smiled at this and said she hoped he hadn't missed the performance. + +"No," he told her somberly, "I didn't miss--any of it." Then on a +different note, "Now we'll see whether those dogs of critics won't change +their tune." + +"Paula herself changed the tune," Mary observed. Then, "She's longing to +see you, of course. And there's no reason why you should wait. No one's +with her now except her dresser." + +She led the way, without giving him a chance to demur, to the gate to the +stockade and turned him over to the gatekeeper. + +"Please take Doctor Wollaston up to his wife's dressing-room," she said. +And with a momentary pleasure in having evaded introducing him as Madame +Carresford's husband, she turned away and went back to the car. + +For the moment the spectacle of her father in the role of a young lover +touched her no more acutely than with a mild half-humorous melancholy. +She even paid the tribute of a passing smile to the queer reversal of +their roles, her own and his. She was more like a mother brooding over +the first love-affair of an adolescent son. It was so young of him, +younger, she believed, than any act she herself could be capable of, to +have come to Paula's performance without letting her know and waited +shyly alone in the dark while the herd of her acquaintances crowded in +and monopolized her. Pathetically young, almost intolerably pathetic in +a man in his middle fifties. She wondered if he had come up for _Tosca_ +the night before and gone away without a word. + +She had spoken quite without authority in assuring him of Paula's +welcome. Paula had not, she thought, spoken of him once either in +connection with her disappointment the night before or with her triumph +to-night. Yet that he would get a lover's welcome she had very little +doubt. It was his moment certainly. Paula left alone up there at last, +sated with an overwhelming success, tired, relaxed... + +With an effort of will Mary settled herself a little more deeply in the +seat behind the wheel and lighted a cigarette. She hated having to wait, +having to be found waiting when they came down together. She wished she +could just--disappear. It wasn't possible, of course. + +It was not very long before they came down. "She says I may stay two +days," John told Mary as they squeezed into their seats in the little +roadster. "Then, relentlessly, she's going to turn me out." But his voice +was beyond disguise that of a lover who has prospered. + +Mary drove them in almost unbroken silence all the way, down the ravine +road and up through the woods to the house in the village. Then she went +on with the car to their garage which stood in a yard of a neighbor, two +or three doors away. She rejected with curt good-humor her father's offer +to help her with this job. It was what she always did by herself, she +said, and took a momentary perverse pleasure, which she despised herself +for, in the obvious fact that this troubled him. + +Back in the cottage living-room, ten minutes later perhaps, she found him +alone and heard then, the explanation of his having come. They had got +the Sunday papers out at Hickory Hill as usual in the middle of the +morning but had found no reference to the performance of _Tosca_ the +night before. John had spent a good part of the day fretting over the +absence of any news as to how Paula's venture had succeeded and puzzling +over the lack of it in the papers. Then the obvious explanation had +struck one of the boys, that the papers that came out to Hickory Hill on +Sunday were an early edition. + +He had had old Pete drive him straight into town, at that, and there he +had found the news-stand edition containing the criticisms. The +unfairness of them had disturbed him greatly. Orders or no orders, he +hadn't been able to endure the thought of leaving Paula to suffer under +the sting of a sneer like that without making at least an effort to +comfort her. He had driven out to Ravinia without any idea that she was +to sing again that night; had been told of it at the park where he had +stopped for the purpose of picking up some one who could conduct him to +her house. Learning that she was about to sing again, he had exerted all +his will power and waited until this second ordeal should be over. + +"It was as much one for me as it could have been for her," he concluded. +"I don't know what stage fright is, but vicarious stage fright is the +devil. I never was so terrified in my life. I hope nobody I knew saw me. +I took pains they shouldn't, for I must have looked like a ghost." + +"There's nothing the matter with your looks now," she told him. "Hickory +Hill must be just the place for you." + +"It would be," he assented, "if it were possible for me to be +whole-heartedly there. By the way, we've got a visitor. Anthony March." + +She felt herself flush at that with clear pleased surprise. "Oh, that's +as nice as possible," she said. "But how in the world did it happen? How +did you find him? Paula was trying to and couldn't." + +"Was she?" Her father's voice, she thought, flattened a little on the +question. "Why, he found us. He turned up on foot--Friday morning, it +must have been--with a knapsack on his shoulders; came to the farm-house +door and asked if he should tune the piano. Luckily, I happened to be +about and caught him before he could get away. He was combining a walking +trip, he said, with his own way of earning a living and I persuaded him +to stay for a few days and make us a visit." + +The last part of that sentence, Paula, coming down into the room from +up-stairs, heard. + +"Who?" she asked. "Who's the visitor you've been persuading?" + +It was just a good-natured way of showing her interest in anything that +her husband might happen to be talking about. But when he answered, +"Anthony March," she came into focus directly. + +"Thank goodness, you've found him!" she said. "I had about given him +up.--And I really need him." + +"I thought," said John, "that you had given him up. Are you going to do +his opera, after all?" + +"Opera!" said Paula blankly, as if she had never heard of such a thing. +"No, I want him to see if he can fix this beastly piano they've given me +so that it's fit to work with." + +And John, after a moment-laughed. + +It was a shattering sort of laugh to Mary. She stared at the man who +uttered it as if he were--what he had for the moment become--a stranger. +He was not, certainly, the man who, down in North Carolina had talked +about March with her, regretted the "rough justice" he had had from Paula +and considered the possibility of repairing it. That momentary blank look +of his had shown that he perceived the insensitive egotism of his wife's +attitude. Not even now that her success was an established thing had she +a regretful thought for the man who had hoped to share it with her. She +had forgotten those hopes. All she remembered now about Anthony March was +that he could tune pianos better than any one else. + +This Mary's father saw and yet he laughed. A cruel laugh. He had felt +for the moment a recurrence of the old jealousy. In his relief from it, +he, a reassured lover, triumphed in the humiliation of one he had +supposed his rival. + +Mary managed to hide her face from him--superfluously because he wasn't +looking at her--and thought up, desperately, a few more questions about +how they were getting on at Hickory Hill. + +But she went on feeling from moment to moment more horribly in the way, +and at last with a simulated yawn she said she was going to bed. +"This--vicarious success is rather tiring," she told her father; "almost +as bad as vicarious stage fright." And then to Paula, "Is there any +reason, if you're going to keep father here for two days, why I shouldn't +steal a holiday?" + +"Go away, do you mean?" Paula asked with a faint flush. "Why,--where +would you go?" + +"I could drive over to Hickory Hill," Mary said, "either by myself in the +little car or with Pete in the big one. Whichever you wouldn't rather +have here." + +"I think that's a capital idea," John said. "Oh, you'd better take the +big car with Pete. It would be rather a long drive for you all by +yourself in the little one." + +This was not the real reason, of course. He wouldn't want a chauffeur +under foot while he was honeymooning about with Paula. + +Owing to a late start and an errand which at the last moment Paula wanted +done in Chicago, it was getting on toward four o'clock when Pete drove +Mary up to the loading platform of the old apple house at Hickory Hill. +The farm Ford was standing there idling in a syncopated manner and +apparently on the point of departure somewhere. Where, was explained a +moment later by the emergence of Sylvia Stannard in her conventional farm +costume of shirt and breeches with a two-gallon jug in each hand. + +"Oh," she said, "then the big car can take Miss Wollaston over to Durham, +can't it?--so she won't have to ride in the Ford which she hates. How do +you do? I'm awfully glad you've come. We weren't expecting you, were we? +Was anybody, I mean?" + +Mary allowed herself a laugh at this young thing with her refreshing way +of saying first whatever first came into her head and letting this serve +as a greeting, said she was sure the big car and Pete were equal to +taking her aunt to the four-miles-distant village. + +"That's all right then. I won't have to wait for her," said Sylvia, +letting down her jugs into the tonneau of the Ford. "I'll run +straight along with this. They must be simply perishing for it. Isn't +it hot, though!" + +Mary wanted to know who they were and what they were perishing for. + +"Lemonade," said Sylvia, "for the boys out in the hay field. It's +perfectly gorgeous out there but hot enough to frizz your hair." + +"Where is the hay field?" Mary asked. "Is it very far?" + +"It's just over in the northeast eighty," said Sylvia, with a rather +conscious parade of her mastery of bucolic vernacular. "But you don't +want to walk. It would be awfully jolly if you would come along with me." + +"Wait two minutes until I've said hello to Aunt Lucile and I will," said +Mary, and turned to go into the house. + +"Don't step on any of the piano," Sylvia called after her. "It's spread +all over the place." + +They had made a good many changes in the apple house since Mary had gone +to Ravinia, but the thing that drew a little cry of surprise from her was +this old square piano. The case of it stood snugly in the corner of the +west wall. But the works were spread about the room in a manner which +made Sylvia's warning less far-fetched than it seemed. + +The feeling that caught Mary at sight of it was more than just surprise. +Its dismantled condition brought to her a half-scared but wholly happy +reassurance that Anthony March was really here. + +Her journey to Hickory Hill had been, so she had told herself at +intervals during the day, merely a flight from her father and Paula. +There was no real reason for thinking that she would find March at the +end of it. Week-end visits usually ended Monday morning, and it was +probable that he would have gone hours before she arrived. She was +conscious now of having commanded herself not to be silly when she was +fretting over the late start from Ravinia and Paula's errand in town. It +_would_ be nice to see him again! He was probably out in the hay field +with the others. + +She gave her aunt a rather absent-minded greeting and a highly condensed +summary of her news. Her father was well and was stopping on with Paula +for a day or two. + +"He's taken over my job," she concluded mischievously, "maid, chauffeur +and chaperon. Paula doesn't mind now that she's made such an enormous hit +and she doesn't sing again until Thursday. Pete will take you in the big +car to Durham." + +"Well, that's Heaven's mercy," exclaimed Miss Wollaston. "I don't like to +drive with Sylvia in any car and I don't like riding in a Ford no matter +who drives. But Sylvia driving a Ford--her own car's broken down +somehow--is simply frightful." + +"She's waiting for me now," said Mary, "to take me out to the hay field. +I must run before she grows any more impatient." + +And run was precisely what she did, down the slope to where Sylvia +awaited her, a lighter-hearted creature altogether than she had supposed +this morning that it was possible for her to be. + +She got an explanation of the piano from Sylvia. She had gone with Rush +and Mr. March to an auction sale late Saturday afternoon at a farm three +or four miles away. Just for a lark. They hadn't meant seriously to buy +anything. But this old piano, Mr. March having sworn that he would make +it play despite the fact that half the keys wouldn't go down at all and +the rest when they did made only the most awful noises, they had bought +for eleven dollars, and had fetched home in the truck on Sunday. + +"I think he's terribly nice," Sylvia confided. "You know him, don't you? +He's quite old, of course.--Well, over thirty he says; but he's +awfully--don't you know--well preserved. There are a whole lot of things +he can do." + +Mary laughed. "That is remarkable. How old are you, you nice young thing? +Going on six? Lookout! You'll smash the lemonade!" + +"We're going to surprise them," Sylvia announced when they had arrived, +miraculously without disaster, at the northeast eighty. They had careened +through the wagon gate and halted under an oak tree at the edge of the +field. "I'll go and tell them I've brought the lemonade, but I won't say +anything about you. You keep out of sight behind the tree. Then Graham +won't want to go and brush his hair." + +It startled Mary to realize that she had forgotten all about Graham. Not +even the sight of his sister had recalled the--highly special nature of +the state of things between them nor suggested the need for preparing an +attitude to greet him with. At all events she wouldn't follow Sylvia's +suggestion and pop out at him from behind a tree. + +He was, it happened, the first person the child encountered in her flight +across the field; the others, indistinguishable at that distance, were in +a group a little farther away. Mary walked out to meet him when she saw +him coming toward her and competently gave the encounter its tone by +beginning to talk to him--about how hot it was and how nice the hay +smelled and how good it seemed to be back here at Hickory Hill--while +they were still a good twenty paces apart. You couldn't strike any sort +of sentimental note very well when you had to begin at a shout. Then she +led him back to the lemonade, gave him a cigarette and answered at length +and with a good deal of spontaneous vivacity his obligatory questions +about Paula and the opening of the Ravinia season. + +She was in the full tide of this--and was, since she had sat down upon a +small boulder Graham had insisted she take possession of, screened by the +trunk of the tree--when Sylvia hailed her brother from, not very far away +with the statement that Rush wouldn't stop for anything or anybody until +once more around the field. It was March, then, who was audibly coming +along with her. Mary rose, broke off about Paula, and moved the single +step it needed to give her sight of him. + +She saw nothing else but him. She saw his head go back as from the actual +impact of the sight of her. She saw the look, unmistakable as a blast +from a trumpet, that flamed into his face. And then her world swam. Paula +wasn't singing now, "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" Nor could Paula +come upon him now, from anywhere, and take him by the shoulders and kiss +his cheek and lead him away with her. This moment was not +Paula's--whatever the other had been. + +And the rest, standing there looking on, hadn't seen the bolt fall! They +were talking as idly and easily as if this were nothing but a hot summer +afternoon in the hay field. + +"I told him," she heard Sylvia saying, "that there was another nice old +person he knew here with the lemonade, who thought I was only about +six.--Were you surprised when you saw who she was?--I'm going to take +him back to the apple house with us, now that Mary's come, so that he +can have the piano ready to dance by to-night." This last, apparently, +to Graham. + +She even heard herself join in,--the voice was hers anyhow--when Graham, +commenting upon the view across the field, remarked that it was so +intensely farm-like that it had almost the look of a stage setting. + +"It is like something," she said then. "It's like the first act of _Le +Chemineau_. We ought to have a keg of cider instead of two jugs of +lemonade and we should have brought it in a wheelbarrow instead of in +the Ford." + +"Well, we couldn't take Mr. March back in a wheelbarrow," Sylvia said, +"so I'm glad it isn't the first act of whatever-you-call-it. Because he's +simply got to fix the piano well enough for jazz." + +Mary couldn't remember that he spoke a word, but he got into the back +seat of the Ford with her when Sylvia slid under the wheel. + +"If you'll promise," Sylvia said to March at the end of the breathless +mile back to the apple house, "if you'll promise to go straight to work +at it and never stop until it'll play the _Livery Stable Blues_, then +I'll go back to the hay field and see that Rush gets some of the lemonade +before those laborers drink it all up. You'll see to him, won't you, +Mary? Stand right over him and be severe, so that we can dance to-night. +You aren't as excited about it as you ought to be. I think I'll come in +and start him." + +And this she did while the Ford executed a little jazz rhythm of its own +outside. She didn't stay more than a minute or two though. When she saw +him fairly occupied, tools in hand, over his task, she darted away again +with a last injunction to severity upon Mary. + +She had seen nothing. The two were left alone. + +Mary sat where she could watch his fine skilled hands at work. The +negligent precision with which they accomplished their varied tasks +occupied her, made it possible to continue for a while the silence she +needed until her world should have stopped swimming; until the blindness +of that revelation should have passed. + +She had been wrong about him again. He was not an Olympian. (But, of +course, Olympians themselves weren't, if it came to that; not always.) +He could never, she had been telling herself since that day when they +had had their one talk together, belong to any one. He did not--save +himself up for special people. He was just there, the same for +everybody, like, she had half humorously observed to her father, a +public drinking fountain. + +If that was the rule, she, Mary Wollaston, was the exception to it. Not +Paula with her opulent armory, but she who had listened with him, +clinging to him, while Paula sang; she, who had talked to him while Paula +fought for her husband's life; she, whom he had come upon in the shade of +the oak tree at the edge of the hay field; she who sat near him, silent +now. This was the meager total that outweighed those uncounted hours of +Paula's. Somehow she had acquired a special significance for him. + +Was she trying to evade saying that he had fallen in love with her. What +was the good--except that it sounded sweet--of using a phrase which could +be packed like a hand-bag with anything you chose to put into it? Graham +was in love with her. That boy in New York, whom she had found in a +panic of lonely terror lest he should prove a coward in the great ordeal +he was facing overseas had been for a few hours in love with her. What +would be the content of the phrase for a man like this? + +Was she in love with him? Her thoughts up to now had been deep, +submerged, almost formless, but this question came to the surface and +touched her lips with a smile. Well, and what did the phrase mean to her? + +All she could think of as she sat so still watching him, was those fine +hands of his, working as skillfully and swiftly as her father's ever +worked but at this humble task. She kept her eyes away for just a +little longer from his face. She wanted those hands. She wanted them +with an intensity that made it impossible at last to let the silence +endure any longer. + +"Paula..." she said, and stopped in sheer surprise that her voice had +come at all; then began again, "Paula wanted you to tune her piano. +At Ravinia. I was angry, at that, until she reminded me that you +wouldn't be." + +His hand laid down the small, odd shaped tool it held, but the next +moment picked it up again. + +"I shouldn't have minded tuning her piano," he told her. + +"I know," she said. "I knew as soon as I had had a minute in which +to--gather you up. And when I had done that, I helped her try to find +you. I had a special reason, a different one from Paula's, for hoping +that we could. And for my reason," she went on, trembling a little +and finding it harder to make her words come steadily, "it +isn't--yet, too late. + +"You see if you were there with her where she could see you every +day--there'd be a lot of pianos there she said; enough to keep you +going--she'd remember you again. She is like that. Lots of people are, I +suppose. When she doesn't see you, she forgets. But if she remembered how +much she liked you and how good your opera was,--the real one, the one +you wrote for yourself--she might do something about it.--To get it +played--so that you could hear it. Now that she's had a great success, +she could do almost anything quite easily, I think. Infinitely more than +I. I've been trying, but I haven't got very far." + +He laid down the tool once more and locked his hands together. "You have +been trying?" he repeated. The tension, like the grip of his hands, was +drawing up almost unbearably. + +"There's a French baritone there, Fournier, who could play your officer's +part. As you meant it to be played, I think. But he doesn't sing in +English. I thought it might be possible, if you didn't mind its being +sung in French, to translate it. That's one of the things I've +been--trying to do." + +And then with a gasp and a sob, "Oh, don't,--don't hurt them like that!" +she reached out and took the hands she wanted. + +He responded to the caress, as before, so quickly that one could +hardly have known where it began; only Mary did know. She looked up +then into his face, steadily, open-eyed, though she could not see much +for the blur. + +"This time," he said, laboriously,--"this time it isn't the song." + +She shook her head. + +"I couldn't have waited, like that," he told her, three breaths later, +"except for being afraid that if I tried to touch you, you wouldn't be +there at all. Like a fairy story;--or a dream. I have never been sure +that the other time wasn't." + +"It's real enough," she said. "You're sure now, aren't you?" + +His answer, the one she meant him to make, was to draw her up into a +deep embrace, his lips upon hers. + +"What does it mean?" he asked, when they had drawn back from it. + +She smiled at that. "You don't need ask. That's the Wollaston trick, to +ask for meanings and reasons." She added, a moment later, "It means +whatever it says to your heart." + +It was at her half-humorous suggestion that he went back, presently, to +work at the piano. She settled contentedly near him where with an +outstretched hand she could occasionally respond to his touch. They +hadn't, either of them, very much to say. + +Once the work was interrupted, when he asked, rather tensely, "Do you +want me to come to Ravinia?" + +She found herself at a loss for a categorical reply. She'd have thought +that a whole-hearted yes would have been the only thing she could say. + +"I don't want you--tortured any more with unheard melodies," she answered +after a moment's reflection. + +His nod, decisive as it was, struck her as equivocal. But she was too +happy to probe into anything this afternoon. There would be plenty of +time; unstinted hours. It was with no more than a mild regret that she +heard, under the windows, the return of the big car with Aunt Lucile. +This inextinguishable happiness expressed itself in the touch of impudent +mischief with which she slipped up close behind Anthony March and, in the +last possible instant before her aunt's entrance into the room, bent down +and kissed him; then flashed back to her decorously distant chair. + +It was funny how calm she was. This day that was closing down over the +hill behind the apple house couldn't be, it seemed, the same that had +dawned over the lake at Ravinia. The whole Ravinia episode, even as she +told Lucile and March about it, seemed remote, like something out of a +book; but became for that very reason, rather pleasant to dwell upon. +Sylvia came in pretty soon for a critical survey of what March had +accomplished with the piano, volunteered to help and attempted to. But +having pled some of Anthony's arrangements of loose parts, she was +sacked off the job and sent back to the hay field to bring the boys in +for supper. + +After supper the excitement over the piano increased. They all gathered +round March like people watching a conjurer's trick when he slid the +action into place and proved, chromatically, that every hammer would +strike and every key return. + +"But it isn't tuned at all," Sylvia wailed. "It will be hours before you +can play on it." + +"Minutes," March corrected with a grin. And they watched, amazed,--but +less so really than an ordinary piano tuner would have been,--at the way +he caught octaves, fifths and fourths, sixths and thirds up and down that +keyboard like a juggler keeping seven tennis balls in the air. + +"There you are," he said suddenly, before it seemed that he could be +half-way through and began playing a dance. + +"But you can play tunes!" cried Sylvia. "I thought you only did terribly +high-brow things. That's what Rush said." + +"I was pianist in the best jazz orchestra in Bordeaux," March told her. + +He stayed there at the piano quite contentedly for more than an hour. +Some of the musical jokes he indulged in (his sense of humor expressed +itself more easily and impudently in musical terms than in any other) +were rather over his auditors' heads. Parodies whose originals they +failed to recognize, experiments in the whole-tone scale that would have +interested disciples of Debussy, but his rhythms they understood and +recognized as faultless. + +And Mary danced. With Graham when she must, with Rush when she could. The +latter happened oftener than you would have supposed. + +"Those Wollastons can certainly dance," Sylvia remarked to her brother. +"I wonder they'll have anything to do with us. Let's just watch them for +a minute.--Here, we'll turn the piano around so Mr. March can see, too." + +It was queer, Mary reflected, how easy it was for her and also, she was +sure, for her lover, to acquiesce in a spending of the hours like that; +how little impatient she was of the presence of these others that kept +them apart. She gave no thought to any maneuver, practicable or +fantastic, for stealing away with him, not even when, as the party +broke up for the night it became evident that chance was not going so to +favor them. + +She realized afterward that there had been something factitious about her +tranquillity. What he had said in the moment before their first embrace +had been on that same note. He had been afraid to touch her for fear +that--as in a fairy story, or a dream,--she wouldn't be there. All that +afternoon and evening, despite an ineffable security in their miracle, +she had walked softly and so far as the future was concerned, avoided +trying to look. + +Something in his gaze when he said good night to her, gave her a +momentary foreboding, though she told herself on the way up to the tent +she was to share with Sylvia that this was nothing but the scare that +always comes along with a too complete happiness. + +But in the morning when her aunt told her that March had gone, she +realized that it had been more than that. + +It was in the presence of the others who had gathered in the apple house +for breakfast that she heard the news, and this was perhaps a mercy; for +the effort she had to make to keep from betraying herself rallied her +forces and prevented a rout. + +To the others his having gone like that seemed natural enough,--likably +characteristic of him, at any rate. In his note to Miss Wollaston he had +merely said that he realized that he must be off and wished to make the +most of the cool of the morning. He hoped she would understand and pardon +his not having spoken of his intention last night. + +"It's the crush Sylvia had on him that accounts for that," Graham +observed. "He was afraid of the row she'd make if he let on." + +Sylvia's riposte to this was the speculation that Mary had scared him +away, but one could see that her brother's explanation pleased her. + +"Anyhow," she concluded, "he was good while he lasted." + +What held Mary together was the obvious fact that none of them saw--no +more than they had seen--anything. Not one curious or questioning glance +was turned her way. A sense she was not until later able to find words +for, that she was guarding something, his quite as much as her own, from +profaning eyes, gave her the resolution it needed to carry on like that +until she could be alone. Naturally,--or at all events plausibly--alone. +She wouldn't run away from anybody. + +Toward eleven o'clock chance befriended her. She hid herself in the old +orchard, lay prone upon the warm grass, her cheek upon her folded +forearms, and let herself go. She did not cry even now. Grief was not +what she felt, still less resentment. + +She was lonely as she had never been before, and frightened by her +loneliness. All the familiar things of her life seemed far away, unreal. +She wanted a hand to hold;--his--oh, one of his!--until she could find +her way into a path again. + +She had known, she reflected,--somewhere in the depths of her she had +known--from the first moment of their meeting, that he would go away. +This was why she had been so careful not to look beyond the moments as +they came; not to tempt Nemesis by asking nor trying for too much. + +There happened to be, rather uncannily, a genuine proof that this was +true. While she had been still dazed with that first look of his, there +in the oak shade at the edge of the field, she had said that it was like +the first act of _Le Chemineau_. That had been speaking all but with the +tongue of prophecy. Deeply as the story had impressed her when she heard +it, she had spoken with no conscious sense of the likeness between that +wayfarer--whom neither love nor interest nor security could tempt away +from the open road which called him,--and Anthony March. It was an inner +self that knew and found a chance to speak. It was that same self who had +answered for her when he asked whether she wanted him to come to Ravinia. + +He had come to his decision then, with just that nod of the head. And +she, forlorn, was glad he had cast this temptation aside. That he was +plodding now sturdily along his highway. She flushed with shame at the +thought of him, ubiquitous among those egotists at Ravinia, enlisting +their interest, reminding Paula how much she liked him. + +Why had he not hated her for suggesting such a thing? He had loved her +for it, she knew, because he understood the longing to comfort and +protect him which lay behind it. But that sort of comfort was not for +him. The torture of the unheard melodies, instead. + +He did love her. This, utterly, she knew. His going away, even with no +farewell at all, cast no flaw upon the miraculous certainty of that. +Their one unreserved embrace remained the symbol of it. + +She pressed her hands to her face and with a long indrawn breath +surrendered to the memory of it. It was hers--for always. + +The family were sitting at dinner when she came down to the apple +house, and after a rather startled look at her, demanded to know where +she had been. + +"Asleep in the orchard," she said. "And not altogether awake yet." + +But she knew she must get away from them. The look she saw in Graham's +face would have decided that. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +A CASE OF NECESSITY + + +She told Rush when they left the table, that she had some shopping to do +in town for Paula and meant to go on the afternoon train. She was +expected back at Ravinia to-morrow anyhow. Beyond trying to persuade her +to let Pete drive her in he made no protest, but she could see that he +was troubled about it and she wasn't much surprised to find Wallace Hood +waiting on the station platform when her train got in. + +She didn't, very much, mind Wallace. There was no appearance of his being +there in the role of guardian because she wasn't considered safe to leave +to herself. You could always trust Wallace to do a thing like that +perfectly. + +It was a great piece of luck for him he told her. He had called up +Hickory Hill to congratulate John upon Paula's enormous success; had +learned from Rush of Mary's visit and that she was even then on the way +to Chicago. He had just dropped round at the station in the hope of being +able to pick her up for dinner. She had some shopping to do he understood +and he wouldn't detain her now. + +"Oh, nothing that matters a bit," said Mary. "It was an excuse merely, +for running away from Hickory Hill." + +There was something to be said for a man like Wallace as a confidant. He +was perfectly safe not to guess anything on his own account. He seemed +touched by her candor and hugged her arm against his side as they walked +along, a gesture of endearment such as he hadn't indulged in for half a +dozen years. + +"So if you have nothing better to do," she went on, "we can begin +our evening now. Though I suppose I had better find, first, a place +to sleep." + +"Frederica Whitney's in town for a day or two, just for a flying visit +to Martin. She'd be glad to take you in, I'm sure." + +"Oh, I think not," said Mary. "Not if I can get anything with four walls +at the Blackstone." + +She thought from his glance at her that he attached some special +significance to her unwillingness to go to the Whitney house and hastened +to assure him this was not the case. + +"Frederica's a dear. Only I just happen to feel like not being anybody's +guest to-night. Oh, and I didn't mean you by that either." + +"It's nice to be nobody in that sense," he said. + +His next suggestion was that he get his car, start north up the shore +with her, have dinner at one of the taverns along the road and deliver +her in good season for a night's sleep in the cottage at Ravinia. + +But this suggestion was declined rather more curtly. + +"To-morrow is as soon as I want to go there," she said. "Pete's going +over then to get father so I shall go on duty. But meanwhile I'll let him +enjoy his holiday in peace." + +He made no further demur to telephoning over to the Blackstone. + +On his coming back presently with the news that he had a room for her, +she said, "Then we've nothing on our minds, have we? Except finding a +place for dinner that's quiet and--not too romantic. I _am_ glad you came +to meet me." + +She was quite sincere about this. It would have been ghastly she +reflected, to have spent the evening alone in a hotel bedroom with her +own thoughts, if those she had entertained on the train coming in were a +fair sample. + +He was being just as nice to her as possible. By his old-fashioned +standards, no hotel was a proper place for a young girl to spend a night +in alone. Yet beyond offering two alternative suggestions, he forbore +trying to dissuade her. So when he chose the Saddle and Cycle as their +anchorage for the evening, she endorsed his choice with the best +appearance of enthusiasm she could muster, though she'd rather have gone +to a place where three out of four of the other diners wouldn't in all +probability be known to her. + +Arriving, however, in the unclassified hour between tea and dinner, they +found they had the place pretty much to themselves and settled down in a +secluded angle of the veranda for a leisurely visit. They began on Paula, +of course, her retrieved failure and her sensational success. How sorry +Wallace was not to have been there for her "Nedda." (He didn't go in much +for Sunday entertainments of any sort, Mary remembered.) Well, it had +been just as splendid as everybody said it was. That was one thing, at +any rate, that had been put beyond discussion. Even the pundits were, for +the moment anyhow, silenced. + +He was curious as to how the intimate details of this strange life she +had a chance to observe, struck her. How she liked Paula's colleagues; to +what extent the glamour evaporated when one was behind the scenes. + +She satisfied him as well as she could, though her opportunities, she +said, were a good deal narrower than he took them to be. She had, +herself, so much to do as Paula's factotem that there wasn't much leisure +for loafing about. And this launched her into a humorously exaggerated +account of what was involved in being secretary, chauffeur and chaperon +to a successful opera star. But she pulled up when she saw he was taking +it seriously. + +"It's shocking she should work you like that," he said in a burst of +undisguised indignation. "Of course, it's precisely what Paula would do. +She has very little common consideration, I'm afraid, for anybody." + +Mary could not remember having heard him speak like that, in all the +years she'd known him, of anybody; she was sure he never had so spoken of +any one who bore the name of Wollaston. Taken aback as she was she +changed her tune altogether and tried to reassure him. + +"But that's what I'm there for, Wallace dear! To be worked. And you've +no idea how I like having something to do which amounts, in a small way, +to a job." + +"It's too hard for you, though," he persisted. "It isn't what you were +trained for. And it's rather, as I said,--shocking. If it was all +understood from the first, then so much the worse for the understanding. +I hope your father, when he went up there, didn't discover what your +duties were supposed to be." + +"No," Mary said rather dryly, "I don't believe he did." + +"Well," he said thoughtfully, at the end of a short silence, "I am +profoundly thankful that she's made so--solid a success." + +Up to this moment none of their talk had been quite real to Mary. She had +betrayed no inattention to him and when it had come her turn to carry on +the conversational stream she had done so adequately and even with a +certain vivacity. But it had meant no more than an occupation; something +that passed the time and held her potential thoughts at bay. + +This last observation of his, though, struck a different note. He had +done full justice to his pleasure in Paula's success at the very +beginning of their talk. Now he meant something by it. Leaning forward a +little for a keener look at him, she asked what it was that he meant. + +He was a little surprised to be brought to book like that, but he made +hardly an effort to fence with her. "I was glad, I meant, for purely +non-sentimental reasons. Her success may prove, I suppose, a practical +solution of some difficulties." + +"Practical?" she echoed. "You don't mean,--yes, I suppose you do +mean,--money difficulties. Do you mean that Paula's going to be invited +to support the family now?" She finished with a little laugh and he +winced at it. "Father said something like that to me one day while I was +down south with him," she explained. "Only he said it as a joke,--a sort +of joke. That's why I laughed." + +"He talked to you then about his affairs?" Wallace asked. "May I ... Do +you mind telling me what he said?" + +"Of course not, if I can remember. He'd been remiss, he said, about +making money. He said that if he had died, then when he was so ill, there +wouldn't have been, beyond his life insurance which was for Paula, much +more than enough to pay his debts. Practically nothing for Rush and me is +what that came to. I pointed out to him that we could take care of +ourselves, and he said that anyway as soon as he could get back into +practise, he'd begin to make a lot of money and save. It must be a good +deal worse,--the whole situation I mean--than I took it to be, for you to +mean that seriously about Paula." + +She had managed an appearance of composure but in truth she was badly +shaken. Money matters was just about the one real taboo that she +respected and to break over this habitual reticence even with an old +friend like Wallace troubled her delicacy. The notion she got from the +look in his face that there was something dubious about her father's +solvency, was terrifying. She hid her hands under the table so that he +shouldn't see they were trembling. She wanted the truth from him now, +rather than vaguely comforting generalties, and if she betrayed her real +feelings, these latter were what she would drive him back upon. + +"Can you tell me," she asked after a pause, "exactly how bad it is?" + +He couldn't furnish details. He told her though that there couldn't be +any doubt her father's affairs were more involved than his summary of +them had made them appear. "He isn't a very good bookkeeper, of +course,--never was; and he has never taken remonstrances very seriously. +Why, about all I know is that Martin Whitney is worried. He tried to +dissuade John from going in anywhere near so heavily on the Hickory Hill +project.--And that, of course, was before we had any reason to suppose +that his ability to earn money was going to be ..." + +It was apparent that he discarded the word that came to his tongue here +and cast about for another; "interfered with," was what he finally hit +upon. "Then he's your aunt's trustee and I believe that complicates the +situation, though just how much I don't know. Rush didn't get a letter +from Martin this morning, did he?" + +"I don't know," Mary said numbly. + +"I thought perhaps," he explained, "that might be the reason why you +didn't want to go to their house tonight. Rush doesn't quite understand +Martin's position nor do justice to it. Martin wants to have a really +thorough talk with him I know, as soon as possible." + +"Wallace ..." Mary asked, after another silence, "what was the word +you didn't say when you spoke of father's earning power +being--interfered with? Was it--cut off? Do you mean that father +isn't--ever going to be well?" + +Startled as he was, he did not attempt a total denial; answered her, +though with an effort, candidly. + +"It's not hopeless, at all," he assured her. "It really is not. If he'll +rest, live an outdoor life for the next year or two, he has a good chance +to become a well man again. It's probable that he will,--practically so. +But if he attempts to take up his practise in the autumn it will simply +be, so Darby declares, suicide." + +"That means tuberculosis, I suppose," she said. + +He nodded; then involuntarily he reached his hands out toward her, a +gesture rare with him and eloquent equally of sympathy and consternation. +He hadn't in the least meant to tell her all that--nor indeed any of it. +Her hands met his with a warm momentary pressure and then withdrew. He +had, for a fact, pretty well forgotten where they were. + +"If you knew," she said, "how kind you've been not to try to--spare me. +No, don't bother. I'm not going to cry. Just give me a minute..." + +It was less than that before she asked, in a tone reassuringly steady, +"Does father know, himself?" + +"He's been warned, but he's skeptical. Steinmetz says there's nothing +surprising about that. It's his all but universal experience with men of +his own profession. Of course this summer out at Hickory Hill is so much +to the good. And if he can get sufficiently interested to stay there the +year round, why, there's no knowing. The investment in that farm may +prove the wisest one he ever made." + +"If it were only possible,"--she was quoting what her father had said to +her the other night at Ravinia,--"for him to be whole-heartedly there! +And he could be--for it's a place one can't help loving and he and Rush +are wonderful companions--he could be whole-heartedly there if it weren't +for Paula." + +It was precisely at this point, he indicated to her, that Paula could +come in by relieving him of the necessity of getting back into practise. +Martin would look out for the fixed indebtedness on the farm. He would +probably be willing, in case John made it his home and put his own mature +judgment at the disposal of the two young partners, to finance still +further increases in the investment. But for the ordinary expenses of +living during the next year or two, Paula should cease being a burden and +become a support. "Do you think," he finished by asking, "that she has +any idea what the situation really is?" + +Mary replied to this question a little absently. "Father insisted that +she carry out the Ravinia contract. She told me so herself and seemed, I +don't know why, just a little resentful about it. But I'm sure she can't +have any idea that there was a need for money at the back of it. It has +irritated her rather whenever she has caught me economizing up there. And +father will never tell her any more pointedly than he has, you can be +sure. Some one of us will have to do it." + +"You're on very good terms with her, aren't you?" Wallace asked. He +added instantly, though with an effort, "I'm willing to tell her if you +wish me to." + +She smiled very faintly at that for she knew how terrifying such a +prospect would be to him. "Whoever told Paula," she said, "she'd +eventually attribute it, I think, back to me. So I may as well, and +rather better, do it directly." + +The tension slackened between them for a while after that. The talk +became casual. Wallace, it was easy to see, was enormously relieved. Mary +had been put in unreserved possession of the facts and had endured them +better than he could possibly have hoped. He began chatting about the +farm again, not now as an incubus but as a hopeful possibility. Both the +boys had real mettle in them and might be expected to buckle down and +show it. Rush would forget the disillusionment of his holiday hopes when +the necessities of the case were really brought home to him. And as for +Graham ... + +Wallace broke off short there, flushed, and made a rather panicky effort +to retrieve the slip. He was in the family enough to be a part of the +Graham conspiracy. Poor Graham, distracted by her innocent inability to +make up her mind to marry him! He would be all right as soon as her +maidenly hesitations should have come to an end, and she'd made him the +happiest man in the world with the almost inevitable yes. + +She had gone rather white by the end of a long silence. Finally: + +"Wallace," she began in a tone so tense that he waited breathlessly for +her to go on, "do you remember I asked you once, the day I came home from +New York, if you couldn't find me a job? I know you didn't think I meant +it and I did not altogether--then. But I mean it now. I need +it--desperately.--Wallace, I can't ever marry Graham. I know I can't. And +I can't go on being dependent on father while he's dependent on Paula." + +He caught at a straw. "Paula is really very fond of you," he said. + +"Yes, in a way," Mary agreed; "though she sometimes has regarded me a +little dubiously. But if she ever saw me--coming between her and father, +or father turning ever so little away from her--toward me, whether it was +any of my doing or not, she'd--hate me with her whole heart. It may not +be very logical but it's true." + +Then she brought him back from the digression. "Anyhow, it's on my own +account, not Paula's--nor even father's--that I want a job. Father will +feel about it, of course, as you do and so will Rush and--and the rest. +And I don't want it to hurt anybody more than necessary. I'd rather stay +here but I suppose on their account I'd better go away. And you know so +many people--in so many places. There's your sister in Omaha. I remember +how much trouble you said she had finding a nursery governess. I'd be +pretty good at that I think. I could teach French and--I'd be nice to +children." + +For a moment she wildly thought she had won him. She saw the tears come +into his eyes. + +"Anything I have in the world, my dear, or anything I can command is +yours. On any terms you like." + +But there he disposed of the tears and got himself together, as if he'd +remembered some warning. She could imagine Rush over the telephone, "Of +course, she's terribly run down with that damned war work of hers; not +quite her real self, you know." + +She saw him summon a resolute smile and heard the familiar note of +encouragement in his voice. "We'll think about it," he told her. "After +all, things aren't, probably, as black as they look. And sometimes when +they look darkest it's only the sign that they're about to change their +faces altogether. Anyhow, we've stared at them long enough to-night, +haven't we? And all I meant was to take you out for a jolly evening! +Don't you think we might save it, even yet? Is there anything at the +theatres you'd like to see?" + +"Some musical show?" she asked. "Yes, I'd like that very much. +Thank you." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE DRAMATIST + + +Mary returned to Ravinia--went on duty, as she put it to Wallace--the +following afternoon rather taut-drawn in her determination to have things +out with Paula at once. But the mere attitude and atmosphere of the +place, as before, let her down a little. + +It was restful to have her days filled up with trivial necessary duties; +an hour's errand running in the small car; a pair of soiled satin +slippers to clean with naptha; a stack of notes to answer from such +unknown and infatuate admirers as managed to escape the classification +feebleminded and were entitled therefore to have the fact recognized +(this at a little desk in the corner while Novelli at the piano and Paula +ranging about the room, ran over her part in half-voice in the opera she +had rehearsed yesterday with the orchestra and was to sing to-night), a +run to the park for a visit to Paula's dressing-room in the pavilion in +order to make sure, in conference with her dresser, that all was in order +for to-night; a return to the cottage in time to heat Paula's milk (their +maid of all work couldn't be trusted not to boil it); then at seven, +driving Paula to the park for the performance, spending the evening in +her dressing-room or in the wings chatting sometimes with other members +of the force whom she found it possible to get acquainted with; +occasional incursions into the front of the house to note how something +went or, more simply, just to hear something she liked; driving Paula +home again at last, undressing her; having supper with her--the most +substantial meal of the day--talking it over with her; and so, like Mr. +Pepys--to bed. + +It might shock Wallace Hood, a schedule like that, but there were days +when to Mary it was a clear God-send. + +She decided within the first twenty-four hours to wait for some sort of +lead from Paula before plunging into a discussion of her father's +affairs. It would take the edge off if the thing weren't too glaringly +premeditated. Paula just now was doing all she could. Mary opened all her +mail and would know if any offer came in that involved future plans. She +accepted the respite gratefully. + +She had a use to put it to. For the first two or three days after her +return, she had not been able to turn to anything that associated itself +with Anthony March without such an emotional disturbance as prevented her +from thinking at all. The mere physical effect of those sheets of score +paper was, until she could manage to control it, such as to make any +continuance of the labor of translating his opera, impossible. + +By a persistent effort of will she presently got herself in hand however +and went on not only with her translation but with the other moves in her +campaign to get _The Outcry_ produced. Her first thought was that +something might be accomplished directly through LaChaise. Her simple +plan had been to make friends with him so that when she urged the +arguments for producing this work, they'd be--well--lubricated by his +liking for her. + +She began saying things to him on a rather more personal note, things +with a touch of challenge in them. There was no gradual response to this +but suddenly--a week or ten days after her return from Hickory Hill this +was--he seemed to perceive her drift. He turned a look upon her, the +oddest sort of look, startled, inquiring, lighted up with a happy though +rather incredible surmise. It was an exclamatory look which one might +interpret as saying, "What's this! Do you really mean it!" + +Mary got no further than that. She didn't mean it, of course, a serious +love-affair with LaChaise, and she tried for a while to feel rather +indignant against an attitude toward women which had only two categories; +did she offer amorous possibilities or not. An attitude that had no half +lights in it, no delicate tints of chivalry nor romance. LaChaise would +do nothing for the sake of her blue eyes. He had no interest whatever in +that indeterminate, unstable emotional compound that goes, between men +and women, by the name of friendship. + +She tried to call this beastly and feel indignant about it, but somehow +that emotion didn't respond. She had more real sympathy for and +understanding of an attitude like that than she had for one like +Graham's. It was simpler and more natural. It involved you in no such +labyrinths of farfetched absurdities and exasperating cross-purposes as +Graham's did. + +It was characteristically,--wasn't it?--a Latin attitude; or would it be +fairer to say that its antithesis as exemplified by Graham was a northern +specialty? She extracted quite a bit of amusement from observing some of +the results of individual failures to understand this fundamental +difference, all the more after she had Jimmy Wallace to share +observations with. He was a dramatic critic, but he consented to take a +fatherly, or better avuncular, interest in the Ravinia season during the +month of his musical colleague's vacation. + +The special episode they focused upon was Violet Williamson's flirtation +with Fournier. She was a pretty woman, still comfortably on the east side +of forty, socially one of the inner ring, spoiled, rather, by an +enthusiastic husband but not, thanks to her own good sense, very +seriously. James Wallace was an old and very special friend of hers and +she commandeered his services as soon as he appeared at Ravinia, in her +campaign for possession of the French baritone. + +Mary had reflected over this and talked it out pretty thoroughly with +Jimmy before it occurred to her that she might be able to turn it to her +own account--or rather to her lover's. For that matter, why not, while +she had him under her hand, recruit Jimmy as an aid in the campaign? + +"Do you mind being used for ulterior purposes?" she asked him. + +He intimated that he did not if they were amusing, as any of Mary's were +pretty sure to be. + +"I'm interested in an opera," she told him, "or rather, I'm very much +interested in a man who has written one. Father and I have agreed that +he's a great person and everybody seems willing to admit that he's a +musical genius. Paula considered the opera, but gave it up after she had +kept him working over it for weeks because the soprano part wasn't big +enough. It would be just the thing for Fournier." + +Jimmy raised the language difficulty. "The book's in English, I +suppose," he said. + +"It's been translated into French," Mary said, and then admitted +authorship by adding, "after a fashion; as well as an amateur like me +could do it." She didn't mind a bit how much Jimmy knew. Not that he +wasn't capable of very acute surmises but that whatever he brought up he +wouldn't have the flutters over. + +"Does Fournier like it himself?" he wanted to know. "Does he see the +personal possibilities in it, I mean?" + +"I haven't shown it to him yet," Mary said. "I want him to hear about it +in just the right way first. If Paula would only say just the right +thing! She means to but she forgets. LaChaise would back her up, I think, +if she took the lead. Otherwise ... well, he isn't looking for trouble, +I suppose, and of course, it would mean a lot." + +"Somebody has to put his back into an enterprise of that sort," +Jimmy observed. + +"I can't, directly," she said, "not with LaChaise nor with Mr. Eckstein. +But you see," she went on, "if Violet happened to hear, from somebody who +was in the way of getting inside information, about a small opera that +had a sensational part for a baritone, she'd work it and make her husband +too, and since he's one of the real backers and a friend of Mr. +Eckstein's, they'd be likely to accomplish something." + +"Lead me to it," said Jimmy. "Give me your inside information and leave +Violet to me." + +He got a little overflow from the fulness of her heart at that that would +have rewarded him amply for a more arduous and less amusing prospect than +he was committed to. It was always touch and go whether this summer +plunge into musical criticism wouldn't bore him frightfully. Pretentious +solemnities of any kind were hard for him to tolerate and an opera season +is, of course, stuffed with these, even a democratized blue-penciled +out-of-doors affair like this. It was a great relief to find him a mind +as free from sentimental resonances as Mary Wollaston's swimming about in +it. They saw eye to eye over a lot of things. + +They were in whole-hearted agreement for example about a certain +impresario, Maxfield Ware, who created a sensation among the company and +staff by turning up ostentatiously unaccounted for from New York and +looking intensely enigmatical whenever any one asked him any questions. +He was a sufficiently well-known figure in that world for surmises to +spring up like round-eyed dandelions wherever he trod. + +It wasn't long before everybody knew, despite the concealments which his +ponderous diplomacy never cast aside, that his objective was Paula. She +divined this before he had made a single overt move in her direction and +pointed it out to Mary with a genuine pleasure sounding through the tone +of careless amusement she chose to adopt. + +"You wouldn't have anything to do with a person like that, would you?" +Mary was startled into exclaiming. "Of course, if he were genuinely what +he pretends to be and the things he boasts were true...." + +"Oh, he's genuine enough," said Paula. "A quarter to a half as good as he +pretends and that's as well as the whole of that lot will average. Though +he isn't the sort you and John would take to, for a fact." + +It was not the first time Mary had found herself bracketed with her +father in just this way. It wasn't a sneering way, hardly hostile. But +Mary by the second or third repetition began reading an important +significance into it. Paula in her instinctive fashion was beginning to +weigh alternatives, one life against the other, a thing it wasn't likely +she had ever attempted before. + +There was a tension between John and Paula which Mary saw mounting daily +over the question of his next visit to Ravinia. Paula wanted him, was +getting restless, moody, as nearly as it was possible for her to be +ill-natured over his abstention. Yet it was evident enough that she had +not invited him to come; furthermore, that she meant not to invite him. +Once Mary would have put this down to mere coquetry but this explanation +failed now to satisfy altogether. There was something that lay deeper +than that. Some sort of strain between them dating back, she surmised, to +the talk her father had referred to down in North Carolina in the jocular +assertion that he had told Paula she would have to begin now supporting +the family. Had the same topic come up again during his visit to Ravinia? + +The perception of this strain in their relation increased Mary's +reluctance to bring the topic up herself, in default of a lead from +Paula, out of nowhere. It almost seemed as if Paula consciously avoided +giving her such a lead, sheered away whenever she found they were +"getting warm" in that direction. + +There were hours when the undertaking she had committed herself to with +Wallace Hood seemed fantastic. Between two persons like her father and +Paula a meddler could make such an incalculable amount of mischief. All +the current maxims of conduct would support her in a refusal to +interfere. It was exclusively their affair, wasn't it? Why not let them +settle it in their own way? + +Yet there were other hours when she put her procrastinations down to +sheer cowardice. This occurred whenever she got a letter from her aunt at +Hickory Hill. + +Miss Wollaston was a dutiful but exceedingly cautious correspondent, but +beneath the surface of her brisk little bulletins were many significant +implications. Rush had made two or three trips to town for consultations +with Martin Whitney ... Doctor Steinmetz, presence unaccounted for, had +been a guest one day at lunch... Graham's father had come out one +Saturday and after he had been exhaustively shown over the place the men +had talked until all hours.... The building program was to be curtailed +for the present; to be resumed, perhaps when prices weren't so high nor +labor so hard to get.... The new Holstein calves had come. Mary had been +told, hadn't she, of the decision to constitute the herd in this manner +instead of buying all milking cows.... Sylvia, declaring that Rush and +Graham had got too solemn to live with, had finally obeyed her mother +and gone home to the Stannards' summer place at Lake Geneva. + +Mary read these letters to Paula as they came in the hope of provoking +some question that would make it possible to tell John Wollaston's wife +the tale of his necessities, but nothing of the sort happened. Paula did +observe (a little uneasily?) apropos of Steinmetz' visit: + +"John says he's taken quite a fancy to him. He told me he was going to +get him to come out if he could." + +The other casts brought up nothing whatever. + +As it happened Mary paid dear for her procrastination. Paula sent her +into town one day with a long list of errands, a transparently factitious +list, which, taken in connection with an unusual interest she displayed +in the item of lunch, made it more than sufficiently plain to Mary that +for the day she wasn't wanted at Ravinia. + +She concealed, successfully she thought, the shock she felt at these new +tactics of Paula's, studied the list and said she thought she should be +able to return on the three o'clock train. She made a point however of +not coming back until the four-fifteen. It was nearly six before she got +back to the cottage, but the contented lazy tone in which Paula from +up-stairs answered her hail, made it plain that her tardiness had not +been remarked. However Paula had spent her day, the upshot of it was +satisfactory. + +"Shall I come up?" Mary asked. + +"Come along," Paula answered. "I'm not asleep or anything and besides I +want to talk to you." + +"I think I got everything you want," Mary said from Paula's doorway, "or +if not exactly, what will do just about as well." + +Paula, stretched out on the bed rather more than half undressed, with the +contented languor of a well fed lioness yet with some passion or other +smoldering in her eyes, made no pretense at being interested in Mary's +success in executing her commissions. + +"I had Max to lunch to-day," she said. "I knew you hated him and then it +was complicated enough anyway. I suppose it might have been better if I'd +told you so right out instead of making up all those things for you to do +in town, but I couldn't quite find the words to put it in somehow and I +had to have it out with him. He's been nagging at me for a week and he's +going away to-morrow. He's given me until then to think it over." + +There was no use trying to hurry Paula. Mary took off her hat, lighted a +cigarette and settled herself in the room's only comfortable chair before +she asked, "Think what over?" + +"Oh, the whole thing," said Paula. "What he's been harping on for the +last week.--He _is_ a loathsome sort of beast," she conceded after a +little pause. "But he's right about this. Absolutely." + +Was her father ever fretted, Mary wondered, by this sort of thing? Did +his nerves draw tight, and his muscles, too, waiting for the idea behind +these perambulations to emerge? + +"I can imagine a lot of things that Mr. Maxfield Ware would be right +about," she observed. "Which one is this?" + +"About me," said Paula. "About what I'd have to do if I wanted to get +anywhere. He thinks I've a good chance to get into the very first class, +along with Garden and Farrar and so on. And unless I can do that, there's +no good going on. I'd never be happy as a second rater. Well, that's +true. And my only chance of getting to the top, he says, is in being +managed just right. I guess that's true, too. He says that if I take this +Metropolitan contract that LaChaise has been talking about, go down to +New York as one of their 'promising young American sopranos' to sing on +off-nights and fill in and make myself generally useful, I simply won't +have a chance. They wouldn't get excited about me whatever happened. +They'd go on patronizing me and yawning in my face no matter how good I +was. I'd do just as well, he says, so far as my career is concerned, to +stay right here in Chicago and get Campanini to give me two or three +appearances a season;--make a sort of amateur night of it for the gold +coast to buzz about. I'd have a lot easier time that way and it would +come to the same thing in the end. And he says that unless I want to go +in for his scheme, that's what I'd better do. Well, and he's right. I can +see that, plainly enough." + +Mary refrained from asking what Max's scheme was. She'd learn, no doubt, +in her stepmother's own good time. She nodded a tentative assent to Max's +general premises and waited. + +"He certainly was frank enough," Paula went on after a while. "He wants +to make a real killing he says. Something he's never quite brought off +before. He says the reason he's always failed before is that he's had to +go and mix a love-affair up with it somehow. He's either fallen in love +with the woman or she with him or if it was a man he was managing, they +both went mad over the same woman. Something always happened anyhow to +make a mess of it. But he says he isn't interested in me in the least in +that way and that he can see plainly enough that I'm not in him. But +imagine five years with him!" + +She broke off with a shudder, not a real shudder though. The sort one +makes over a purely imaginary prospect. Some expression of her feeling +must have betrayed itself in Mary's face, for Paula, happening to look at +her just then, sat up abruptly. + +"Oh, I know," she said. "It's all very well, but that's the sort of +person you have to go in with and that's the sort of scheme you have to +go into if you're going to get anywhere. Something of the sort anyhow,--I +never heard of one exactly like this. But this is what he proposes: we're +each to put up twenty thousand dollars. That's easy enough as far as I'm +concerned because what I put up isn't to be spent at all. It's just to be +turned over to somebody--some banker like Martin Whitney--as a guarantee +that I won't break my contract. He says he wouldn't take on anybody in my +position without a guarantee like that. He's to spend the money he puts +up for publicity and other things but he's to get paid back out of what I +earn. He's to be my manager absolutely. I'm to go wherever he says; carry +out any contracts he makes for me. He's to pay my expenses and guarantee +me ten thousand a year beyond that. If he doesn't pay me that much, then +it's he that breaks the contract. And of course, he can't make me do +anything that would ruin my voice or my health. He says he's going to +work me like a dog. That's what he thinks I need. He says he can get me +in with the Chicago company for their road tour before their regular +season opens here. He won't let me sing either in Chicago or New York +until I've landed, but he wants me to go to New York this winter and +coach with Scotti, if we can get him. Then go to Mexico City in the +spring and then down to Buenos Aires for their winter season there. +That's July and August, of course, when it's summer up here. By that time +he thinks we'll be ready for Europe; London or Paris. He's rather in +favor of London. He knows all the ropes and he'll buy the people that +have to be bought and square the people that have to be squared and work +the publicity. He says he's the best publicity man in the world and I +guess he knows. Then after a year or two over there, he thinks we'll be +ready to come back to the Metropolitan and clean up." + +"And what," asked Mary, "is his share of the clean-up to be?" + +"Oh, a half," said Paula; "we'd be equal partners. That's fair enough, I +suppose. I sat there all through lunch while he was talking, hating him; +hating his big blue chin, and his necktie and his great shiny +finger-nails and the way he ate, and feeling, of course, perfectly +frightfully unhappy. I told him I'd let him know what I would do sometime +before to-morrow noon, and as soon as I could I got rid of him. And then +I came up here and cried and cried. And that's something I haven't done +for a long while. I felt as if he was a big spider that had been running +about all over me tying me up in his web. And as if I was a fly and +couldn't get out. There is something spidery about him, you know. The way +he goes back and forth and the way he's so patient and indirect about it +all. It seemed like the end of the world to me before he finished, as if +I never was going to see John again. Oh, I cried my eyes out. Well, and +then about an hour ago I came to. I realized that I hadn't signed his +horrible contract and that I needn't. And that when this beastly season +was over,--and it isn't going to last much longer, thank goodness,--I +could go home to John and lock up the piano and never look at a score +again. It was like coming out of a nightmare." + +Mary dared not stop to think. She took the plunge. + +"There's something about father you've got to be told. I promised Wallace +Hood weeks ago that I'd tell you. I guess he and Martin Whitney think you +know about it by now." + +"Something I've got to be told about John?" Paula echoed incredulously. +"Why, I was talking with him over the telephone not ten minutes before +you came in." + +"Oh, I know. It's nothing like that," Mary said. "But they say he has +tuberculosis. Not desperately, not so that he can't get well if he takes +care of it. If he lives out-of-doors and doesn't worry or try to work. +But if he takes up his practise again this fall, they say,--Doctor +Steinmetz says,--that it will be--committing suicide. That's one thing. +And the other is that he's practically bankrupt. Anyhow, that for a year +or two, until he can get back into practise, he'll need help. That's why +Wallace and Mr. Whitney wanted you told about it." + +There hadn't been a movement nor a sound from Paula. Mary, at the end of +that speech was breathless and rather frightened. + +Finally Paula asked, "Does he know about it?--his health I mean." + +"He's been told," Mary answered, "but he doesn't believe it. They nearly +always are skeptical, Doctor Steinmetz says." + +"He's probably right to be. He's a better doctor than six of Steinmetz +will ever be." + +Another pause; then, once more from Paula, "Did he tell you about the +other thing,--about his money troubles,--when you were down in North +Carolina with him?" + +Mary flushed at the hostile ring there was to that. "He told me a +little," she said, "but not much more, I thought, than he had already +told you." + +"Told me?" Paula swung herself off the bed and on to her feet in one +movement. "He told me nothing." + +"He urged you to carry out your Ravinia contract, didn't he?" Mary asked, +as steadily as she could. + +Paula stood over her staring. "Oh," she exclaimed, and, a moment later +she repeated the ejaculation in a drier tone and with a downward +inflection. She added presently, "I'm not clever the way you are at +taking hints. That's the thing it will be just as well for you both to +remember." She began bruskly putting on her dressing-gown. "I'm going +down-stairs to telephone to Max," she explained. "He's got the paper all +drawn up, not the final contract but an agreement to sign one of the sort +I told you about. I'm going to tell him that if he will bring it back +with him now, I'll sign it." + +Mary stood between her and the door. "Don't you think it would be--fairer +to wait?" she asked; "before you signed a thing like that. Until at +least, you were no longer angry with me for having told you too much or +with father because he had told you too little." + +Paula pulled up at that and stood looking at her stepdaughter with a +thoughtful expression that was almost a smile. "I am angry," she +admitted, "or I was, and just exactly about that. It's queer the way you +Wollastons, you and your father, anyhow, are always--getting through to +things like that. What you say is fair enough. I guess you're always +fair. Can't help being, somehow. But I can't put off telephoning to Max. +You see I called up John at Hickory Hill an hour ago. I told him I had +made up my mind to stop singing. I told him I didn't want any career. +That I just wanted to--belong to him. And I asked him to come to me as +fast as he could. He's on the way now. So it's important, you see, that +Max should get here first." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +TWO WOMEN AND JOHN + + +Paula seemed calm enough after that one explosion but she moved along +toward the accomplishment of her purpose, to get herself thoroughly +committed to Max before John's arrival, with the momentum of a liner +leaving its pier. Mary made two or three more attempts at dissuasion but +their manifest futility kept her from getting any real power into them. +She was, to tell the truth, in a panic over the prospect of that +evening;--her father arriving triumphant in Paula's supposed surrender to +find Maxfield Ware with his five years' contract in his pocket. And the +responsibility for the disaster would be attributed to herself; was +indeed so attributable with a kind of theatrical completeness seldom, to +be found in life. It didn't often happen that any one was as entirely to +blame for a calamity to some one else as Mary was for this _volte-face_ +of Paula's. + +She did not run away altogether. Paula, indeed, didn't know that she had +fled at all, for Maxfield Ware's tardiness about coming back the second +time supplied her with a pretext. + +It was nearly eight o'clock before he came and Paula, who was momentarily +expecting John's arrival by then, was in an agony of impatience to sign +his papers and get him out of the house again. Ware may have divined her +wish and loitered out of mischievous curiosity as to the cause of it. Or +he may, merely, have been prolonging an experience which he found +agreeable. Anyhow, he wouldn't be hurried and he wouldn't go. But Paula +finally turned a look of despairing appeal upon Mary who thereupon +announced her intention of going to to-night's performance in the park. +She would drive, of course, and would be glad to take Mr. Ware along. +Or, for that matter, she would set him down first wherever he might want +to go. He smiled upon her with the fatuous smile of one who finds he has +made an unexpected conquest and said he would be delighted to accompany +Miss Wollaston anywhere. + +She took him, driving pretty fast, to the Moraine Hotel and was glad the +distance was not greater, for after various heavy-handed and unquenchable +preliminaries he kissed her as nearly on the mouth as possible, clinging +to a half-lit cigar the while, just before she whipped around into the +hotel drive. She avoided a collision with one of the stone posts narrowly +enough to startle him into releasing her,--he hadn't realized the turn +was so close--and stopped at the lighted carriage door with a jerk that +left him no option but to get out at once. + +She nodded a curt good night and drove back to the park; went to one of +the dressing-rooms and washed her face. Then she came around in front to +hear Edith Mason sing _Romeo and Juliet_. She didn't get just the effect +she anticipated from this lovely performance because Polacco, who is Miss +Mason's husband, came and sat down beside her--there was nothing spidery +about him, thank goodness--and in a running and vivacious commentary +expressed his lively contempt for this opera of Gounod's. At its best it +was bad _Faust_. Its least intolerable melodies were quotations from +_Faust_,--an assertion which he proved from time to time by singing, and +not very softly either, the original themes to the wrath of all who sat +within a twenty-five foot radius of them. + +Mary felt grateful to him for giving her something that was not +maddening to think about and after the performance went with him and his +wife to supper so that it was well after midnight before she returned to +the cottage. + +It was an ineffable relief to find it dark. Her habit on warm nights was +to sleep on the gloucester swing in the screened veranda and she made it +her bed to-night, though beyond a short uneasy doze of two, she didn't +sleep at all. + +At half past eight or so, just after she had sat down to breakfast, +she heard her father coming down the stairs. She tried to call to him +but could command no voice and so waited, frozen, until he appeared in +the doorway. + +"I thought I heard you stirring down here and that it perhaps meant +breakfast. Paula won't be down, I suppose, for hours. She fell asleep +about four o'clock and has been sleeping quietly ever since." + +This was exactly like Paula, of course. She was the vortex of the +whole tempest, but when she had thoroughly exhausted the emotional +possibilities of it she sank into peaceful slumber like a baby after +a hard cry. + +No wonder she was too much for these two Wollastons who sat now with dry +throats and tremulous hands over the mockery of breakfast! Mary, although +she knew, asked her father whether he wanted his coffee clear or with +cream in it and having thus broken the spell, went on with a gasp: + +"I'm glad Paula isn't coming down. It gives you a better chance to tell +me just how you feel about my having interfered. I did run away last +night. You guessed that, I suppose. But it wasn't to evade it altogether. +My--whipping, you know." + +It had an odd effect on both of them, this reference to her childhood; +her hand moved round the table rim and covered his which rested on the +edge of it. + +"Did your mother ever punish you?" he asked. "Corporeally? It's my +recollection that she did not. I was always the executioner. I doubt now +if that was quite fair." + +"Perhaps not," she asserted dubiously. "In general it isn't fair of +course. It probably wasn't in the case of Rush. But with me,--I don't +think I could have borne it to have mother beat me. It would have seemed +an insufferable affront. I'd have hated her for it. But there was a sort +of satisfaction in having you do it." + +After another moment of silence she smiled and added, "I suppose a +Freudian would carry off an admission like that to his cave and gnaw over +it for hours." + +He stared at her, shocked, incredulous. "What do you know about Freud?" +he demanded. + +"One couldn't live for two years within a hundred yards of Washington +Square without knowing at least as much about it as that," she told +him,--and was glad of the entrance of the maid with another installment +of +the breakfast. There was no more talk between them during the meal. But +at the end of it she faced him resolutely. + +"We must have this out, dad. And isn't now as good a time as any?" + +He followed her out into the veranda but the sounds from the dining-room, +where the maid had come in to clear away the breakfast, disturbed him so +Mary suggested a walk. + +"Get your hat and we'll go over to the lake. I know a nice place not far, +an open field right at the edge of the bluff with one big tree to make it +shady. At this hour of the morning we are sure to have it all to +ourselves." + +He said as they walked along, "I've no reproaches for you. Not this +morning. I've thought over a lot of ground since four o'clock." + +He said nothing more to the point until they reached the spot which Mary +had selected as their destination--it lived up handsomely to all her +promises--and settled themselves under the shade of the big tree. + +"I suppose," he added then, "that I ought to forgive Whitney and Hood. +Their intentions were the best and kindest, of course. But I find that +harder to do." + +He sat back against the trunk of the tree, facing out over the lake; +she disposed herself cross-legged on the grass near by just within +reaching distance. She offered him her cigarette case but he declined. +Of late years, since his marriage to Paula, he had smoked very little. +As a substitute, now, he picked up a forked bit of branch, and began +whittling it. + +"I'm as much to blame as they are," she said, presently. "More, really. +Because, if I hadn't procrastinated-o-ut of cowardice, mostly,--until +yesterday, when she was half-way over the edge, it might never have come +to Maxfield Ware at all. After the situation had dramatized itself like +that, there was only one thing she could do. Of course, they didn't +foresee that five years' contract, any more than I did." + +He nodded assent, though rather absently to this. "I'm not much +interested in the abstract ethics of it," he said. "It's disputable, of +course, how far any one can be justified in making a major interference +in another's life; one that deprives him of the power of choice. That's +what you have done to me--the three of you. If the premises are right, +and the outcome prosperous, there's something to be said for it. But in +this case ..." + +"They aren't mistaken, are they, dad? Wallace and Mr. Whitney?--Or Doctor +Steinmetz?" + +"Why, it's reasonable to suppose that Whitney understands my financial +condition better than I do. I mean that. It's not a sneer. But what he +and Hood don't allow for is that I've never tried to make money. +They've no idea what my earning power would be if I were to turn to and +make that a prime consideration. A year of it would take me out of the +woods, I think." + +She waited, breathless, for him to deal with the third name. She was +pretty well at one with Paula in the relative valuation she put upon her +father's opinion and that of the throat and lung specialist. + +"Oh, as for Steinmetz," John Wollaston said, after a pause, querulously, +"he's a good observer. There's nothing to be said against him as a +laboratory man. But he has the vice of all German scientists; he doesn't +understand imponderables. Never a flash of intuition about him. He +managed to intimidate Darby into agreeing with him. Neither of them takes +my recuperative powers into account." + +He seemed to feel that this wasn't a very strong line to take and the +next moment he conceded as much. + +"But suppose they were right," he flashed round at her. "Am I not still +entitled to my choice? I've lived the greater part of my life. I've +pulled my weight in the boat. It should be for me to choose whether I +spend the life I have left in two years or in twenty. If they want to +call that suicide, let them. I've no religion that's real enough to make +a valid argument against my right to extinguish myself if I choose." + +She wasn't shocked. It was characteristic of their talks together, this +free range among ethical abstractions, especially on his part. + +"You act on the other theory though," she pointed out to him. "Think of +the people you've patched together just so that they can live at most +another wretched year or two." + +"That's a different thing," he said. "Or rather it comes to the same +thing. The question of shortening one's life is one that nobody has a +right to decide except for himself." + +Then he asked abruptly. "What sort of person is Maxfield Ware?" + +She attempted no palliations here. + +"He kissed me last night," she said, "taking his cigar out of his mouth +for the purpose. He's not a sort of person I can endure or manage. Paula +hates him as much as I do, but she can manage him. He'd never try to +kiss her like that." + +"Oh, God!" cried John. "It's intolerable." He flung away his stick, got +to his feet and walked to the edge of the bluff. "Think of her working, +traveling,--living almost,--with a man like that! You say she can manage +him; that she can prevent him from trying to make love to her. Well, what +does that mean, if you're right, but that she--understands him; his talk; +his ideas; his point of view. You can't make yourself intelligible to a +man like that; she can. It's defilement to meet his mind anywhere--any +angle of it. She's given him carte blanche, she says, to manage the +publicity for her. Do you realize what that means? He's licensed to try +to make the public believe anything that he thinks would heighten their +interest in her. That she dresses indecently; that she's a frivolous +extravagant fool; that she has lovers. You know how that game is played." + +Mary did know. She ran over a list of the great names and opposite every +one of them there sprang into her mind the particular bit of vulgar +reclame that had been in its day some press agent's masterpiece. She was +able further to see that Paula would regard the moves of this game with a +large-minded tolerance which would be incomprehensible to John. After +all, that was the way to take it. If you were a real luminary, not just a +blank white surface, all the mud that Mr. Maxfield Ware could splash +wouldn't matter. You burnt it off. None of those great names was soiled. + +She tried to say something like this to her father, but didn't feel sure +that she quite had his attention. He did quiet down again however and +resumed his seat at the foot of the tree. Presently he said: + +"She's doing it for me. Because my incompetence has forced it upon her. +She'd have taken the other thing; had really chosen it." Then without a +pause, but with a new intensity he shot in a question. "That's true, +isn't it? She meant what she said over the telephone?" As Mary hesitated +over her answer he added rather grimly, "You can be quite candid about +it. I don't know which answer I want." + +"She meant every word she said over the telephone," Mary assured him. +"You couldn't doubt that if you had seen her as I did afterward." + +She didn't pretend though that this was the complete answer. The +reflective tone in which she spoke made it clear that there was more to +it than that. + +"Go on," John said, "tell me the rest of it. I think, perhaps, you +understand her better than I do." + +Mary took her time about going on and she began a little doubtfully. "I +always begin by being unjust to Paula," she said. "That's my instinct, I +suppose, reproaching her for not doing what she would do if she were +like me. But afterward when I think her out, I believe I understand her +pretty well." + +"Paula exaggerates," she went on after another reflective pause. "She +must see things large in order to move among them in a large way. Her +gestures, those of her mind I mean, are--sweeping. If she weren't so +good-natured, our--hair-splitting ways would annoy her. Then it's +necessary for her to feel that she's--conquering something." + +That last word was barely audible and the quality of the silence which +followed it drew John Wollaston's gaze which had been straying over the +lake, around to the speaker. She had been occupying her hands while she +talked, collecting tiny twigs and acorn cups that happened to be within +reach but now she was tensely still and paler than her wont, he thought. + +"You needn't be afraid to say what's in your mind," he assured her. + +"It wasn't that," she told him. "I realized that I had been quoting +somebody else. Anthony March said once of Paula that if she had not been +an artist she might have been a _dompteuse_." + +John settled himself more comfortably against his tree trunk. A contact +like this with his daughter's mind must have been inexpressibly +comforting to him after a night like the one he had just spent. Its +rectitude; its sensitiveness; the mere feel and texture of it, put his +jangling nerves in tune. + +"Is Ware the wild beast she has an inclination to tame in this +instance?" he asked. + +"He's nothing but a symbol of it," Mary said. Then she managed to get the +thing a little clearer. "What she'd have done if she'd been like us and +what we'd have had her do--Mr. Whitney and Wallace and I,--would have +been to make a sort of compromise between her position as your wife and a +career as Paula Carresford. We'd have had her sign a contract to sing a +few times this winter with the Metropolitan or the Chicago company, go on +a concert tour perhaps for a few weeks, even give singing lessons or sing +in a church choir. That would probably have been Mr. Whitney's idea. +Rather more than enough to pay her way and at the same time leave as much +of her to you as possible. + +"But that's the last thing in the world it would be possible for Paula to +do. She must see a great career on one side,--see herself as Geraldine +Farrar's successor,--and on the other side she must see a perfect +unflawed life with you. So that whichever she chooses she will have a +sense of making the greatest possible sacrifice. She couldn't have said +to you what she did over the telephone if Mr. Ware hadn't convinced her +that a great career was open to her and she couldn't have signed his +contract if it had not involved sacrificing you." + +She propped herself back against her hands with a sigh of fatigue. +"There's some of the hair-splitting Paula talks about," she observed. + +"It may be fine spun," her father said thoughtfully, "but it seems to me +to hold together. Isn't there any more of it?" + +"Well, it was balanced like that, you see," Mary went on; "set for the +climax, like the springs in a French play, when I came along at just the +moment and with just the word, to topple it over. Being Paula, she +couldn't help doing exactly what she did. So, however it comes out, I +shall be the one person she won't be able to forgive." + +She knew from the startled look he turned upon her that this last shot +had come uncannily close. She fancied she must almost literally have +echoed Paula's words. If she needed any further confirmation she would +have found it in the rather panicky way in which he set about trying to +convince her that she was mistaken, if not in the fact at least in the +permanence of it. + +She insisted no further, made indeed no further attempt at all to carry +the theme along and though she listened and made appropriate replies when +they were called for, she let her wordless thought drift away to a dream +that it was Anthony March who shared this shade and sunshine with her and +that veiled blue horizon yonder. It was easier to do since her father had +drifted into a reverie of his own. They need not have lingered for they +had sufficiently talked away all possible grounds of misunderstanding, +even if they had not reconciled their disagreement. + +It occurred to her to suggest that they go back, but she dismissed the +impulse with no more than a glancing thought. It was his burden, not +hers, that remained to be shouldered at the cottage and it might be left +to him to choose his own time for taking it up. Paula seldom came down +much before noon anyhow. + +As for John Wollaston, he was very tired. Paula's volcanic moments always +exhausted him. He never could derationalize his emotions, cut himself +free; and while he felt just as intensely as she did, he had to carry the +whole superstructure of himself along on those tempestuous voyages. In +the mood Paula had left him in this morning, there was nothing in the +world that could have satisfied and restored him as did his daughter's +companionship. The peace of this wordless prolongation of their talk +together was something he lacked, for a long while, the will to break. + +It was not far short of noon when they came back into the veranda +together. He had walked the last hundred yards, after a look at his +watch, pretty fast and after a glance into both the down-stairs rooms, he +called up-stairs to his wife in a voice that had an edge of sudden +anxiety in it. Then getting no response, he went up, two at a time. + +Mary dropped down, limp with a sudden premonition, upon the gloucester +swing in the veranda. The maid of all work, who had heard his call, came +from the kitchen just as he was returning down the stairs. Mrs. Wollaston +had gone away, she said. Pete had reported with the big car at eleven +o'clock and Paula, who apparently had been waiting for him, had driven +off at once having left word that she would not be back for lunch. + +"All right," John said curtly. "You may go." + +He was so white when he rejoined Mary in the veranda that she sprang up +with an involuntary cry and would have had him lie down, where she had +been sitting. But the fine steely ring in his voice stopped her short. + +"Have you any idea," he asked, "where she has gone or what she has gone +to do? She came down," he went on without waiting for her answer,--"and +looked for me. Waited for me. And thanks to that--walk we took, I wasn't +here. Well, can you guess what she's done?" + +"It's only a guess," Mary said, "but she may have gone to see +Martin Whitney." + +"Martin Whitney?" he echoed blankly. "What for? What does she want of +him?" + +"She spoke of him," Mary said, "in connection with the money, the twenty +thousand dollars..." + +He broke in upon her again with a mere blank frantic echo of her words +and once more Mary steadied herself to explain. + +"Her agreement with Mr. Ware required her to put up twenty thousand +dollars in some banker's hands as a guarantee that she would not break +the contract. She mentioned Martin Whitney as the natural person to +hold it. So I guessed that she might have gone to consult him about +it;--or even to ask him to lend it to her. As she said, it wouldn't +have to be spent." + +"That's the essence of the contract then. It's nothing without that. +Until she gets the money and puts it up. Yet you told me nothing of it +until this moment. If you had done so--instead of inviting me to go for a +walk--and giving her a chance to get away..." + +He couldn't be allowed to go on. "Do you mean that you think I did +that--for the purpose?" she asked steadily. + +He flushed and turned away. "No, of course I don't. I'm half mad +over this." + +He walked abruptly into the house and a moment later she heard him at the +telephone. She stayed where she was, unable to think; stunned rather than +hurt over the way he had sprung upon her. + +He seemed a little quieter when he came out a few minutes later. +"Whitney left half an hour ago for Lake Geneva," he said. "So she's +missed him if that's where she went. There's nothing to do but wait." + +He was very nervous however. Whenever the telephone rang, as it did of +course pretty often, he answered it himself, and each time his +disappointment that it was not Paula asking for him, broke down more or +less the calm he tried to impose upon himself. He essayed what amends +good manners enabled him to make to Mary for his outrageous attack upon +her. It went no deeper than that. The discovery that Paula was gone and +simultaneously that he need not have lost her obliterated--or rather +reversed--the morning's mood completely. + +It was after lunch that he said, dryly, "I upset your life for you, half +a dozen years ago. Unfairly. Inexcusably. I've always been ashamed of it. +But it lends a sort of poetic justice to this." + +She made no immediate reply, but not long afterward she asked if she +might not go away without waiting for Paula's return. "It would be too +difficult, don't you think?--for the three of us, in a small house +like this." + +He agreed with manifest relief. He asked if it was not too late to drive +that afternoon to Hickory Hill, but she said she'd prefer to go by train +anyhow. That was possible she thought. + +He did not ask, in so many words, if this was where she meant to go. +There was no other place for her that he could think of. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE SUBSTITUTE + + +It was a good guess of Mary's that Paula had gone to borrow the twenty +thousand dollars but it was to Wallace Hood, not to Martin Whitney, that +she went for it; and thereby illustrated once more how much more +effective instinct is than intelligence. + +Martin, rich and generous as he was, originator as he was of the edict +that Paula must go to work, would never have been stampeded as Wallace +was in a talk that lasted less than half an hour, into producing +securities to the amount that Paula needed and offering them up in escrow +for the life of Maxfield Ware's contract. + +Wallace was only moderately well off and he was by nature, cautious. His +investments were always of the most conservative sort. This from habit +as well as nature because his job--the only one he had ever had--was +that of estate agent. But Paula's instinct told her that he wouldn't +find it possible to refuse. I think it told her too, though this was a +voice that did not make itself fairly heard to her conscious ear, that +he would be made very fluttered and unhappy by it whether he granted her +request or not. + +What he would hate, she perceived, was the suddenness of the demand and +the irrevocable committal to those five years; the blow it was to those +domesticities and proprieties he loved so much. The fact that he would be +made sponsor for those unchartered excursions to Mexico, to South +America, and so on, under the direction of a libidinous looking +cosmopolite like Maxfield Ware. + +Why she wanted to put Wallace into the flutters she couldn't have told. +She was, as I say, not quite aware that she did. But he had been running +up a score in very minute items that was all of five years old. The fact +that all these items went by the name of services, helpful little acts of +kindness, made the irritation they caused her all the more acute. + +I don't agree with Lucile Wollaston's diagnosis, that Paula could not +abide Wallace merely because he refused to lose his head over her, but +there was a grain of truth in it. What she unconsciously resented was the +fundamental unreality of his attitude to her. Actually, he did not like +her, but the relation he had selected as appropriate to the first Mrs. +Wollaston's successor was one of innocent devotion and he stuck, +indefatigably, to the pose. So the chance to put his serviceability to +the proof in consternating circumstances like these, afforded her a +subtle satisfaction. He'd brought it upon himself, hadn't he? At least it +was he and no other who had put Mary up to the part she had played. + +None of this, of course, came to the surface at all in the scene between +them. She was gentler than was her wont with him, very appealing, subdued +nearer to his own scale of manners than he had ever seen her before. But +she did not, for a fact, allow him much time to think. + +He asked her, with a touch of embarrassment, whether John was fully in +her confidence concerning this startling project, and if she had won his +assent to it. + +"He knows all about it," she said--and with no consciousness of a +_suppressio veri_ here. "We hardly talked of anything else all last +night. I didn't get to sleep till four. He doesn't like it, but then you +couldn't expect he would. For that matter neither do I. Oh, you don't +know how I hate it! But I think he sees it has to be. Anyhow, he didn't +try very hard to keep me from going on with it--And Mary, of course, is +perfectly satisfied." + +Even his not very alert ear caught something equivocal in those last +sentences, and he looked at her sharply. + +"Oh, I'm worn to ribbons over it!" she exclaimed, and this touch of +apology served for the tearing edge there had been in her voice. "I +couldn't let him see how I feel about it. It would be a sort of relief to +have it settled. That's why I came straight to you to-day." + +He tried, but rather feebly, to temporize. We mustn't let haste drive us +farther than we really wanted to go. The matter of drawing the formal +contract, for instance, must be attended with all possible legal +safe-guards, especially when we were dealing with a person whose honor +was perhaps dubitable. + +"I thought we might go round to see Rodney Aldrich about it, now," she +said. "He's about the best there is in that line, isn't he? Why don't you +telephone to his office and find out if he's there." + +This seemed as good a straw as any to clutch at. The chance of catching +as busy a man as Aldrich with a leisure half hour was very slim. The +recording angel who guarded his wicket gate would probably give them an +appointment for some day next week, and this would leave time for a +confirmatory talk with John. But, unluckily, Rodney was there and would +be glad to see Mrs. Wollaston as soon as she could be brought round. + +"Then, that's all right," Paula said with a sigh of relief. "So if you +really believe I'll keep my word and don't mind putting up the money for +me, it's as good as settled." + +There was one more question on his tongue. "Does John know that you have +come to me for it?" But this, somehow, he could not force himself to ask. +Implicitly she had already answered it--hadn't she? + +"Of course I believe, in you, in everything, my dear Paula. And I'm very +much--touched, that you should have come to me. And my only hope is that +it may turn out to have been altogether for the best." + +And there was that. + +It was not until late that night that his misgivings as to the part Mary +might have played in this drama really awoke, but when they did he +marveled that they had not occurred to him earlier. He recalled that Mary +had prophesied during their talk at the Saddle and Cycle that Paula would +attribute to her the suggestion--whoever might make it--that an operatic +career for John's wife was desirable and necessary for financial reasons. +She had said too, in that serious measured way of hers, "If Paula ever +saw me coming between her and father, whether it was my doing or not, she +would hate me with her whole heart." + +Had that prediction been justified? There were half a dozen phrases that +Paula had allowed herself to use this afternoon, which added up to a +reasonable certainty that it was altogether justified. It was not easy +for him to admit to himself that he didn't like Paula; that he knew her +and had long known her for a person incapable of following any lead save +that of her own primitive straightforward desires. + +His self-communings reached down deeper into him than they had done for +many a long year. He convicted himself, before his vigil was over, of +flagrant cowardice in having allowed Mary to undertake the burden of that +revelation. What harm would it have done any one, even himself, beyond an +hour's discomfort, to have drawn down Paula's lightnings on his own head? +Her enmity, even though it were permanent, could not seriously have +changed the tenor of his ways. + +But to Mary, such a thing could easily be a first-class disaster. Could +John be relied upon to come whole-heartedly to her defense. No, he could +not. Indeed--this was the thought that made Wallace gasp as from a dash +of cold water in the face--John's anger at this interference with his +affairs and at the innocent agent of it was likely to be as hot as his +wife's. Momentarily anyhow. What a perfectly horrible situation to have +forced the girl into;--that fragile sensitive young thing! + +And now above all other times, when, for some reason not fully known to +him, she was finding her own life an almost impossibly difficult thing to +manage. He remembered the day she had come back from New York; how she +had flushed and gone pale and asked him in a moment of suddenly tense +emotion if he couldn't find her a job. It had been that very night, +hadn't it?--when Paula had given that recital of Anthony March's +songs--that she had disappeared out of the midst of things and never come +back during the whole evening. When one considered her courage a flight +like that told a good deal. + +Then there had been that something a little short of an engagement with +Graham Stannard, which must have distressed her horribly;--any one with a +spirit as candid as hers and with as honest a hatred of all that was +equivocal. The family had seemed to think that it would all come out +right in the end somehow, yet the last time she had talked with him she +had said, cutting straight through the disguise his thought had hidden +itself behind, "I know I can't ever marry Graham." + +And it was a young girl harassed with perplexities like these, whom he +had permitted in his stead to beard the lioness. Well, if there was +anything in the world, any conceivable thing, that he could do to repair +the consequences of his fault, he would do it. If that lovers' +misunderstanding with Graham could, after all, be cleared away it would +be the happy, the completely desirable solution of the problem. But if it +could not ... A day-dream that it was he who stood in Graham Stannard's +shoes, offering her harbor and rest and a life-long loyalty, formed the +bridge over which he finally fell asleep. + +She called him to the telephone the next morning while he was at +breakfast; just to tell him she was in town, she said, and to ask him if +he had heard anything from his sister in Omaha as to whether she wanted a +nursery governess. He had to admit, of course, that he had not even +written to her, and felt guiltier and more miserable than ever. + +"Do write to-day, though, won't you?" she urged. "And give me the best +character you can. Because I am going to get some sort of job just as +soon as possible." + +In reply to the inarticulate noise of protest he made at this she went +on, "Our family has simply exploded. I fled for my life last night. So +you see I'm really in earnest about going to work now." + +"I want to come and see you at once," he said. "Where are you?" + +"At home," she answered, "but I'm going out this minute for the day. If +you'd like a picnic tea here at half past five, though, come and I'll +tell you what I've been doing." + +He asked if this meant that she was staying all by herself in the +Dearborn Avenue house without even a servant, and at his lively horror +over this she laughed with an amusement which sounded genuine enough to +reassure him somewhat. She ended the conversation by telling him that she +had left her father with the impression that she was going straight to +Hickory Hill. She was writing Aunt Lucile a note saying she meant to stay +in town for a few days. "But if you get any frantic telephone calls in +the meantime, tell them I'm all right." + +He wondered a good deal, as his hours marched past in their accustomed +uneventful manner, what she could be doing with hers. It was an odd +locution for her to have employed that she was "going out for the day." +He couldn't square it with any sort of social activity. The thing that +kept plaguing his mind despite his impatient attempts to dismiss it as +nonsense, was the possibility that she was actually looking for that job +she'd talked about. Answering advertisements! + +Toward four, when he had stopped trying to do anything but wait for his +appointment with her, Rush and Graham came in, precipitately, and asked +for a private talk with him. He took them into his inner office, relieved +a little at the arrival of reenforcements but disappointed too. + +"If you're anxious about Mary," he began by saying, "I can assure you +that she is all right. She's at the Dearborn Avenue house, or was last +night and will be again later this afternoon. I talked to her on the +phone this morning." + +"Thank God!" said Rush. + +Graham dropped into a chair with a gesture of relief even more +expressive. + +Rush explained the cause of their alarm. Old Pete had driven in to +Hickory Hill around two o'clock with a letter, addressed to Mary, from +Paula, and on being asked to explain offered the disquieting information +that she had left Ravinia for the farm, the afternoon before. They had +driven straight to town and to Wallace as the likeliest source of +information. + +In the emotional back-lash from his profound disquiet about his sister, +suddenly reassured that there was nothing--well, tragic to be +apprehended, Rush allowed himself an outburst of brotherly indignation. +He'd like to know what the devil Mary meant by giving them a fright like +that. Why hadn't she telephoned last night? Nothing was easier than +that. Or more to the point still, why hadn't she come straight out to +the farm as she had told her father she meant to do, instead of spending +the night in town? + +Wallace would have let him go on, since it gave him a little time he +wanted for deciding what line to take. But Graham, it seemed, +couldn't stand it. + +"Shut up, Rush!" he commanded. (You are to remember that he was three +years his partner's senior.) "Mary never did an--inconsiderate thing in +her life. If she seems to have forgotten about us, you can be dead sure +there's a reason." + +"I agree with Stannard," Wallace put in, "that she wants to be dealt +with--gently. She must have been having a rather rotten time." + +He hadn't yet made up his mind how far to take them into his confidence +as to what he knew and guessed, but Rush made an end of his hesitation. + +"Tell us, for heaven's sake, what it's all about.--Oh, you needn't +mind Graham. He's as much in it as any of us. I suppose you know how +he stands." + +Wallace was conscious of an acute wish that they had not turned up until +he'd had a chance to see Mary, but somehow he felt he couldn't go behind +an assurance like that. So he told them what he had pieced together. + +Rush grunted and blushed and said he'd be damned, but it was not a +theme--this contention between his father and his stepmother--that he +could dwell upon. He got hold at last of something that he could be +articulate about, and demanded to know why, in these circumstances, Mary +hadn't come straight to them at Hickory Hill instead of camping out, for +the night, all by herself in the Dearborn Avenue house. + +"She has an idea she must find a job for herself," Wallace said, feeling +awkwardly guilty as if he had betrayed her; but the way Rush leaped upon +him, demanding in one breath what the deuce he meant and what sort of job +he was talking about, made it impossible to pull up. + +He recounted the request Mary had made of him, concerning his sister in +Omaha, and, last of all, stated his own misgiving--nothing but the merest +guess of course--that she had been putting in this day answering +advertisements. "She said she'd give me a picnic tea at five-thirty and +tell me what she'd been doing." + +"Well, it'll be no picnic for her," Rush exploded angrily. "I'll see her +at five-thirty myself. She must be plumb out of her head if she thinks +she'll be allowed to do a thing like that." + +Once more, before Wallace could speak, it was Graham who intervened. "I +want you to leave this to me," he said gravely. "I don't know whether I +can settle it or not, but I'd like to try." He turned to Wallace. +"Would you mind, sir, letting me go to tea with her at half past five +in your place?" + +It is possible that, but for Wallace's day-dream of himself offering +Mary the shelter and the care she so obviously needed, he might have +persisted in seeing her first and assuring her that he was to be +regarded as an ally whatever she decided to do. Her voice as she had +said, "I know I can never marry Graham" echoed forlornly in his mind's +ear. But a doubt faint and vague as it was, of his own disinterestedness +held him back. Graham was young; he was in love with her. That gave him +right of way, didn't it? + +So he assented. It was agreed that Rush should dine with Wallace at his +apartment. Graham, if he had any news for them should communicate it by +telephone. Instantly! + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE + + +The instinct to conceal certain moods of depression and distress together +with the histrionic power to make the concealment possible may be a +serious peril to a woman of Mary Wollaston's temperament. She had managed +at the telephone that morning to deceive Wallace pretty completely. Even +her laugh had failed to give her away. + +She was altogether too near for safety to the point of exhaustion. She +had endured her second night without sleep. She had not really eaten an +adequate meal since her lunch in town the day Paula had engineered her +out of the way for that talk with Maxfield Ware. + +There was nothing morbid in her resolution to find, at the earliest +possible moment, some way of making herself independent of her father's +support. Having pointed out Paula's duty as a bread winner she could not +neglect her own, however dreary the method might be, or humble the +results. In any mood, of course, the setting out in search of employment +would have been painful and little short of terrifying to one brought up +the way Mary had been. + +A night's sleep though and a proper breakfast would have kept the thing +from being a nightmare. As it was, she felt, setting out with her +clipping from the help-wanted columns of a morning paper, a good deal +like the sole survivor of some shipwreck, washed up upon an unknown +coast, venturing inland to discover whether the inhabitants were +cannibals. Even the constellations in her sky were strange. + +Where, then, was Anthony March? Nowhere above her horizon, to-day at all +events. The memory of him had been with her much of the two last +sleepless nights. She had told over the tale of her moments with him +again and again. (Did any one, she might have wondered, ever love as +deeply with so small a treasury of golden hours for memory to draw upon?) +But she could not, somehow, relate him at all to her present or her +future. Her love for him was an out-going rather than an in-coming thing. +At least, her thoughts had put the emphasis upon that side of it; upon +the longing to comfort and protect him, to be the satisfaction to all his +wants. Not--passionately not--to cling heavily about his neck, drag at +his feet, steal his wayfarer's liberty,--no, not the smallest moment of +it! This present helplessness of hers then, which heightened her need for +him, served also to bolt the doors of her thoughts against him. + +Her recollection of the next few hours, though it contained some +vignettes so sharp and deeply bitten in as to be, she fancied, +ineffaceable, was in the main confused. She must have called upon ten or +a dozen advertisers in various suburban districts of the city (she +avoided addresses that were too near home and names where she suspected +hers might be known). Her composite impression was of flat thin voices +which she could imagine in excitement becoming shrill; of curious +appraising stares; of a vast amount of garrulous irrelevancy; of a note +of injury that one who could profess so little equipment beyond good will +should so disappoint the expectation her first appearance had aroused. +The background was a room--it seemed to have been in every case the +same--expensively overfurnished, inexpressive, ill-fitting its uses, like +a badly chosen ready-made coat. The day was not without its humors, or +what would have been humors if her spirit could have rebounded to them. +Chiefly, the violent antagonism she found aroused in two or three cases +by the color of her hair. + +The residuum of her pilgrimages was three addresses where she might call +about the middle of next week, in person or by telephone, to learn the +advertiser's decision. Well it would convince Wallace Hood that she was +in earnest. That was something. + +Wallace's coming to tea became, as the day wore on, more and more +something to look forward to. All the things about him which in more +resilient hours she had found irritating or absurd, his neutrality, his +appropriateness, his steady unimaginative way of going always one step +at a time, seemed now precisely his greatest merits. The thought of tea +in his company even aroused a faint appetite for food in her and lent +zest to her preparations for it. When she stopped at the neighborhood +caterer's shop for supplies she bought some tea cakes in addition to the +sandwiches she had ordered in the morning. She had managed to get home +in good enough season to restore the drawing-room somewhat to its +inhabited appearance, to set out her tea table, put on her kettle, and +then go up-stairs and change her dress for something that was not wilted +by the day's unusual heat. She was ready then to present before Wallace +an _ensemble_ which should match pretty well her tone at the telephone +this morning. + +But when she answered the ring she supposed was his and flinging open the +door saw Graham Stannard there instead, she got a jarring shock which her +overstrung nerves were in no condition to endure. + +"I persuaded Mr. Hood to let me come to tea in his place," he said. +"It was rather cheeky of me to ask him, I'm afraid. I hope you will +forgive me." + +The arrest of all her processes of thought at sight of him lasted only +the barest instant. Then her mind flashed backward through a surmise +which embraced the whole series of events. An alarm at Hickory Hill over +her failure to arrive (which somehow they had been led to expect), a +dash by Graham (Rush not available, perhaps), into town for news. To +Wallace Hood, of course. And Wallace had betrayed her. In the interest of +romantic sentiment. The happy ending given its chance. A rich young +adoring husband instead of a job as nursery governess in Omaha! + +It took no longer for all that to go through her mind than Graham needed +for his little explanatory speech on the door-step. There he stood +waiting for her answer. The only choice she had was between shutting the +door in his face without a word, or graciously inviting him to come in +and propose to her--for the last time, at all events. It was not, of +course, a choice at all. + +"I'm afraid it's a terribly hot day for tea," she said, moving back from +the doorway to make room for him to come in. "Wallace likes it, though. I +might make you something cold if only I had ice, but of course there +isn't any in the house. It's nice and cool, though, isn't it; from having +been shut up so long?" + +Anything,--any frantic thing that could be spun into words to cover the +fact that she had no welcome for him at all, not even the most wan little +beam of friendly tenderness. She had seen the hurt look come into his +eyes, incipient panic at the flash of anger which had not been meant for +him. She must float him inside, somehow, and anchor him to the tea table. +There she could get herself together and deal with him--decently. + +He came along, tractably enough, sat in the chair that was to have +been Wallace's, and talked for a while of the tea, and how hot it was +this afternoon, and how beautifully cool in here. It was hot, too, out +at Hickory Hill but one thought little of it. The air was drier for +one thing. He and Rush had commented on the difference as they drove +in to-day. + +"Oh, Rush came in with you, did he?" she observed. + +He flushed and stammered over the admission and it was easy to guess why. +The fact that her brother, as well as Wallace, was lurking in the +background somewhere waiting for results gave an official cast to his +call that was rather--asinine. She came to the rescue. + +"I suppose he and Wallace had something they wanted to talk about," she +commented easily, and he made haste to assent. + +She steadied herself with a breath. "Did Wallace tell you," she asked, +"about our explosion at Ravinia over Paula's new contract? And how +furious both father and Paula are with me about it? And how I'm out +looking for a job? He didn't say anything about his sister, did he; +whether he'd written to her to-day or not?" + +"Not whether he'd written. But he told us the rest. How you wanted to go +to work. As a nursery governess." + +He paused there but she did not break in upon it. She had given him all +the lead he needed. With the deliberate care that a suddenly tremulous +hand made necessary he put down his teacup and spoke as if addressing it. + +"I think you're the bravest--most wonderful person in the world. Of +course, I've known that always. Not just since I came back last spring. +But this, that Mr. Hood told us this afternoon, somehow--caps the climax. +I can't tell you how it--got me, to think of your being ready to do--a +thing like that." + +The last thing she would have done voluntarily was to put any obstacles +in his way. Her program, on the contrary was to help him along all she +could to his declaration, make a refusal that should be as gentle as was +consistent with complete finality, and then get rid of him before +anything regrettably--messy ensued. But to have her courage rhapsodized +over like this was a thing she could not endure. + +"It's nothing," she said rather dryly, "beyond what most girls do +nowadays as a matter of course. I'm being rather cowardly about it, I +think--on account of some silly ideas I've been more or less brought up +with perhaps, but..." + +"What if they do?" he broke in; "thousands of them at the stores and in +the offices. It's bad enough for them--for any sort of woman. But it's +different with you. It's horrible. You aren't like them." + +She tried to check herself but couldn't. "What's the difference? I'm +healthy and half-educated and fairly young. I have the same sort, pretty +much, of thoughts and feelings. I don't believe I like being clean and +warm and well-fed and amused and admired any better than the average girl +does. I ought to have found a job months ago, instead of letting Rush +bring me home from New York. Or else gone to work when I came home. But +every one was so horrified..." + +"They were right to be," he interrupted. "It is a horrible idea. Because +you aren't like the others. You _haven't_ the same sort of thoughts and +feelings. A person doesn't have to be in love with you to see that. Your +father and Rush and Mr. Hood all see it. And as for me--well, I couldn't +endure it, that's all. Oh, I know, you can act like anybody else; laugh +and dance and talk nonsense and make a person forget sometimes. But the +other thing is there all the while--shining through--oh, it can't be +talked about!--like a light. Of--of something a decent man _wants_ to be +guided by, whatever he does. And for you to go out into the world with +that, where there can't be any protection at all ... I can't stand it, +Mary. That's why I came to-day instead of Mr. Hood." + +She went very white during that speech and tears came up into her eyes. +Tears of helpless exasperation. It was such a cruelly inhuman thing to +impose an ideal like that upon a woman. It was so smug, so utterly +satisfactory to all romantic sentimentalists. Wallace would approve every +word of it. Wallace had sent him to say just this;--was waiting now to be +told the good news of his success. + +The fact is worth recalling, perhaps, that away back in her childhood +Wallace had sometimes reduced her to much this sort of frantic +exasperation by his impregnable assumption that she was the white-souled +little angel she looked. Sitting here in this very room he had goaded her +into committing freakish misdemeanors. + +She was resisting now an impulse of much the same sort, though the +parallel did not, of course, occur to her. It was just a sort of +inexplicable panic which she was reining in with all her might by telling +herself how fond she really was of Graham and how terrible a thing it +would be if she hurt him unnecessarily. She dared not attempt to speak so +she merely waited. She was sitting relaxed, her head lowered, her chin +supported by one hand. This stillness and relaxation she always resorted +to in making any supreme demand upon her self-control. + +He looked at her rather helplessly once or twice during the silence. Then +arose and moved about restlessly. + +"I know you don't love me. I've gone on hoping you could after I suppose +I might have seen it wasn't possible. You've tried to and you can't. I +don't know if one as white as you could love any man--that way. Well, I'm +not going to ask any more for that. I want to ask, instead, that we be +friends. I haven't spoiled the possibility of that, have I?" + +She was taken utterly by surprise. It didn't seem possible that she had +even heard aright and the face he turned to, as he asked that last +question, was of one pitiably bewildered, yet lighted too by a gleam of +gratitude. + +"You really mean that, Graham?" she asked in a very ragged voice. "Is +that what you came to-day to tell me?" + +"I mean it altogether," he said earnestly. "I mean it without +any--reservations at all. You must believe that because it's the--basis +for everything else." + +She repeated "everything else?" in clear interrogation; then dropped back +rather suddenly into her former attitude. Everything else! What else was +there to friendship but itself? + +He turned back to the window. "I've come to ask you to, marry me, Mary, +just the same. I couldn't be any good as a friend, couldn't take care of +you and try to make you happy, unless in the eyes of the world I was your +husband. But I wouldn't ask,--I promise you I wouldn't ask +anything,--anything at all. You do understand, don't you? You'd be just +as--sacred to me ..." + +Then he cried out in consternation at the sight of her, "Mary! +What is it?" + +The tension had become too great, that was all. Her self-control, +slackened by the momentarily held belief that it was not needed, +had snapped. + +"I understand well enough," she said. "You would say good night at my +bedroom door and good morning at the breakfast table. I've read of +arrangements like that in rather nasty-minded novels, but I didn't +suppose they existed anywhere else. I can't think of an existence more +degradingly sensual than that;--to go on for days and months and years +being 'sacred' to a man; never satisfying the desires your nearness +tortured him with--to say nothing of what you did with your own! + +"But that such a thing should be offered to me because I'm too good to +love a man honestly.... You see, I'm none of the things you think I am, +Graham. Nor that you want me to be. Not white, not innocent. Not a 'good' +woman even, let alone an angel. That's what makes it so--preposterous." + +He had been staring at her, speechless, horrified. But at this it was as +if he understood. "I ought not to have worried you to-day," he said, +suddenly gentle. "I know how terribly overwrought you are. I meant--I +only meant to make things easier. I'm going away now. I'll send Rush to +you. He'll come at once. Do you mind being alone till then?" + +She answered slowly and with an appearance of patient +reasonableness, "It's not that. It's not what Rush calls +shell-shock. There is many a shabby little experimental flirt who +has managed to keep intact an-innocence which I don't possess. That +is the simple-physiological truth." + +Then, after a silence, with a gasp, "I'm not mad. But I think I shall be +if you go on looking at me like that. Won't you please go?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE TERROR + + +Graham Stannard made his well-meant but disastrous proposal to Mary at +half past five or so on a Friday afternoon. It was a little more than +twenty-four hours later, just after dark on Saturday evening, that she +came in, unheralded, more incredibly like a vision than ever, upon +Anthony March in his secret lair above the grocery. + +He was sitting at his work-table scoring a passage in the third act of +_The Dumb Princess_ for the wood-wind choir when her knock, faint as it +was, breaking in upon the rhythm of his theme, caused his pen to leap +away from the paper and his heart to skip a beat. But had it actually +been a knock upon his door? Such an event was unlikely enough. + +He uttered a tentative and rather incredulous "Come in" as one just +awakened speaks, humoring the illusion of a dream. + +But the door opened and the Dumb Princess stood there, pallid, wistful, +just as she had looked before her true lover climbed the precarious ivy +to her tower and tore away the spell that veiled her. + +March sat debating with himself,--or so it seemed to him afterward; it +was a matter of mere seconds, of course,--why, since she was a vision, +did she not look as she had on one of the occasions when he had seen her. +The night of the Whitman songs; the blazing afternoon in the hay field. + +She was different to-night, and very clearly defined, in a plain +little frock of dark blue--yet not quite what one ordinarily meant by +dark blue--cut out in an unsoftened square around the neck, and a +small hat of straw, the color of the warmer sort of bronze. These +austerities of garb, dissociated utterly with all his memories, gave +her a poignancy that was almost unbearable. Why had the vision of her +come to him like that? + +She smiled then and spoke. "It is really I. I've come with a +message for you." + +Until she spoke he could do nothing but stare as one would at an +hallucinatory vision; but her voice, the first articulate syllable of it, +brought him to his feet and drew him across the room to where she stood. +He was almost suffocated by a sudden convulsion of the heart, half +exultation, half terror. The exultation was accountable enough. The high +Gods had given him another chance. Why he should be terrified he did not +at the time know, but he was--from that very first moment. + +He came to her slowly, not knowing what he was to do or say. All his +mental powers were for the moment quite in abeyance. But when he got +within hand's reach of her it was given to him to take both of hers and +stoop and kiss them. He'd have knelt to her had his knees ever been +habituated to prayer. Then he led her to his big hollow-backed easy chair +which stood in the dormer where the breeze came in, changed its position +a little and waited until, with a faintly audible sigh, she had let +herself sink into it. + +How tired she was! He had become aware of that the moment he touched her +hands. Whatever her experience during the last days or weeks had been, it +had brought her to the end of her powers. + +He felt another pang of that unaccountable terror as he turned away, and +he put up an unaddressed prayer for spiritual guidance. It was a new +humility for him. He moved his own chair a little nearer, but not close, +and seated himself. + +"I can conceive of no message,"--they were the first words he had +spoken, and his voice was not easily manageable,--"no message that would +be more than nothing compared with the fact that you have come." Rising +again, he went on, "Won't you let me take your hat? Then the back of that +chair won't be in the way." + +It was certainly a point in his favor that she took it off and gave it to +him without demur. That meant that there would be time; yet her very +docility frightened him. She seemed quite relaxed now that her head could +lie back against the leather cushion, and her gaze traveled about the +dingy littered room with a kind of tender inquisitiveness as if she were +memorizing its contents. + +He gazed at her until a gush of tears blinded his eyes and he turned, +blinking them away, to the untidy quires of score paper which he had +tried to choose instead. It could not be that it was too late to alter +that choice. The terror, for a moment, became articulate. She believed +that it was too late. That was why she had come. + +She spoke reflectively. "It would be called an accident, I suppose, that +I came. I wrote to you but there was more to the message than would go +easily in a note so I took it myself to your house. There was just a +chance, I thought, that I'd find you there. I didn't find you, but I +found Miss MacArthur. That was the only thing about it that could be +called accidental. Your mother and sister were worried about you. They +said it had been much longer than such periods usually were since they +had heard from you. So I left my note and was coming away. Miss +MacArthur said she would come with me and offered to drive me back to +town. When we got into her car she said she thought she knew where you +were and would take me to you. She did not say anything more nor ask any +questions until she had stopped outside here at the curb, when she +looked up and saw the lighted windows and said you were surely here. +Then she pointed out the place in the dark where the stairs were and +told me how to find your door. She waited, though, to make sure before +she drove away. I heard her go." + +He had no word to say in the little pause she made there. He felt the +pulse beating in his temples and clutched with tremulous hands the wooden +arms of his chair. Until she had mentioned Jennie MacArthur's name it had +not occurred to him to wonder how she had been enabled to come to him. It +could only have been through Jennie, of course. Jennie was the only +person who knew. But why had Jennie disclosed his secret (her own at the +same time, he was sure; she never would have expected Mary's clear eyes +even to try to evade the unescapable inference)--why had she revealed to +Mary, whom she had never seen before, a fact which she had guarded with +so impregnable a loyalty all these many years? + +The only possible answer was that Jennie had divined, under the girl's +well-bred poise, the desperation which was now terrifying him. It was no +nightmare then of his own overwrought imagination. Jennie had perceived +the emergency--the actual life-or-death emergency--and with courageous +inspiration had done, unhesitatingly, the one thing that could possibly +meet the case. She had given him his chance. Jennie! + +He arrived at that terminus just as Mary finished speaking. In the pause +that followed she did not at first look at him. Her gaze had come to rest +upon that abortive musical typewriter of his. Not quite in focus upon it, +but as if in some corner of her mind she was wondering what it might be. +But as the pause spun itself out, her glance, seeking his face, moved +quickly enough to catch the look of consternation that it wore. She read +it--misread it luckily--and her own lighted amazingly with a beam of pure +amusement. + +"I suppose it is rather overwhelming," she said; "a conjunction like +that. I mean, that it should have been she who brought me here. But +really, unless one accepts all the traditional motives and explanations +that one finds in books, it shouldn't be surprising that she should +undertake a friendly service for some one else she saw was fond of you, +too. Not when one considers the wonderful person she is." + +If his sheer adoration of her were enough to save her then she was safe, +whatever the peril. But he doubted if it would be enough. + +"Jennie and I were lovers once," he said. "But that came to an end for +both of us a good while ago. Two or three years. And the last time she +came to this room--one day in April it was--I told her about you and +about _The Dumb Princess_." He laid his hand upon the stack of +manuscript. "This. I had come home from that night at your father's house +when you and I heard that song together, with my head full of it. I went +nearly mad fighting it out of my head while I tried to make over that +other opera for Paula." + +"_The Dumb Princess_...?" + +He nodded. "You see you hardly spoke that night, only at the end to say +we mustn't talk. So I came away thinking of some one under a spell. A +princess, the fairy sort of princess who could not speak until her true +lover came to her. But instead of that I tried to go on working at that +Belgian horror and stuck at it until it was unendurable. And then, when I +came to the house to tell Paula so, it was you who came to me again, the +first time since that night." + +There had come a faintly visible color into her cheeks and once more she +smiled, reflectively. "That's what you meant then," she mused. "I +couldn't make it out. You said just before you went away, 'That's why it +was so incredible when you came down the stairs instead.'" + +She had remembered that! + +"I ran away," he confessed, "the moment I had said it, for fear of +betraying myself. And I went to work on _The Dumb Princess_ that day." + +"You've done all that, a whole opera, since the fourteenth of May?" + +"I worked on it," he said, "until I had to stop for the little vacation +that--that ended at Hickory Hill. And I came straight back to it from +there. I've been working at it all the time since. Now, except for the +scoring in the second part of the third act, it's finished. I thought it +was the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. Just to get +it written down on paper, the thing which that moment with you up in that +little anteroom started. I've pretty well done it. As far as the music +itself is concerned, I think I have done it." + +He paused there and pressed his lips together. Then he went on speaking, +stiffly, one word at a time. "And I was saying to myself when you knocked +that I would tear it up, every sheet of it, and set it alight in the +stove yonder if it would take me back to that hour we had together at +Hickory Hill." + +The tenderness of her voice when she replied (it had some of the +characteristic qualities of his beloved woodwinds) did not preclude a +bead of humor, almost mischief, from gilding the salient points of +its modeling. + +"I know," she said. "I can guess what that feeling must be; the perfect +emptiness and despair of having a great work done. I suspect there aren't +many great masterpieces that one couldn't have bought cheap by offering +the mess of pottage at the right moment. Oh, no, I didn't mean a sneer +when I said cheap. I really understand. That very next morning out in the +orchard, thinking over it, I managed to be glad you'd gone--alone. Your +own way, rather than back with me to Ravinia. But--I'm glad I came +to-night and I'm glad I know about--_The Dumb Princess_." + +Watching her as her unfocused reminiscent gaze made it easy for him to +do, he saw her go suddenly pale, saw the perspiration bead out on her +forehead as if some thought her mind had found itself confronting +actually sickened her. He waited an instant, breathless in an agony of +doubt whether to notice or to go on pretending to ignore. After a moment +the wave passed. + +"I know that was a figure of speech," she resumed,--her voice was +deadened a little in timbre but its inflections were as light as before. +"But I wish--I'd really be ever so much--happier--if you'd give me a +promise; a perfectly serious, solemn,"--she hesitated for a word and +smiled,--"death-bed promise, that you never will burn up _The Dumb +Princess_. At least until she's all published and produced. And I wish +that as soon as you've got a copy made, you'd put this manuscript in a +really safe place." + +He turned away from her, baffled, bewildered. She had evaded the issue he +had tried to confront her with. She had taken the passionate declaration +of his wish to retrieve the great error of his life as a passing emotion +familiar to all creative artists at certain stages in their work. It was +a natural, almost inevitable, way of looking at it! He sat for a moment +gazing abstractedly at his littered table, clutching the edges of it with +both hands, resisting a momentary vertigo of his own. + +She left her chair and came and stood beside him. She picked up one of +the quires of manuscript, opened it and gazed a while at the many-staved +score. He was aware of a catch in her breathing, like an inaudible sob, +but presently she spoke, quite steadily. + +"I wish I could sit here to-night and read this. I wish it made even +unheard melodies to me. I'm not dumb but I am deaf to this. _There's_ a +spell beyond your powers to lift, my dear." + +She laid her hand lightly upon his shoulder and at her touch his +taut-drawn muscles relaxed into a tremulous weakness. After a +little silence: + +"Now give me my promise," she said. + +He did not immediately answer and the hand upon his shoulder took hold. +Under its compulsion, "I'll promise anything you ask," he said. + +She spoke slowly as if measuring her words. "Never to destroy this work +of yours that you call _The Dumb Princess_ whatever may conceivably +happen, however discouraged you may be about it." + +"Very well," he said, "I won't." + +"Say it as a promise," she commanded. "Quite explicitly." + +So he repeated a form of words which satisfied her. She held him tight in +both hands for an instant. Then swiftly went back to her chair. + +"Don't think me too foolish," she apologized. "I haven't been sleeping +much of late and I couldn't have slept to-night with a misgiving like +that to wonder about." + +His own misgiving obscurely deepened. He did not know whether it was the +reason she had offered for exacting that promise from him or the mere +tone of her voice which was lighter and more brittle than he felt it +should have been. She must have read the troubled look in his face for +she said at once and on a warmer note: + +"Oh, my dear, don't! Don't let my vagaries trouble you. Let me tell you +the message I came with. It's about the other opera. They want to put it +on at once up at Ravinia. With Fournier as the officer and that little +Spanish soprano as 'Dolores.' Just as you wrote it without any of the +terrible things you tried to put in for Paula. It will have to be sung +in French of course, because neither of them sings English. They want you +there just as soon as you can come, to sign the contract and help with +the rehearsals." + +Once more with an utterly unexpected shift she left him floundering, +speechless. + +He had forgotten _The Outcry_ except for his nightmare efforts to revamp +it for Paula; had charged it off his books altogether. What Mary had told +him at Hickory Hill about her labors in its behalf had signified simply, +how rapturously delicious it was that she should have been so concerned +for him. The possibility of a successful outcome to her efforts hadn't +occurred to him. + +She said, smiling with an amused tenderness over his confusion, "I +haven't been too officious, have I?" + +He knew he was being mocked at and he managed to smile but he had +to blink and press his hand to his eyes again before he could see +her clearly. + +"It's not astonishing that you can work miracles," he said. "The wonder +would be if you could not." + +"There was nothing in the least miraculous about this," she declared. "It +wasn't done by folding my wings and weaving mystic circles with a wand. +Besides making that translation,--oh, terribly bad, I'm afraid,--into +French, I've cajoled and intrigued industriously for weeks like one of +those patient wicked little spiders of Henri Fabre's. I found a silly +flirtation between Fournier and a married woman I knew and I encouraged +it, helped it along and made it useful. I've used everybody I could lay +my hands on." + +What an instrument of ineffable delight that voice of hers was,--its +chalumeau tenderness just relieved with the sparkle of irony. But he was +smitten now with the memory of his own refusal to go to Ravinia so that +Paula would remember him again. He blurted out something of his +contrition over this but she stopped him. + +"It was only because I wanted you there. I would not for any conceivable +advantage in the world have let you--oh, even touch these devices that +I've been concerned with. But I've reveled in them myself. In doing them +for you, even though I could not see that they were getting anywhere. + +"Everything seemed quite at a standstill when I left Ravinia Thursday, +but on Thursday night the Williamsons dined with Mr. Eckstein and went to +the park with him; and they all went home with father and Paula +afterward, Fournier and LaChaise, too; and everything happened at once. I +got a note from Paula this morning written yesterday, asking where my +translation was, but not telling me anything. And as she wasn't at home +when I telephoned to answer her question I didn't know until to-night. + +"But about six o'clock James Wallace telephoned from the park and told +me all about it. He wanted you found and sent to Ravinia at once. Having +wasted half the season and more, they're now quite frantic over the +thought of losing a minute. And Jimmy says immensely enthusiastic. So, +all you have to do now is to go up there and lord it over them. You'll +hear it sung; you'll hear the orchestra play it. You will make a +beginning toward coming into your own, my dear. Because even if you +don't care for it as you did, it will be a step toward--the princess, +won't it?" + +She dropped back against the cushion as from weariness, and sudden tears +brimmed into her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. He came to her at that +in spite of the gesture that would have held him away. + +"You must believe--it's nothing--but happiness," she gasped. + +He sat down upon the arm of the chair and a little timidly took her in +his hands, caressed her eyes and her wet face until at last she met his +lips in a long kiss and sank back quieted. + +He stayed on the chair arm however and their hands remained clasped +through a recollecting silence. She said presently: + +"There are two or three practical things for you to remember. You mustn't +be irritated with Violet Williamson. She has let herself become a little +more sentimental about Fournier than I think in the beginning she meant +to be and you may find her under foot more than you like. You mustn't +mind that. And you'll find a very friendly helper in James Wallace. There +is something a little caustic about his wit, and he suspects musicians on +principle; but he will like you and he's thoroughly committed to _The +Outcry_. He is a very good French scholar and over difficulties with the +translation, where passages have to be changed, he'll be a present help." + +He took her face in both his hands and turned it up to him. "Mary," he +demanded when their eyes met, "why are you saying good-by to me?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE WHOLE STORY + + +The shot told. The harried, desperate look of panic with which she gazed +at him and tried, tugging at his hands, to turn away, revealed to him +that he had leaped upon the truth. Part of it anyhow. He closed his +eyes, for an instant, for another unaddressed prayer that he might not +falter nor let himself be turned aside until he had sounded the full +depth of it. + +When he looked at her again she had recovered her poise. "It was silly," +she said, "to think that I could hide that from you. I am going +away--to-morrow. For quite a long while." + +"Are you going away--physically? In the ordinary literal sense, I mean; +or is it that you are just--going away from me?" + +Once more it was as if a trap had been sprung upon her. But this time he +ignored the gasp and the sudden cold slackness of the hands he held and +went on speaking with hardly a pause. + +"I asked that question, put it that way, thinking perhaps I understood +and that I could make it easier for you to tell me." He broke off, there, +for an instant to get his voice under control. Then he asked, steadily, +"Are you going to marry Graham Stannard?" + +She gasped again, but when he looked up at her there was nothing in her +face but an incredulous astonishment. + +So there was one alternative shorn away; one that he had not conceived as +more than a very faint possibility. It was not into matrimony that her +long journey was to take her. He pulled himself up with a jerk to +answer--and it must be done smoothly and comfortably--the question she +had just asked him. How in the world had he ever come to think of a thing +like that? + +"Why, it was in the air at Hickory Hill those days before you came. +And then Sylvia was explicit about it, as something every one was +hoping for." + +"Was that why you went away?" she asked with an intent look into his +face. "Because he had a--prior claim, and it wouldn't be fair to--poach +upon his preserves?" + +He gave an ironic monosyllable laugh. "I tried, for the next few days to +bamboozle myself into adopting that explanation but I couldn't. The truth +was, of course, that I ran away simply because I was frightened. Sheer +panic terror of the thing that had taken hold of me. The thought of +meeting you that next morning was--unendurable." + +She too uttered a little laugh but it sounded like one of pure happiness. +She buried her face in his hands and touched each palm with her lips. "I +couldn't have borne it if you'd said the other thing," she told him. "But +I might have trusted you not to. Because you're not a sentimentalist. +You're almost the only person I know who is not." + +She added a moment later, with a sudden tightening of her grip upon his +hands, "Have you, too, discovered that sentimentality is the crudest +thing in the world? It is. It is perfectly ruthless. It makes more +tragedies than malice. Ludicrous tragedies--which are less endurable than +the other sort. Unless one were enough of an Olympian so that he could +laugh." She relaxed again and made a nestling movement toward him. "I +thought for a while of you that way." + +He managed to speak as if the idea amused him. "As an Olympian? No, if +I had a mountain it wouldn't be that one. But I like the valleys +better, anyhow." + +"I know," she said contentedly. Then her voice darkened. "I'm just at +the beginning of you--now..." The sentence ended unnaturally, though he +had done nothing to interrupt it. + +Deliberately he startled her. "What time does your train go, to-morrow?" +he asked. "Or haven't you selected one? You haven't even told me where it +is you are going." + +Through his hands which held her he felt the shock, the momentary agony +of the effort to recover the threatened balance, the resolute relaxation +of the muscles and the steadying breath she drew. + +"Oh, there are plenty of trains," she said. "You mustn't bother.--Why, +Wallace Hood has a sister living in Omaha. (Wallace Hood, not James +Wallace. It would be terrible if you confused them.) She's been trying +for months to find a nursery governess. And I've been trying--perhaps you +didn't know; the family have been very unpleasant about it--to find a +job.--Oh, for the most realistic of reasons, among others. Well, it +occurred to me the other day that Wallace's sister and I might be looking +for each other." + +There she paused, but only for a moment. Then she added, very explicitly, +"So I'm going to Omaha to-morrow." + +Even her lying she had to do honestly. She preferred, he saw, that he +should remember she had lied to having him recall that she had tricked +him by an evasion. + +One need not invoke clairvoyance to account for his incandescent +certainty that she had lied. The mere unconscious synthesis of the things +she had said and left unsaid along the earlier stages of their talk, +would have amounted to a demonstration. Her moment of panic over his +discovery that she was saying good-by, her irrespressible shudder at the +question whether she was going away in the ordinary literal sense of the +phrase; finally, her pitiful attempt to avoid, in answer to his last +question, a categorical untruth and then her acceptance of it as, after +all, preferable to the other. But it was by no such pedestrian process +as this that he reached the truth. + +He knew, now, why he had been terrified from the moment she came into the +room. He knew why she had wrung that promise from him--a death-bed +promise she had dared with a smile to call it--that he would not, +whatever happened, destroy _The Dumb Princess_. It would be a likely +enough thing for him to do, she had perceived, when he learned the truth. +She could not--sleep, she had told him, until that surmise was laid. + +There were, as she had said, plenty of trains to that unknown destination +of hers, but he thought that that word sleep offered the true clue. She +was a physician's daughter; there must be, somewhere in that house, a +chest or cupboard that would supply what she needed. They'd find her in +her own bed, in that room he had once cast a glance into on his way +up-stairs to Paula. + +The conviction grew upon him that she had her plans completely laid; yes, +and her preparations accomplished. That quiet leisureliness of hers would +not have been humanly possible if either her resolution or the means for +executing it had remained in doubt. It was likely that she had whatever +it was--a narcotic, probably; morphine; she wouldn't, conceivably, resort +to any of the corrosives--upon her person at this moment. In that little +silken bag which hung from her wrist. + +He clenched the finger-nails into the palms of his hands. This thing was +a nightmare. He had fallen asleep over his table; had only to wake +himself.--It would not do to play with an idea like that. Nor with the +possibility that he had misread her mind. He knew. He was not mistaken. +Let him never glance aside from that. + +For one moment he thought wildly of trying to call in help from outside, +of frustrating her design by sheer force. But that could not be done. As +between them, he would be reckoned the madman. Her project might be +deferred by that means, perhaps. It could not be prevented. + +It was that terrible self-possession of hers that gave the last turn to +the screw. She could not be dealt with as one frantic, beside herself, to +be wooed and quieted back into a state of sanity. She was at this moment +as sane as he. She was not to be held back, either, by a mere assurance +of his love for her. She had never, it appeared, lacked that assurance. +But her life, warmed even as it was by their love, presented itself to +her somehow as something that it was not possible to go on with. + +This was very strange. All of its externals that were visible to him +made up, one would have said, a pattern singularly gracious and +untroubled. Buried in it somewhere there must be some toxic focus that +poisoned everything. He must meet her on her own ground. He must show +her another remedy than the desperate one she was now resolved upon. And +before he could find the remedy he must discover the virus. The only +clue he had was the thing she said about sentimentalists, and the +tragedies they caused. More tragedies than malice was responsible for. +He thought she was probably right about that. It was some such tragedy +anyhow, ludicrous, unendurable, that had driven her to this acquiescence +in defeat. + +He said, in as even a tone as he could manage, "I asked about trains +because I wondered whether there was anything to hurry you to-night. +Packing to do or such a matter; or whether we mightn't have a really +leisurely visit. I haven't much idea what time it is except that I don't +think I've eaten anything since around the middle of the day. Have you? +If you'd stay and have supper with me ... But I suppose you're expected +somewhere else." + +She smiled ironically at this, then laughed at herself. "It happens +rather funnily that I haven't been so little expected or looked after, +since I came home from New York, as I am to-night. I'm not--in a hurry at +all. I'll stay as long as you like." + +"Is that a promise?" he asked. "As long as I liked would be a long +while." + +"I'll stay," she said, "as long as I can see I'm making you happy. When I +find myself beginning to be a--torment to you, I shall--vanish." + +He was almost overmastered by the temptation to forget everything except +his love for her; to let himself be persuaded that his ghastly surmise +was a product of his own fatigue and sleepless nights. Even supposing +there were a basis for it, could he not keep her safe by just holding her +fast in his arms? + +He dashed the thought out of his mind. She would surrender to his +embrace, how eagerly he already knew. For a matter of moments, for a few +swift hours she might forget. She had perhaps come to him meaning to +forget for a while in just that way. But no embrace could be eternal. +He'd have to let her go at last and nothing would be changed save that +she would have a memory of him to take with her into her long sleep. + +No, love must wait. That obscure unendurable nightmare tragedy of hers +must be brought out into the light first and shorn of its horrors. + +So he managed for the moment a lighter note. He would not let her help in +the preparation of the meager little meal which was all that his +immediate resources ran to. He hadn't quite realized how exiguous it was +going to be when he spoke of it as supper. It was nothing but a slice of +Swiss cheese, a fresh carton of biscuits and a flagon of so-called +Chianti illicitly procured from the Italian grocery downstairs. + +He cleared his work table and anchored her in the easy chair at the +same time by putting into her lap the bulky manuscript of _The Dumb +Princess_, and it was this they talked about while he laid the cloth--a +clean towel--and set out his scanty array of dishes. He feared when they +drew up to the table that she was not going to be able to eat at all, +and he was convinced that she was even more in need of food than he. But +the wine, thin and acidulous as it was, helped, and he saw to it that +for a while she had no chance to talk. He told her the story of _The +Dumb Princess_ in detail and dwelt a little upon the half formulated +symbolism of it. + +When at last he paused, she said, "I think I know why the princess was +dumb. Because when she tried to speak no one wanted to hear what she had +to say. They insisted on keeping her an image merely, so that they could +go on attributing to her just the thoughts they wished her to think and +just the desires they wanted her to feel. That's the spell that has made +many a woman dumb upon all the essentials." + +He gripped his hands together between his knees, leaned a little forward, +drew a steadying breath and said, "There's something I wish you'd do for +me just while we're sitting quietly like this. It has been so momentary, +this life of ours together,--the times I mean when we've been bodily +together. The whole of it could be reckoned quite easily in minutes. +There has been more packed into them, of course, than into many a lover's +months and years, but one effect it has had on me has been to make you, +when you aren't here physically with me, like this, where by merely +reaching out I can touch you, a little--visionary to me. I confuse you +with the Dumb Princess over there whom you made me create. I get +misgivings that you're just a sort of wraith. Well, if you're going away +and we aren't to be within--touching distance of each other again for a +long while--perhaps months, I want more of you, that my memory can hold +on by. The real every-day person that you are instead, as you say, of the +image I've had to make of you. So I wish you'd tell me as nearly as you +can remember everything that you've done--everything that has happened to +you--to-day." + +That last word was like the touch of a spur. She shuddered as she cried, +"Not to-day!" + +He did not press for a reason and the next moment she went on in her +natural manner again. "That's a strange thing for you to wish. At least +the strangeness of it strikes me after some of the things that have been +happening lately. Yet I don't believe it happens often that a lover asks +as specifically as that to be--disillusioned. And that is what you would +be. Because the complete story of a day,--any day,--with no +suppressions, nothing tucked decently away out of sight, would be a +pretty searching test." + +"That's why I asked for it," he said, "I'd like to be disillusioned; just +as completely as possible." + +"That's because you're so sure you wouldn't be." The raggedness of her +voice betrayed a strong emotion. With a leap of the pulse he told himself +that it was as if she were crying out against some unforeseen hope. "You +think it would merely be that lovely little image of yours--the Dumb +Princess, coming to life." + +"I'd rather have the reality," he told her, "whatever it is. I think I +can make you see that that must be true. The person I love is you who are +sitting there across the table from me. I don't believe that any one in +the world was ever more completely and utterly adored than you are being +adored at this moment. I love the things I know you by. The things I've +come to recognize as yours. I know some of your qualities that way; your +sensitiveness, your uprightness, your fastidious honesty that makes you +hate evasions and substitutes,--everything you mean when you say +sentimentality. And I know your resolution that carries you along even +when you are afraid,--when your sensitiveness makes you afraid. I admire +all those qualities, but it isn't their intrinsic worth that makes me +love them. I love them because they're the things I know you by. I can't +be mistaken about them because I've felt them. Just as I've felt your +hands and your mouth and your hair. Well, then, whatever your days have +been, one day after another, they have in the end produced you sitting +there as you sit now. Whatever your--ingredients are they're your +ingredients. The total works out to you. Whereas my illusions work out to +nothing better than my little image of the Dumb Princess." + +"Would it surprise you," she asked, "to know that I could be cruel? I +mean exactly what the word means. Like a little boy who tears the legs +off a beetle. Can you imagine me hurting some one frightfully, whom I +needn't have hurt at all? Some one who was trying in his own way to be +kind to me?" + +He smiled. "I can imagine your being cruel to a sentimentalist," he said. +"Not deliberately, of course. Only after you had been hounded, like a +little white cat, into a corner. By some one who wanted you for an image, +merely, that he himself could attribute all the appropriate thoughts and +desires to. I can imagine you turning, at last, and rending him;--limb +from limb, if you like." + +She gazed at him, wide-eyed, for a long moment; then she drooped forward +over the table and cradled her head in her arms. With his hands he tried +to comfort her but he felt that they were clumsy and ineffectual. + +"I've hurt you horribly," he said, when he could command his voice. +"Probing in like that." + +This must be the unendurable tragedy she had referred to a while ago. +She was speaking, voicelessly and he bent down to listen. + +"... if you knew the comfort! I suppose I ought to be frightened--at your +guessing like that, but it seems natural, to-night, that you should.--You +know who it was, don't you?" + +"Yes," he told her confidently. "It happened just to-day, didn't it?" + +"It was yesterday he asked me to marry him," she said. "That wasn't +hounding. He had a right to, I mean. I thought I would marry him, once. I +told him I would if I could. I meant, I would if I could make him +understand what I really was. He thought I meant something altogether +different, something that his image of me might have meant quite nicely. +Yesterday when he asked me again, I flew into a fury and told him what I +am really like. I needn't have done it. I could have told him that the +reason I wouldn't marry him was because I was in love with you. That +would have been true--in a way. I mean, it wasn't the reason in the +beginning; nor even after I was in love with you--so long as you didn't +know. But I never thought of telling him that. I just wanted to--smash +that image of his. And I did. I knew it was cruel when I did it, but not +how terrible until this morning when Rush got a letter from him." + +She had to stop there to master a sob. He went around the table and took +her in his arms. "Come over to the big chair," he said, "where I +can--hold you. I can't let you go on like this. You can tell me the rest +of it there." + +She released herself from his hands by taking them in her own and +pressing them for a moment tight. Then she let them go. + +"I couldn't," she said. "I couldn't be comforted like that while I was +telling you about him." + +He understood instantly. "That's like you," he commented. "You're always +like yourself, thank God." He walked away to the chair he had invited her +to and stood behind it, gripping its padded leather back. "He wrote your +brother a letter then." He had spoken, he thought, quietly and evenly +enough, but the indignation he felt must have betrayed itself in his +voice for she answered instantly: + +"You mustn't be angry about that. He had to write to Rush, you see. Rush +had been in his confidence about it all the while. Rush knew his hopes +and his explanations. Rush knew of his coming yesterday, was waiting up +at Wallace Hood's apartment for his news. Now, do you see how horrible it +was? He couldn't tell Rush what I had said to him. There was nothing he +could tell him. He couldn't even face him. He did the only thing I'd left +for him to do." + +March asked, "What has he done?" + +"We don't know, exactly. Just gone away, I suppose. The letter was +written about midnight from the University Club. He said he wasn't coming +back to Hickory Hill. That he couldn't possibly come back. He'd arrange +things, somehow, later. He told Rush not to try to find him nor make any +sort of fuss, and to be very kind to me; not to question nor worry me." + +She broke off there and looked intently up at him. In her eyes he thought +he saw incredulity fighting against a dawning hope. "I wonder," she went +breathlessly on, "if you can understand this, too. Can you see that, for +him, the unbearable thing about it--was that it was ludicrous? The +contrast between what he had believed me to be and--what I am?" + +He interrupted sharply, with a frown of irritation, "Don't put it +like that!" + +"Well, then," she amended, "the contrast between his explanation of the +way I had been treating him, and the true one?" + +"That is a thing I think I can understand," he said. "It was a sort +of--awakening of Don Quixote. To a fine sensitive boy nothing could give +a sharper wrench than that.--I'm moving in the dark," he added. Yet he +knew he was drawing near the light. The secret he had set out to discover +was not very far away. + +"You see well enough," she said. "Better than Rush, though I tried to +explain it to him. He'd caught a surmise of the truth, too, I think, in +New York, when he came back from France and brought me home. But he +wouldn't look. Father wouldn't, either, once when I tried to tell him +about it. It was too horrible to be thought,--let alone believed.--I +don't quite see how I can have gone on believing it myself." + +The look he saw in her eyes made him wonder how she could. He managed to +hold his own gaze steady. It gave him a sense of somehow supporting her. + +"But you," she said,--"you, of all people in the world, don't seem to +feel that way about it. You were there--waiting for me--before I even +tried to tell you. Oh, you do understand, don't you?" + +"I think," he told her--and the smile that came with the words was +spontaneous enough, though it did feel rather tremulous--"I think I +could almost repeat the sentence you demolished young Stannard with in +your own words. But can't you see why it doesn't demolish me? It's +because I love you." + +"So did he. So do father and Rush." + +"Not you. Not quite you. Don't you see? It's just the thing I was trying +to tell you a while ago. What they insist on loving is--oh, partly you, +of course, but partly a sort of--projection of themselves that they call +you, dress you out in, try to compel you to fit. One can fight hard to +preserve an outlying bit of one's self like that. But there would be a +limit I should think. How your brother, with a letter like that in his +hands, could refuse to look at what you were trying to make him see ..." + +"He had a theory, that began when we were in New York together as a sort +of joke, that I was a case of shell-shock. So whenever there has been +anything really uncomfortable to face, he has always had that to fall +back upon." + +A momentary outburst of anger escaped him. "You've been tortured!" he +cried furiously. He reined in at once, however. "You've never, then," he +went on quietly, "been able to tell the story to any one. I'm sure you +didn't tell it to Graham Stannard. You didn't even try to." + +She shook her head. The pitifulness of her, sitting there so spent, so +white, blurred his vision again with sudden tears. But after he had +disposed of them, he managed a smile and sat down comfortably in his +easy chair. + +"You couldn't find a better person than me to tell it to," he said. + +"You know already," she protested. "At least, you know what it comes to." + +"I know the brute fact," he admitted, "but that and the whole truth are +seldom quite the same thing." + +He saw the way her hands locked and twisted together and remembered with +a heart-arresting pang, her half-choked cry, "Don't! Don't hurt them like +that!" when his own had agonized in such a grip. But no caress of his +could help her now. He held himself still in his chair and waited. + +"The whole truth of this story isn't any--prettier than the brute fact. +There weren't any extenuating circumstances." + +Then she sat erect and faced him. He was amazed to see a flush of color +come creeping into her cheeks. Her eyes brightened, the brows drew down a +little, her voice steadied itself and the words came swiftly. + +"I think I must make sure you understand that it isn't the sort of story +that you usually find enveloping that particular brute fact. I wasn't +deceived nor betrayed by anybody. There isn't anybody you can take as a +villain. Just a nice, rather inarticulate boy, whom I met at a dance the +evening before he went overseas." + +She broke off there to ask him shortly, "When was it that you went over?" + +"Not until September," he said, "when it looked like a very long chance +if we ever got to the front at all. Of course, you know, we didn't. But +this was a lot earlier, wasn't it?" + +"The seventeenth of April," she said. "We'll never forget those weeks, +any of us, who were in New York doing what we called war work, but it's +hard not to feel that we weren't different persons somehow. I don't mean +that to sound like making excuses. We were more our real selves perhaps +than we will ever be again. Anyhow, we worked harder all day long, and +never felt tired, and in the evening most of the people I knew went out a +lot, to dinners and dances. + +"We could always make ourselves believe, of course, that we were doing +that to cheer up the men who were going to France--and were very likely +never coming back. Like the English women one read about. The only thing +that used to trouble me in those days was a perfectly scorching +self-contempt that used to come when I realized that I was enjoying it +all; enjoying the emotional thrill of it. I knew I was getting off cheap. + +"I suppose I needn't have told you all that. You'd have understood it +anyhow. But that was how I felt when I went to that dance. As if it would +be a relief to do something--costly. + +"It was a uniform dance as far as the men were concerned. We made +ourselves, of course, as--attractive as we knew how. Somebody introduced +this boy to me with just the look that said, 'Do be kind to him,' and +that's what I set out, very resolutely and virtuously, to be. He couldn't +talk much beyond monosyllables and he couldn't dance,--even with me. I +mean, I've danced so much ..." + +"I've seen you dance, my dear," he reminded her, and saw how, with a +deep-drawn breath, the memory of that night at Hickory Hill came +back to her. + +"Don't," she gasped. "Let me go on." But it was the better part of a +minute before she could. + +"We sat out two or three dances together and then, when I might decently +enough have passed him on to some one else with that same sort of +explanatory look--I didn't. Partly because of the feeling I have told you +about and partly because I was attracted to him. He was big and young and +good-looking, and his voice--oh, one can't explain those things. It +wasn't pure altruism. That's what you must see. And then he got up +suddenly and said, 'Good-by.' It was early, you know, and I asked him why +he was going. He said he wanted to get out of there. Rather savagely. + +"I got up too and said I felt the same way about it. So he asked if he +might 'see me home.' The dance was in the East Sixties. There had been a +shower but it was clear then and warm. There weren't any taxis about +and, anyhow, he didn't seem to think of looking for one, and we went +over and took a Lexington Avenue car. When we turned at Twenty-third +Street I said we'd get out and walk. He'd said hardly anything, but we +had sat rather close in the car and he had been holding a fold of my +cloak between his fingers. + +"We went on down Lexington to Gramercy Park. There was shrubbery in +flower inside the iron fence and some of the trees had been leafing out +that day and the air was very still and sweet. We both stopped for a +minute without saying anything and I slipped my hand farther through his +arm and took his. + +"He gave a sort of sob and said, 'You wouldn't do that if you knew about +me.' I said, 'You'd better tell me and see.' + +"We walked on again, around the park and across Twentieth Street and down +Fifth Avenue. When we got to my door he hadn't told me. + +"My flat was just the second story of an old made-over house. There was +no one about, I mean, to stare or wonder, and I asked him to come in. +When we were inside I looked at my watch and asked him what time he had +to report. He said not until seven o'clock in the morning. He was going +over detached. There was nothing but a hotel to go back to. + +"If I'd asked him that question out on the sidewalk, and got that answer, +I don't know whether I'd have asked him in or not. + +"He just stood looking at me for a minute after telling me he hadn't +anywhere to report that night. Then he turned away and sat down on the +edge of my couch and bent his face down on his hands and began to talk. +He told me what was the matter with him. Of course, the same thing must +have tormented thousands of them,--the terror of being afraid. He felt +pretty sure he was a coward. + +"Mostly, I think, that fear was pretty sensibly dealt with in this war. +It got talked out openly. But he must have been a terribly lonely +person. He came from Iowa, but somehow he got sent to one of the southern +cantonments, and had his officer's training, such as it was, down there. +Then he was sent along to fill in somewhere else. I don't remember all +the details. He'd come to New York alone. The men he had gone to the +dance with he had only met that afternoon. + +"I tried to help him. I told him how some of the officers in the French +and English armies, who had the highest decorations for courage, had +suffered most horribly, in advance, from fear. I could tell him two or +three that I knew about personally; men who had told their own stories to +me. Well, that helped a little, roused him out of his daze, gave him a +little gleam of hope perhaps. But it wasn't much; words can't be, +sometimes. + +"He wanted more than that. He wanted me. He didn't want to go back alone +to that hotel. So I kept him. Early in the morning, about six o'clock, I +cooked his breakfast and ate it with him and kissed him good-by." + +She made a sudden savage gesture of impatience. "I didn't mean to make it +sound like that. That sounds noble and self-sacrificial and sickening. I +suppose because that's the half of the truth that is easiest to tell. I +_did_ want to make an end of perpetually getting off cheap. I did have a +sort of feeling of establishing my good faith with myself. I wanted to +comfort him and make him happy. But it's also true that I'd been +attracted to him from the very first minute, and that it thrilled me when +I first touched his hand, there by the park railing, and afterward when +he took me in his arms." + +Since his last interruption he had sat motionless, even breathing small +in the extremity of his effort not to hinder. But now he rose and without +speaking, came to her and bending down, kissed her forehead, her eyes, +her mouth. Then he seated himself on the table close beside her and took +possession, thoughtfully, of one of her hands. + +"Did you ever hear anything more of him?" he asked. + +She shook her head. "I don't think he remarked my name at all when we +were introduced," she said, "nor asked what it was afterward. I think it +must all have seemed afterward a little unreal to him. The girls he'd +known at home don't smoke cigarettes nor drink champagne--nor wear their +dresses as low as we do. He couldn't once have thought of people like +father and Rush and Aunt Lucile as belonging to me. I remembered his name +and used to look to see if it was there when I read the casualty lists, +but I never did see it again.--No, that's the whole story; just what I +have told you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +DAYBREAK + + +There followed the conclusion of the story, an interval of ease. It gave +March, to begin with, a new access of courage, almost of confidence, to +note that she did not fade white again and that the sick look of horror, +banished from her eyes by the mere intensity of her determination to +convey the whole truth to him, did not return to them. She substituted +her other hand for the one he held in order to shift her position a +little and lean against his knees. + +Her mind had not detached itself from the story as she made evident by +the reflective way in which she went on thinking aloud about it; dwelling +on some of the curious consequences of the adventure. It was +surprising--she wondered if it indicated anything really abnormal in +her--the way she had felt about it afterward. + +She'd felt nothing in the least like shame. Certainly not at first. On +the contrary, she'd taken a deep soul-satisfying pride in it, a kind of +warm sense of readiness for anything. + +She told him with a little clutch of embarrassment and resolution, about +another incident that happened somewhat later, attributing an importance +to it which he conceded while he reflected with a smile that most people, +men and women virtuous or otherwise, would have regarded as ridiculously +disproportionate. The incident concerned a man whom she didn't much like, +she said, but found somehow, fascinating. He had been paying her +attentions of a rather experimental sort for weeks, maneuvering, +arranging. He knew she lived by herself and had been angling for an +invitation to come to see her, alone. Finally, he telephoned her office +one day and asked point-blank if he mightn't come to tea that afternoon. +She said he might without telling him that she was expecting Christabel +Baldwin at the same time. An hour later, a restless hour it had been, she +had telephoned Christabel and put her off so that when her other guest +came he found just what he had expected. In the manner of one sure of his +welcome and intent on wasting no time, he had begun making love to her +(she apologized for the employment of that phrase but said she knew no +other that was usable). She admitted that she had never had any real +doubt that this was what he had meant to do and conceded him the right to +think that she had invited it. But she found it, nevertheless, +unendurable. She felt unspeakably degraded by it and presently flew into +a rage and turned the man out of the house, feeling, she added, as much +ashamed of that part of the performance as of anything else. + +This encounter, she told March, made a profound change in her feeling +about the other episode--closed a door upon it. Nothing like that could +happen to her again. She simply stopped thinking about it after that, +buried it and it had stayed buried comfortably for the better part of a +year, until Rush came home from France. At least she wasn't aware that it +had troubled her. The twinges of discomfort she'd felt whenever she'd +faced the prospect of coming home, she had attributed to another cause +altogether. + +"Paula," he observed. "That's easy enough to see." + +"Oh, you are a comfort," she said; "only not Paula by herself. Paula and +father and I, in a sort of awkward triangle, all doing our best and all +nagging one another. That has got terribly worse in the last few days." + +She seemed to find no difficulty at all in informing him fully about this +home situation; needed only a question or surmise dropped here and there +to develop the whole story. + +It wasn't a chronological narrative. Her mind drifted like a soaring +kingfisher over the whole area between her childhood and the events of +this very morning, swooping down here or there to pick up some incident +wherever a gleam of memory attracted her. + +Her spirit was finding compensation for the agonies of the past hours in +a complete detachment. Nothing she told him, no matter how close home it +came, seemed to involve any painful emotion. Her body, pressed so close +against his that he could have felt the faintest muscle quiver, conveyed +no message to him but the relaxation of complete security. + +About himself there was a curious duality. One of him was lulled +irresistibly into sharing her mood of serene detachment. The other, +recognizing the transitoriness of hers, knowing that when this interlude +came to an end, as come it must, the storm would break upon them once +more, was casting about desperately for the means of saving her. + +He had come to see the situation with her own eyes, fairly felt the +clutch of it upon his own heart. She or some impish power acting through +her agency had certainly made a mess of things. Her father's happiness +destroyed; Rush's partnership broken; and the whole Hickory Hill project +ruined unless some one could be found to buy into it in Graham's place; +Graham humiliated, utterly cast adrift, irreparably hurt. And the +prospect for the future.... + +She had told him of her tramp about the streets yesterday with her +newspaper clipping and he was able to feel the full terror of it; and, +beyond the terror, the gray emptiness. + +There was only one way out of the tangle and this was to marry the man +she loved and knew loved her. Well, he knew with merciless certainty what +her answer would be when he asked her--begged her--to do that. He had +provided her with the answer himself, with his sophomoric talk about +traveling light and refusing to wear harness. And he'd worse than +talked. His flight from her at Hickory Hill was enough to show that these +weren't mere empty phrases. And yet her life depended to-night upon his +ability to persuade her, in the face of those phrases and that fact, to +marry him. So he sat very still, wondering how soon she would divine +these undercurrents of his thought, listening while she talked to him. + +The hours were slipping away, too. A glance at the watch braceleted upon +the wrist he held startled him and he covered it with his hand. Had they +already, he wondered, begun a search for her? Her words supplied +presently the answer to that question. She was talking, with a dry sort +of humor, about the commotions of that day. + +He could not be sure he was getting it quite straight, for she was +commenting upon events rather than narrating them. Apparently she had +telephoned to her brother at Hood's apartment immediately after young +Stannard left the house the evening or afternoon before, telling him not +to bother about her, as she was going straight to bed. Let him go to a +show and be careful not to wake her when he came in. She'd done this and +gone to sleep at once, not waking until she'd heard him getting ready +for bed in the adjoining room. But after that she hadn't been able to +get off again. + +March reflected, with a shudder, what a ghastly procession of hours those +must have been. Had it been then, he wondered, that, looking for some +harmless thing to help her sleep, she had come upon the deadlier stuff? + +Her encounter with her brother at breakfast, which she had prepared, was +their first, it seemed, since her visit to Hickory Hill and Rush had been +shocked at her wan, lifeless appearance. He'd guessed, of course, that +his friend's suit hadn't prospered and now took the line, which no doubt +seemed to him the most tactful and comforting one available, that she was +too ill to attempt any final decision on such a subject just now and +that things would look different when better health had driven morbid +thoughts away. + +Her vehemence in trying to convince him that she had acted finally in the +matter, that Graham now acquiesced fully in her decision and no longer +wanted to marry her, and that Rush _must_ let him alone--not even try to +talk with him about it--had only made him the more confident in his +diagnosis. + +It must have been pat in the middle of this scene that Graham's +midnight-written letter arrived. Rush's attitude toward his partner's +flight--after the first moments of mere incredulity--had been one of +contemptuous irritation, the natural attitude for any young man who sees +a comrade taking no more of a matter than a disappointment in love with +an evident lack of fortitude. This was heightened, too, by a rapidly +developed sense of personal grievance. What the devil did Graham think +was going to happen to him with Hickory Hill left on his hands like that? +There was more than enough work for the two of them. And then the +financial aspect of it! Mr. Stannard, who had just been brought to the +point of loosening up and letting them have a little more money, would of +course leave Rush to his fate. If he didn't call his loans and sell him +out! Ruin them altogether! Graham must simply be found and dragged back +before his father learned of his flight. + +He couldn't have been paying his sister much attention while he ran on +like that! Unwisely, perhaps, but inevitably, Mary attempted to defend +the fugitive--in the only way she thought of as possible; namely, by +showing her brother what the true situation was. + +She didn't try to tell March what she said. The thing which, with a +forlorn smile, she dwelt upon, was the terrified vehemence with which +Rush had stopped her at his first inkling of what she was trying to make +him see. She was simply out of her head. A bad case, he pronounced, of +neurasthenia. Her having set out yesterday to find a job should have made +that plain enough. What she needed was a nurse and a doctor--and he meant +to provide both within the next few hours. He then compromised by saying +that the nurse he had in mind was for the moment Aunt Lucile and the +doctor their father. + +With an alternation of truculence and cajolery, he had got her to lie +down and to promise not to talk--that was the important thing--and this +accomplished he devoted half an hour to the composition of a note to Miss +Wollaston (whom it was difficult to tell anything to over the telephone, +particularly with long distance rural connections) which he despatched, +in charge of Pete, in the big car. Pete would get back with her by three +at the latest. + +Rush then had a long talk by telephone with his father at Ravinia. Mary +didn't know, of course, what they had said, beyond that John had promised +to come down immediately after lunch, but she got the idea that the +professional medical attitude had been one of less alarm than the amateur +one. Mary confessed to March, with a flicker of ironic amusement, that +she had supported this lighter view so successfully that, a little before +noon, Rush had confided to her his wish--if she were perfectly sure she +didn't need him--to take the one o'clock train to Lake Geneva. He and +Graham were still expected there for the week-end and on a good many +accounts it would be well if he didn't fail them. He dreaded going, of +course, but he felt he could meet the situation better on the ground +whatever turned up. He could wait for the three o'clock train, but this +was the one Mr. Stannard always took and he'd like to get in a talk with +Sylvia first. She was a great pal of her brother's and might well have +some real information about He'd have Pete's wife come in and look after +Mary--get lunch and so on. And father would be down about two. + +March thought the forlorn smile with which she told him this the most +heart-breaking thing he had ever seen. Damn Rush! Damn all the +sentimentalists in the world. Dressing up their desires in altruistic +clothes. Loving themselves in a lot of crooked mirrors! + +The rest of the story told itself in very few words. John Wollaston +telephoned, about three, from Ravinia, to say that Paula wasn't +well--meant to sing to-night as she was billed to do (she took great +pride in never disappointing her audiences)--but very much wanted him at +hand through the ordeal. If Mary was feeling as much better as her voice +sounded would she mind his not coming until to-morrow morning. + +She'd assured him, of course, that she wouldn't mind a bit. Aunt Lucile +hadn't arrived yet but she would be coming any minute now. Rush had been +making a great fuss about nothing, anyway. She did not volunteer the +information that Rush had already gone to Lake Geneva. + +At five o'clock a telegram, addressed to Rush, had come from Miss +Wollaston. Pete had broken one of the springs of the big car and had had +to go to Durham for another. She hoped Rush and his father would be able +to take care of Mary until to-morrow morning when she would arrive with +one of the servants and take charge. + +That cleared the board. To-morrow they would descend upon her with their +fussy attentions, their medical solemnities, their farcical search for +something--for anything except the truth they wouldn't let her tell--to +account for her nervous breakdown. But for a dozen hours she was, +miraculously, to be let alone, with blessed open spaces round her. No +need for any frantic haste. Plenty of time. The whole of that hot still +summer night. + +And then, at six o'clock, a man named James Wallace had telephoned! And +Jennie MacArthur had decided to drop in that evening for a visit with +Sarah! Fate had played its part; given March his chance. + +"So that's why you decided to go away," he said. + +He had been nerving himself during a long slow silence for that. He could +almost as easily have struck her a blow, and indeed the effect of it was +precisely that. But though she tried to shrink away he held her tighter +and went on. "I don't believe there's anything in the whole picture now +that I don't see and understand. But--but the way out ... Oh, Mary +darling, it isn't the one you are trying to take. There's happiness for +both of us if you'll take the other way--with me." + +She was struggling now to get free from his hands. "No!" she gasped +wildly. "I won't do that. I'll do anything--_anything_ else rather than +that. Let me go now." + +But he held her fast. Presently she relaxed and lay back panting in her +chair. "Won't you please let me go?" she pleaded. "You haven't understood +at all if you don't see that you must. Oh, but you do understand! You've +comforted me ... I didn't think there could be any comfort like that. Let +me go now--in peace. Don't ask the other. I've spoiled things for +everybody else, but I won't for you. I couldn't endure that." + +All the pleas, the arguments, the convincing phrases which he had been +mustering while she talked to him so contentedly, to convince her of the +truth, the blinding truth that he wanted her now for his wife, that life +no longer seemed a possible thing for him upon any other terms--all that +feeble scaffolding of words was, to his despair, swept now clean away in +the very torrent of his passion. He could do nothing for a while but go +on holding her. At last, words burst from him. + +"I won't let you go. Not alone. Wherever you go, I'll go with you." + +She looked up, staring into his face and he saw an incredulous surmise +deepen into certainty. She had seen, heard in that cry of his, the +truth--that he understood what she meant to do. Then her face contorted +itself like a child's, ineffectually struggling to keep back tears, and +she broke down, weeping. + +That broke the spell that had fallen upon him. He took her up, carried +her over to the big armchair and sat down with her in his arms. + +His own terror, which had never more than momentarily receded since she +had first spoken to him from the doorway, was, he realized, gone; +replaced by an inexplicable thrilling confidence that he had won his +victory. He didn't speak a word. + +The tempest was soon spent. It was a matter only of minutes before the +sobbing ceased. But for a long while after she was quiet, all muscles +relaxed, she lay just as he held her, a soft dead weight like a sleeping +child. He wondered, indeed, if she had not fallen asleep and finally +moved his head so that he could see her eyes. They were open, though, and +at that movement of his she stirred, sighed and sat erect. + +"I think I would have dropped off in another minute," she said. Then she +put her hands upon his shoulders. "I won't do that. I promise, solemnly, +I won't do what--what we both thought I meant to do. I don't believe I +could now, anyway. Now that the nightmare is gone." + +She smiled then and bent down and kissed him. "But I won't do the other +thing either, my dear. I'll find some other way. Really go to Omaha +perhaps. But I won't marry you. You see why, don't you?" + +"Oh, yes," he said. "I can tell you exactly why. You don't want to take +away my freedom. You want me to be a sort of--what was that opera you +spoke about at Hickory Hill?--_Chemineau_. Doing nothing but what I +please. Wandering off wherever I like." He smiled. "Mary, dear, do you +realize that you're proposing to deal with me exactly as Graham Stannard +would have dealt with you? Trying to make an image of me?" + +She started from his knees, retreated a pace or two and turned and +confronted him. + +"That's not true," she protested. "That can't possibly be true!" + +He did not answer. He had plenty of arguments with which to establish the +parallel, his mind was aflame with phrases in which to plead his cause +with her. Somehow they wouldn't come to his tongue. It didn't occur to +him that fatigue had anything to do with this. He was filled with a +sudden fury that he could not talk to her. + +She had turned away, restlessly, and moved to one of the dormer windows. +Following her with his eyes he saw the dawn coming. + +He rose stiffly from his chair. "I guess I had better take you home +now," he said. + +She nodded and got her hat. When he found her at the door after he had +put out the lamp she clung to him for a moment in the dark and he thought +she meant to speak, but she did not. + +He helped her down the irregular shaky stair and then, along the gray +cool empty street he walked with her toward the brightened sky. + +She said, at last, "Graham wouldn't let me tell him what the real me was +like. Tell me the truth about the real you." + +"There isn't much to tell. I guess I'm pretty much like any one else when +it comes down to--to ... I don't want to go on, alone. I want to be +woven in with you. I want..." + +He stood still in a vain effort to make the words come. "I can't talk!" +he cried, and his voice broke in a sob. + +"You needn't," she said; and pressing his hand against her breast she led +him on again. She was trembling and her hand was cold. + +Nothing more was said between them, all the way. But when they reached +her door and managed to open it she stood for a moment peering through +the dusk into his face. + +"If it's true..." she said. "If you really want a home and a wife--like +me... Oh, yes, I know it's true!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +JOHN ARRIVES + + +Two or three hours after March and Mary came to the Dearborn Avenue house +that Sunday morning, a little before eight o'clock to be precise, John +Wollaston, deterred by humane considerations from ringing the door-bell, +tried his latch-key first and found it sufficient. Rather surprisingly +since his sister was particular about bolts and chains. But this mild +sensation was engulfed the next moment in clear astonishment when he +encountered in the drawing-room doorway, Anthony March. + +The piano tuner was coatless and in his socks. Evidently it was no less +recent an event than the sound of the latchkey which had roused him +from sleep. + +"Oh," he said. "It's you, sir." And added as he came a little wider +awake, "I'm very glad you've come." + +John detected a reservation of some sort in this afterthought; faintly +ironic perhaps. There was, at any rate, a conspicuous absence of any +implication that his presence was urgently needed just then, or eagerly +waited for. + +He replied with an irony a little more marked, "It's an unexpected +pleasure to find you here. They're wanting you rather badly up at Ravinia +these days, I understand." + +March nodded, cast a glance in the direction of the stairs and led the +way decisively into the drawing-room. His pantomime made it clear that he +did not wish the rest of the slumbering household aroused. Considerate of +him, of course, and all that, but the decisiveness of the action--as if +he somehow felt himself in charge, despite the arrival of his +host--roused in John a faint hostility. + +He followed nevertheless. He saw at once where his unaccountable visitor +had made his bed. A big cane davenport had been dragged into the bay +window, its velvet cushions neatly stacked on the piano bench, and the +composer's coat, rolled with his deftness of experience, had served him +for a pillow. Not a bad bed for such a night as this that John himself +had sweltered through so unsuccessfully. Probably the coolest place in +the house, right by those open south windows. But all, the same ... + +"Couldn't Rush do better for you than that?" he said. "There must be a +dozen beds in the house." + +"Rush isn't here," March answered. "I believe he went to Lake Geneva +yesterday, for over Sunday." + +John Wollaston felt the blood come up into his face as the conviction +sprang into his mind that Lucile wasn't here, either. She'd never have +left the front door unbolted. She'd never have permitted a guest, however +explicit his preferences, to sleep upon the cane davenport in the +drawing-room with his coat for a pillow. + +It was as if March had followed his train of thought step by step. + +"Miss Wollaston isn't here either," he said. "She was detained by a +broken spring in the car. I believe she expects to arrive this morning." + +A faint amusement showed in his face and presently brightened into a +smile. "I'm really very relieved," he added, "that it was you who got +here first." + +And then the smile vanished and his voice took a new timbre, not of +challenge, certainly not of defiance, but all the more for that of +authority. "The only other person in the house is Mary." + +A sudden weakness of the legs caused John to seat himself, with what +appearance of deliberation he could manage, in the nearest chair. March, +however, remained on his feet. + +"I brought her home last night," he went on, "very late--early this +morning rather--with the intention of leaving her here alone. But I +decided to stay. Also it was her preference that I should. I suspect +she's asleep. She promised, at least, to call me if she didn't." + +That, apparently, finished for the present what he had to say. He +turned--it really was rather gentle the way he disengaged himself from +the fixity of John's look,--replaced the cushions on the cane davenport; +and then, seating himself, began putting on his shoes. + +Precisely that gentleness, though it checked on John's tongue the angry +question, "What the devil were you doing with her until early this +morning?" only added to his anger by depriving it of a target. For a +minute he sat inarticulate, boiling. + +It was an outrageous piece of slacking on Rush's part that he should have +deserted his sister before the arrival of one or the other of his +promised reenforcements relieved him of his duty. It was inexcusable of +Lucile to let a trivial matter like a broken spring keep her at Hickory +Hill. There were plenty of trains, weren't there? And the third rail +every hour? It was shockingly disengenuous of Mary, when she talked with +him over the telephone yesterday afternoon, to have suppressed the +essential fact that Rush had already deserted her and that she was at +that moment alone. + +And then his anger turned upon himself, as a voice within him asked +whether, on his conscience, he could affirm that this knowledge would +have made a difference in his own actions. Could he be sure he wouldn't +have clutched at the assurance that his sister was already on the way +rather than have exacerbated his quarrel with Paula by doing the one +thing that would annoy her most. + +Laboriously he got himself together, steadied himself. "You mustn't +think," he said, "that I'm not grateful. We're all grateful, of course, +to you for having done what our combined negligence appears to have made +necessary." Then his voice hardened and the ring of anger crept into it +as he added, "You may be sure that nothing of the sort will occur again." + +"No," March said dryly. "It won't occur again." He straightened up +and faced John Wollaston squarely. "I've persuaded Mary to marry +me," he said. + +"To marry--_you_!" John echoed blankly. For a moment before his mind +began to work, he merely stared. The first thought that struggled through +was a reluctant recognition of the fact that there was a sort of dignity +in the man which not even the stale look, inevitable about one who has +just slept in his clothes, could overcome. No more than his pallor and +the lines of fatigue deeply marked in his face could impeach his air of +authority. There was something to him not quite accountable under any of +the categories John was in the habit of applying. So much John had +conceded from the first; from that morning in this very room when he had +found him tuning the Circassian grand and had gone away, shutting the +door over yonder, so that Paula shouldn't hear. + +But that Mary should seriously contemplate marrying him! Mary! Good God! + +Once more March disengaged himself from John's fixed gaze. Not at all +as if he couldn't support it; gently again, by way of giving the older +man time to recover from his astonishment. He went into the bay and +stood looking out the window into the bright hot empty street. From +where he sat John could see his face in profile. He certainly was +damned cool about it. + +There recurred to John's mind, a moment during that day's drive he had +taken with Mary, down South, when he had leaped to the wild surmise that +there might be something between those two. She'd been talking about the +piano tuner with what struck him as a surprisingly confident +understanding. + +She had instantly, he remembered, divined his thought and as swiftly +set it at rest. March wasn't, she had said, a person who saved himself +up for special people. He was there for anybody, like a public +drinking fountain. + +But had she been ingenuous in making that reply to him? Had he really +been in her confidence about the man? Obviously not. The only encounter +between them that he had ever heard about was the one she had upon that +day described to him. And Lucile and Rush were evidently as completely in +the dark about the affair as he himself had been. Their meetings, their +numerous meetings, must have been clandestine. That Mary, his own white +little daughter, should be capable of an affair like that! + +Another memory flashed into his mind. The evening of that same day when +she had tried to tell him why she couldn't marry Graham. She wasn't, she +had said, innocent enough for Graham; she wasn't even quite--good. + +The horror of the conclusion he seemed to be drifting upon literally, for +a moment, nauseated John Wollaston. The sweat felt cold upon his +forehead. And then, white hot, bracing him like brandy, a wave of anger. + +Some preliminary move toward speaking evidently caught March's ear, for +he turned alertly and looked. It was one of the oddest experiences John +Wollaston had ever had. The moment he met March's gaze, the whole +infernal pattern, like an old-fashioned set-piece in fireworks, +extinguished itself as suddenly as it had flared. There was something +indescribable in this man's face that simply made grotesque the notion +that he could be a blackguard. John felt himself clutching at his anger +to keep him up but the momentary belief which had fed it was gone. + +March's face darkened, too. "If you have any idea," he said, "that I've +taken any advantage--or attempted to take any..." + +"No," John said quickly. "I don't believe anything like that. I confess +there was a moment just now when it looked like that; when I couldn't +make it look like anything else. It is still quite unaccountable to me. +That explanation is discarded--but I'd like the real one." + +"I don't believe," March said, reflecting over it for a moment, "that +there is any explanation I could give that would make it much more +accountable. We love each other. That is a fact that, accountable or not, +we both had to recognize a number of weeks ago. I didn't ask her to marry +me until last night. I wouldn't have asked her then if it hadn't become +clear to me that her happiness depended upon it as much as mine did. When +she was able to see that the converse was also true, we--agreed upon it." + +"What I asked for," John said, "was an explanation. What you have offered +is altogether inadequate--if it can be called an explanation at all." He +wrenched his eyes away from March's face. "I've liked you," he went on, +"I've liked you despite the fact that I've had some excuse for +entertaining a contradictory feeling. And I concede your extraordinary +talents. But it remains true that you're not--the sort of man I'd expect +my daughter to marry. Nor, unless I could see some better reason than I +see now, permit her to marry." + +This was further than, in cool blood, he'd have gone. But the finding of +a stranger here in his own place (any man would have been a stranger when +it came as close as this to Mary) professing to understand her needs, to +see with the clear eye of certainty where her happiness lay, angered and +outraged him. The more for an irresistible conviction that the profession +was true. But that word permit went too far. He wasn't enough of an +old-fashioned parent to believe, at all whole-heartedly, that Mary was +his to dispose of. + +Again, he looked up at the man's face, braced for the retort his +challenge had laid him open to, and once more the expression he saw +there--a thing as momentary as a shimmer of summer lightning,--told him +more than anything within the resources of rhetoric could have effected. +It was something a little less than a smile that flashed across March's +face, a look half pitiful, half ironic. It told John Wollaston that his +permission was not needed. Events had got beyond him. He was superseded. + +He dropped back limp in his chair. March seated himself, too, and leaned +forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. + +"I know how it must look to you, sir," he said gravely. "Even the social +aspect of the thing in the narrowest sense of the word is serious. And +there are other difficulties harder to get over than that. I don't think +I minimize any of them. And I don't believe that Mary does. But the main +thing is a fact that can't be escaped. If we face that first ..." + +He broke off there for a moment and John saw him grip his hands together. +It was with a visible effort that he went on. + +"One of the things Mary said last night was that sentimentality was the +crudest thing in the world. It caused more tragedies, she said, than +malice. She had learned the cruelty of it by experience. It's not an +experience she can safely go through again." + +It was in an automatic effort to defend himself against the conviction he +felt closing down upon him that John lashed out here with a reply. + +"The fact you're asking me to face is, I suppose, that you two have +discovered you're in love with each other to a degree that makes all +other considerations negligible." + +"That's not quite it," March replied patiently. "A part of it is, that it +would have been just as impossible for Mary to marry Graham Stannard if +she had never seen me. And if she could forget me completely it would +still be impossible for her to marry any one else like him." + +John didn't follow that very closely. His mind was still upon the last +sentence of March's former speech. "It's not an experience she can safely +go through again." What did he mean by that? How much did he mean by +that? Would John, if he could, plumb the full depth of that meaning? +There was no use fighting any longer. + +"The simplest way of stating the fact, I suppose," he said, "is that you +two mean to marry and that you're satisfied that your reasons for making +the decision are valid. Well, if Mary corroborates you, as I have no +doubt she will, I'll face that fact as realistically as possible. I'll +agree not to, as you put it, sentimentalize." + +Then he got up and held out his hand. "I mean that for a better welcome +that it sounds," he concluded. And if there was no real feeling of +kindliness for his prospective son-in-law behind the words, there was +what came to the same thing, a realization that this feeling was bound to +come in time. No candid-minded person could keep alive, for very long, a +grievance against Anthony March. + +The physician in him spoke automatically while their hands were gripped. +"Good lord, man! You're about at the end of your rope. Exhausted--that's +what I mean. How long is it since you've fed?" + +March was vague about this; wouldn't be drawn into the line John had been +diverted into. He answered another question or two of the same tenor with +half his mind and finally said--with the first touch of impatience he had +betrayed, "I'm all right! That can wait. There's one more thing I want +to say before you talk to Mary." + +He seemed grateful for John's permission to sit down again, dropped into +his chair in a way that suggested he might have fallen into it in another +minute, and took the time he visibly needed for getting his wits into +working order again. + +"I think I can see how the prospect must look to you," he began. "The +difficulties and objections that you see are, I guess, the same ones that +appeared to me. The fact that I'm not in her world, at all. That I've +never even tried to succeed nor get on, nor even to earn a decent living. +And that, however hard I work to change all that, it will only be by +perfectly extraordinary luck if I can contrive to make a life for her +that will be--externally anywhere near as good a life as the one she's +always taken for granted. + +"It won't be as much worse, though, as you are likely to think. With the +help she'll give me I shall be able to earn a decent living. Unless that +opera of mine fails--laughably, and I don't believe it will, up at +Ravinia, it will help quite a lot. Make it possible for me to get some +pupils in composition. And I know I can write some songs that will be +publishable and singable--for persons who aren't musicians like Paula. I +did write two or three for the boys in Bordeaux that went pretty well. +That sort of thing didn't seem worth while to me then and I never went +on with it. + +"Oh, you know how I've felt about it. How I've talked about traveling +light and not letting my life get cluttered up. But that isn't really the +thing that's changed. I've never been willing to pay, in liberty and +leisure, for things I didn't want. The only difference is that there's +something now that I do want. And I shan't shirk paying for it. I want +you to understand that." + +He stressed the word you in a way that puzzled John a little, but what +he went on to say after a moment's hesitation made his meaning clear. + +"That's preliminary. You'll find that Mary's misgivings--she's not +without them and they won't be easy to overcome--aren't the same as ours. +Those aren't the things that she's afraid of. She's afraid of taking my +liberty away from me. She won't be able to believe, easily, that my old +vagabond ways have lost their importance for me; that they're a phase I +can afford to outgrow. She's likely to think I've sacrificed something +essential in going regularly to work, giving lessons, writing popular +songs. Of course, it will rest mostly with me to satisfy her that that +isn't true, but any help you can give her along that line, I'll be +grateful for. Last night she seemed convinced--far enough to give me her +promise but..." + +Words faded away there into an uneasy silence. John, looking intently +into the man's face, saw him wrestling, he thought, with same idea, some +fear, some sort of nightmare horror which with all the power of his will +he was struggling not to give access to. He pressed his clenched hands +against his eyes. + +"What is it?" John asked sharply. "What's the matter?" + +"It's nothing," March said between his teeth. "She promised, as I said. +She told me I needn't be afraid." Then he came to his feet with a gesture +of surrender. "Will you let me see her?" he asked John. "Now. Just for a +minute before I go." + +John, by that time, was on his feet, too, staring. "What do you mean, +man? Afraid of what? What is it you're afraid of?" + +March didn't answer the question in words, but for a moment he met her +father's gaze eye to eye and what John saw was enough. + +"Good God!" he whispered. "Why--why didn't you ..." Then turning swiftly +toward the door. "Come along." + +"I'm really not afraid," March panted as he followed him up the stairs, +"because of her promise. It was just a twinge." + +Her door at the foot of the stairs which led to the music room stood wide +open, but both men came to an involuntary breathless pause outside it. +Then John went in, looked for a brief moment at the figure that slept so +gently in the narrow little bed, gave a reassuring nod to March who had +hung back in the doorway, a nod that invited him in; then turned away and +covered his face with his hands just for one steadying instant until the +shock of that abominable fear should pass away. + +When he looked again March stood at the bedside gazing down into the +girl's face. It was as if his presence there were palpable to her. She +opened her eyes sleepily, smiled a fleeting contented smile and held up +her arms to her lover. He smiled, too, and bent down and kissed her. Then +as the arms that had clasped his neck slipped down he straightened, +nodded to John and went back to the door. John followed and for a moment, +outside the room, they talked in whispers. + +"I'm going home now," March said. "To my father's house--not the other +place. There's a telephone there if she wants me. But I'll call anyhow +before I go to Ravina this afternoon." + +It was he, this time, who held out his hand. + +"You can trust her with me in the meantime, I think," John said as he +took it, but the irony of that was softened by a smile. March smiled, +too, and with no more words went away. + +Her eyes turned upon John when he came back into the room, wide open but +still full of sleep. When he stood once more beside her bed a pat of her +hand invited him to sit down upon the edge of it. + +"He really was here, wasn't he?" she asked. "I wasn't dreaming?" + +"No, he was here," John said. + +Her eyelids drooped again. "I'm having the loveliest dreams," she told +him. "I suppose I ought to be waking up. What time is it?" + +"It's still very early. Only about half past eight. Go back to sleep." + +"Have you had breakfast? Pete's wife, out in the garage, will come in and +get it for you." + +"When I feel like breakfast, I'll see to it that I get some," he +said, rising. + +Once more she roused herself a little. "Stay here, then, for a while," +she said. "Pull that chair up close." + +When he had planted the easy chair in the place she indicated and seated +himself in it she gave him one of her hands to hold. But in another +minute she was fast asleep. + +And that, you know, was the hottest, most intolerable sting of all. He +was sore, of course, all over. He had been badly battered during the last +four days. Some of those moments with March down-stairs had been like +blows from a bludgeon. But his daughter's sleepy attempt to concern +herself about his breakfast and the perfunctory caress of that slack +unconscious hand had the effect of the climax of it all. + +She'd just been through the crisis of her life. She'd been down chin-deep +in the black waters of tragedy (he didn't yet know, he told himself, what +the elements of the crisis were nor the poisonous springs of the tragedy) +and all her father meant to her was a domestic responsibility, some one +that breakfast must be provided for! + +He managed to control his release of her hand and his rising from his +chair so that these actions should not be so brusk as to waken her again +and, leaving the room, went down to his own. + +That was the way with children. They remained a part of you but you were +never a part of them. Mary having awakened for her lover, smiled at him, +been reassured by his kiss, had been content to drop off to sleep again. +Her father didn't matter. Not even his derelictions mattered. + +He had been derelict. He didn't pretend to evade that. He could have +forgiven her reproaches; welcomed them. But thanks to March, she had +nothing to reproach him for The presence of a man she had known a matter +of weeks obliterated past years like the writing on a child's slate. He +tried to erect an active resentment against the composer. Didn't all his +troubles go back to the day the man had come, to tune the drawing-room +piano? First Paula and then Mary. + +None of this was very real and he knew it. There was an underlying +stratum of his consciousness that this didn't get down to at all, +which, when it managed to get a word in, labeled it mere petulance, a +childish attempt to find solace for his hurts in building up a +grievance, a whole fortress of grievances to take shelter in against +the bombardment of facts. + +Was this the quality of his bitter four days' quarrel with Paula? Was the +last accusation she had hurled at him last night before she shut herself +in her room, a fact? "Of course, I'm jealous of Mary," she had +acknowledged furiously when he charged her with it. "You don't care +anything about me except for your pleasure. Down there in Tryon, when you +didn't want that, you got rid of me and sent for Mary instead. If that +weren't true, you wouldn't have been so anxious all these years that I +shouldn't have a child." + +No, that wasn't a fact, though it could be twisted into looking like one. +If he had refrained from urging motherhood upon her, if he'd given her +the benefit of his special knowledge, didn't her interest in her career +as a singer establish the presumption that it was her wish rather than +his that they were following. Had she ever said she'd like to have a +baby? Or even hinted? + +He pulled himself up. There was no good going over that again. + +He bathed and shaved and dressed himself in fresh clothes, operations +which had been perforce omitted at the cottage this morning in favor of +his departure without arousing Paula. (He'd slept, or rather lain awake, +upon the hammock in the veranda.) When he came down-stairs he found +Pete's wife already in the kitchen, gave her directions about his +breakfast and then from force of habit, thought of his morning paper. The +delivery of it had been discontinued, of course, for the months the house +was closed, so he walked down to Division Street to get one. + +He had got his mind into a fairly quiescent state by then which made the +trick it played when he first caught sight of the great stacks of +_Tribunes_ and _Heralds_ on the corner news-stand all the more +terrifying. It had the force of an hallucination; as if in the head-lines +he actually saw the word suicide in thick black letters. And his +daughter's name underneath. + +He had managed, somehow, to evade that word; to refrain from putting into +any words at all the peril Mary had so narrowly escaped, although the +fact had hung, undisguised, between him and March during the moment they +stared at each other before they went up-stairs together. It avenged that +evasion by leaping upon him now. He bought his paper and hurried home +with it under his arm, feeling as if it might still contain the news of +that tragedy. + +Reacting from this irrational panic he tried to discount the whole thing. +March hadn't lied, of course, but, being a lover, he had exaggerated. As +John sat over his breakfast he got to feeling quite comfortable about +this. His mind went back to the breakfast he had had with Mary at Ravinia +--breakfast after much such an abominable night as this last had +been--the breakfast they had left for that talk under the trees beside +the lake. And then his own words came back and stabbed him. + +He had been arguing with her his right to extinguish himself if he chose. +He had said he had no religion real enough to make a valid denial of that +right. It was a question no one else could presume to decide. How much +more had he said to that sensitive nerve-drawn child of his? He +remembered how white she had gone for a moment, a little later. And he +had pretended not to see! Just as he had been pretending, a few minutes +back, to doubt the reality of the peril March had saved her from. What a +liar he was! + +Sentimentality, March had quoted Mary as saying, was the cruelest thing +in the world. John stood convicted now of that cruelty toward his +daughter. Was he guilty of it, also, toward his wife? Did their quarrel +boil down to that? + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +SETTLING PAULA + + +Anthony March might deny as much as he pleased that he was "enough of an +Olympian to laugh" at life's ironies, but it remained true that his God +had a sense of humor and that March himself appreciated it. When, well +within that same twenty-four hours, a third member of the Wollaston +family insisted upon telling him her troubles and asking him what she'd +best do about them, he conceded with the flicker of an inward grin (not +at all at the troubles which were serious enough nor at their sufferer +who was in despair), that the great Disposer, having set out to demolish +that philosophy, enjoyed making a thorough job of it. + +It was about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon that he came to Paula's +cottage at Ravinia to get the score to _The Outcry_. The maid who opened +the door informed him that her mistress wasn't at home, but when he told +her what he wanted, and she had gone rather dubiously up-stairs to see +about it, it was Paula herself who, after a wait of ten minutes or so, +came down with the manuscript in her hand. + +He was, perhaps, just the one person in the world she'd have come down to +see. All the explanation she volunteered to herself was that he didn't +matter. It didn't matter, this was to say, if he did perceive that she +had been crying for days and days and looked an utter wreck. + +And then his errand brought her a touch of comfort. The acceptance of +_The Outcry_ for production restored the proprietary feeling she once +had had about it. She was the discoverer of _The Outcry_ and if you'd +asked her who was responsible for the revival of interest in it and for +the fact that it was now to be produced, I think she'd have told you +quite honestly that she was. Hadn't she asked them all to come to her +house to hear it? And sung the part of "Dolores" herself at that very +informal audition? + +And I'll hazard one further guess. It is that her quarrel with John made +March's opera a rather pleasanter thing to dwell on a little. She had +taken it up in defiance of his wish in the first place; her abandonment +of it had acquired from its context the color of a self-sacrificial +impulse. She would carry out her contract, she had told John down in +Tryon, but she wouldn't sing "Dolores" for anybody. Well, now that her +love-life with John was irremediably wrecked, there was a sort of +melancholy satisfaction in handling, once more, the thing that stood as +the innocent symbol of the disaster. + +That's neither here nor there, of course. Paula was totally unaware of +any such constellation about her simple act of deciding to carry down the +score herself instead of handing it over to the maid. + +The sight of him standing over the piano in her sitting-room cheered her +and the look of melancholy she brought down-stairs with her was replaced +by a spontaneous unexpected smile. Just as Mary, out at Hickory Hill, had +predicted, she remembered how well she liked him. She laid the manuscript +on the piano in order to give him both hands. + +"I can't tell you how pleased I am about it," she said. "I wish you all +the luck in the world." + +He brightened responsively at that but looked, she thought, a little +surprised, too. + +"I am glad you're pleased about it," he told her. "I wasn't quite sure +you'd know. Of course, they telephoned." + +She stepped back, puzzled. "But of course I know!" she said. "Haven't I +been working on it for weeks! Why, it was right here in this room that +they decided on it. Days ago. I've been trying frantically to find you +ever since." + +"Oh," he said, "you mean _The Outcry_. I thought you were congratulating +me on my engagement to marry Mary." + +She stared at him in simple blank incredulity. "To marry Mary! Mary +Wollaston? You don't mean that seriously?" + +"It's the only serious fact in the world," he assured her. + +"But John--Does John know about it?" she demanded. + +"Yes," he said. + +She drew a long breath, then pounced upon him with another question. "Did +you tell him about it, or was it Mary who did?" + +"It was I," March said. "I was the first one to see him after it +happened." + +"He hadn't suspected anything, had he?" she persisted. + +She was vaguely aware that he was a little puzzled and perhaps in the +same degree amused by her intensity, but she had no interest in half +tones of that sort. + +When he answered in the sense she expected, "No, I can testify to +that. He was taken completely by surprise when I broke it to him;" she +heaved another long breath, turned away, and sat down heavily in the +nearest chair. + +"Poor old John!" she said. But she didn't let that exclamation go +uninterpreted. "I didn't mean anything--personal by that," she went on. +"Only--only I didn't think John could make up his mind to let her +marry--anybody." Then in a rush--an aside, to be sure, but one he was +welcome to hear if he chose.--"He wanted her so much all to himself." + +Whether he heard it or not, he failed, she thought, to attach any special +significance to that last comment of hers. He said that John had been +very nice about it, though he was, as any father would be under the +circumstances, taken aback. He had consented to regard the arrangement as +an accomplished fact and would, March hoped, in time be fully reconciled +to it. Then he went back rather quickly to the matter of his opera. + +"Of course, it means more than ever to me now," he said, putting his hand +on the manuscript, "to get this produced. If it goes moderately well it +will help in a good many ways." + +She found some difficulty in again turning her mind to this theme and +answered absently and rather at random, until she perceived that he was +getting ready to take his leave. He was saying something about an +appointment with LaChaise. + +"Is it at once?" she asked. "Do you have to go right away?" + +"I'm to have dinner with him and his secretary, who can talk English, at +six," March said, "but I thought I'd carry this off somewhere and read it +before I talked with them. It's been a long way out of my mind this last +three months." + +"Don't go," Paula said. "It seems so--so nice to have you here. Sit down +and read your score. Then you'll have a piano handy in case you want to +hear anything." She added as she saw him hesitate, "I won't bother +you--but I'm feeling awfully lonely to-day." + +At that, of course, he relinquished, though a little dubiously she +thought, his intention to go. She set about energetically making matters +convenient for him, cleared a small table of its litter and set it in the +window where he would have the best light; chose a chair for him to sit +in; urged him to take off his coat; and began looking about for something +for him to smoke--but not quite successfully. She was sure there were +cigarettes of Mary's somewhere about. + +He didn't care to smoke just now, he said. If he felt later like +resorting to a pipe he would. + +Was there anything else? Didn't he want a pencil and paper to make notes +on? No, he was supplied with everything, he said. + +But for all the ardor of these preparations of hers, she was a little +disconcerted and aggrieved at the way he took her at her word and plunged +into the study of his score. + +She found herself a novel and managed, for five minutes or so, to pretend +to read. Then she flung it aside and drifted over to the piano bench and +after gazing moodily a while at the keyboard, began in a fragmentary way +to play bits of nothing that came into her head. But she stopped herself +short in manifest contrition when, happening to look around at him, she +saw a knot of baffled concentration in his forehead. + +"Of course, you can't read if I do that," she said. "I'm sorry." Then +under cover of the same interruption, "How did John look when you saw him +this morning? Like a wreck? What time was it, anyway? It must have been +frightfully early that he left here because I waked as soon as it was +really light and he was gone by then." + +"I don't know that he looked particularly a wreck," March said. "Not any +worse, I mean, than he looked out at Hickory Hill the day you opened the +season here." + +"He didn't say anything about me, did he?" she asked. + +"No," March said, "I don't think he did." + +"I suppose you'd remember it if he'd happened to tell you that he loathed +and hated me and never wanted to see me again." Then she rose and went +over to the opposite side of his little table and leaning down spread her +hands out over his score. + +"Oh, I know I said I wouldn't bother, but do stop thinking about this and +talk to me for a minute. We're having--we're having a perfectly hideous +time. He and I. We've been fighting like cat and dog for four days. I +don't exactly know what it's all about, except that it seems we hate each +other and can't go on. You've got to tell me what to do. It all started +with you anyway. With the time you brought around those Whitman +songs.--That was the day Mary came home from New York, too," she added. + +"All right," he said, shutting down the cover upon his manuscript, +"then Mary and I will try to patch you up. That is, if we haven't +already done it." + +Her face darkened. "Don't try to talk the way they do," she commanded. +"I'm not intelligent enough to take hints. Do you mean that the whole +trouble is that I'm jealous of Mary? And that now she's going to marry +you I'll have nothing to be jealous of? Well, you're wrong both ways. +There's more to it than that. And that isn't going to stop just because +she's marrying you. She'll always be there for him. And he'll be there +for her. You'll find that out before you've gone far." + +He didn't seem disposed to dispute this, nor to be much perturbed about +it, either. He annoyed her by saying, "Well, if it's a permanent fact, +like snow in February, what's the good of taking it so hard?" + +"You can go south in February," she retorted. Then she went on, "I want +to know if you don't think I've a right to be jealous of her. I'd saved +his life. He admitted that. But when we went south, afterward, he simply +didn't want me around. Sent me home pretending I'd be wanted for +rehearsals. And then he sent for her. They spent a week +together--talking! As far as that goes, they could have done it just as +well if I'd been there. They can talk right over my head and I never know +what it's all about. Wait till they begin doing that with you! I don't +suppose they will though. You're a talker, too. He told her things he'd +never told me-about his money troubles. What he said to me was that he +didn't want to stand in the way of my career. He left her to tell me the +truth about it, later,--after I'd told him I didn't want any +career--though I'd just been offered the best chance I ever had. And +then, when he came and found that I'd done--for him--what he'd been +trying to make me do for myself, he was furious. We fought all night +about it. And when I came down the next morning, ready to do anything he +wanted me to, he'd wandered off with Mary. To talk me over with her +again.--Tell her some more things, I suppose, that I didn't know about." + +March had nothing to interpose here, it seemed, in Mary's defense, for +her pause gave him ample opportunity to do so. He merely nodded +reflectively and loaded and lighted his pipe. + +"Well," she demanded presently, "can you see now that there's something +more to it than jealousy? Whatever I try to do, he fights. When I wanted +to begin singing again last spring, he fought that. And when I wanted to +give it all up, after he'd so nearly died, he wouldn't let me. And when +I'd refused the best chance I'd ever had, for him, and then changed +around and accepted it because of him, he seemed to hate me for doing +that. And he simply boiled when I told him I'd gone and got the money, +myself, from Wallace Hood." + +"Yes," March said, so decisively that he startled her, "I know all about +it up to there. That was Thursday afternoon, wasn't it? Go on from then." + +The interruption disconcerted her. "There isn't much more--to tell," she +went on, but a good deal less impetuously. "Except that we fought and +fought and fought. About eight o'clock that night I said I was going to +the park to see the performance;--just to get a rest from talking. Mr. +Eckstein was there and the Williamsons and James Wallace, so I asked them +all to come home with us. And Fournier and LaChaise, too. And we got on +your opera and LaChaise played part of it and then I read a lot of it +with Fournier. So they didn't go home till after three. John thought I +was keeping them there in order not to be left alone with him.--Well, +what was the good of talking, anyhow? We did get started again on Friday, +though; all day long. And Friday night we--made up, in a way. At least, I +thought we did. + +"Well, and then yesterday morning Rush telephoned out from town and said +he thought John ought to come in to see Mary. She wasn't very well. I +told him to go if he liked. I was feeling perfectly awful, yesterday, +myself--and I was billed for _Thais_ last night. There isn't another +soprano up here who wouldn't have cancelled it, feeling the way I did. +But I told John that if he thought Mary needed him more than I did, he'd +better go.--I wish he had gone. After he'd telephoned to say he wasn't +coming--he'd talked to Mary herself, that time--he kept getting colder +and gloomier and more--unendurable from hour to hour. And after the +performance, we had the most horrible fight of all. He told me I had kept +him away from Mary on purpose,--because I was jealous of her. He said he +could never forgive himself for the way he'd treated her--in order to +curry favor with me. And he said that the first thing in the morning he +was going to her. That's all.--Oh, well, I said a few things to him, too. +Do you wonder?" + +By way of a flourish, she flashed to her feet again at this conclusion +(she'd been up and down half a dozen times in the course of her appeal to +him as jury), and walked away to a window. But after the silence had spun +itself out to the better part of a minute, she whipped round upon him. + +"Have you been listening to a word I've said?" she demanded. + +"Yes," he said, but with the contradictory air of fetching himself back +from a long way off. "Truly! I've listened to every word. And I don't +wonder a bit." + +"Don't wonder at what?" + +"That you said a few things to him, too. You've got a valid grievance, it +seems to me. You couldn't be blamed for quarreling with him over it as +bitterly as possible." + +She barely heeded the words. They never did mean much to Paula. But his +look and his tone reached her, and stung. + +"Look here!" she said with sudden intensity. "Before we go any farther, I +want to know this. Did Mary really need John, yesterday?" + +She saw him turn pale and she had to wait two or three long breaths for +her answer. But it came evenly enough at last. + +"I happened to turn up instead. And she's perfectly all right, to-day." + +Her eyes filled with tears. She turned forlornly away from him and +dropped down upon a settee. "You hate me, too, now, I suppose. As +well as he." + +He sat down beside her and laid a hand upon her shoulder. "My dear," he +said--and his own voice had a break of tenderness in it,--"I couldn't +hate any one to-day if I wanted to. And I never could want to hate you. +If there's anything I can do to help with John Wollaston.... But you see, +if you want to keep your grievance you don't need any help. Nobody can +take it away from you. It's only if you want to get rid of it--because +it's making you beastly unhappy, no matter how valid it is--that you need +any help from me or any one else. If that's what you want, I'll take a +shot at writing you a prescription." + +"Go crawling back to him on my knees, I suppose," she said in a tone not +quite so genuinely resentful as she felt it ought to be. "And ask him to +forgive me. What's the good of that when he doesn't love me?--Oh, of +course I know he does--in a way." + +His hand dropped absently from her shoulder. After a thoughtful moment he +sprang up and took a turn of the room. "Do you know," he said, halting +before her, "'in a way' is the only way there is. The only way any two +people ever do love each other. That's what makes half the trouble, I +believe. Trying to define it as if it were a standard thing. Like +sterling silver; so many and so many hundredths per cent. pure. Love's +whatever the personal emotion is that draws two people together. It may +be anything. It may make them kind to each other, or it may make them nag +each other into the mad-house, or it may make them shoot each other dead. +It's probably never exactly the same thing between any two pairs of +people..." + +"Don't talk nonsense," she said petulantly. + +"I'm not a bit sure it's nonsense," he persisted. "I only just thought of +it, but I believe I've got on to something. Well, if I'm right, then the +problem is to adjust that emotion to your life, or your life to that +emotion, in such a way that the thing will work. There aren't any rules. +There can't be any. It's a matter of--well, that's the word--adjustment." + +She could not see that this was helping her much. It was not at all the +line she'd projected for him. Yet she was finding it hard not to feel +less tragic. She had even caught herself, just now, upon the brink of +being amused. "Wait till you've tried to adjust something, as you say, +with John, and have had him tell you what you think until you believe +you do. When he's really being perfectly unreasonable all the while." + +"Of course," March observed with the air of one making a material +concession, "he is a good bit of a prima donna himself." + +"What do you mean by that?" she demanded. And then, petulantly, she +accused him of laughing at her, of refusing to take her seriously, of +trying to be clever like the Wollastons. + +"Look here, Paula," he said, and he put so much edge into his tone that +she did, "have you ever spent five minutes out of the last five years +trying to think what John was, besides your husband? I don't believe it. +When I spoke of him to you, months ago, as a famous person you didn't +know what I was talking about. He is. He's got a better chance--say to +get into the next edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, than you +have. He's got a career. He had it long before he knew you existed.--How +old was he when he came to Vienna? About fifty, wasn't he?" + +"Forty-nine," she said with the air of one making a serious +contradiction; but her, "Oh, well,--" and a little laugh that followed it +conceded that it was not. + +"He'd had a career then for a long time," March went on. "He was +established. He had things about as he wanted them. And then, out of +nowhere, an irresistible thing like you came along and torpedoed him. He +must have realized that he had gone clean out of his head about you. A +man of that age doesn't fall in love unconsciously, nor easily either. He +must have had frightful misgivings about persuading you to marry him. On +your account as well as his own. Because he is that, you know. +Conscientious, I mean. Almost to a morbid degree." + +"Oh, yes," she conceded, "they're both like that. They spend half their +time working things out trying to be fair." + +He gave her a quick look, then came and sat down beside her again. +"Well, then," he said, "we're on the right track. Just follow it along. +You're the one big refractory thing in his life. The thing that +constantly wants reconciling with something else,--at the same time that +you're the delight of it, and the center and core of it. And while he's +trying to deal with those problems justly, you know, he's taking on all +of yours, too. He's trying to see things with your eyes, feeling them +with your nerves, and since he's got a kind of uncanny penetration, I'd +be willing to bet that he can tell you, half the time, what you're +thinking about better than you could yourself. No wonder, between his +conscience and his desire--your mutual desire--he's unreasonable. And +since he's too old to be reformed out of his conscience that leaves the +adjustment up to you." + +"I don't know what more I can do," she said. "I've offered to give up +everything." + +"Yes," he said with a grunt, "that's it. I don't wonder he flew at you. +_That's_ the thing you'll have to give up!" + +He rose and stood over her and thumped home, his point with one fist in +the palm of the other hand. "Why, you've got to give up the nobility," he +said. "The self-sacrificial attitude. You've got to chuck the heroine's +role altogether, Paula. That's what you've been playing, naturally +enough. It makes good drama for you, but look where it leaves him! First +you give up your career for him, and then you give him up for the career +you've undertaken for his sake. You've contrived to put him in the wrong +both ways. Oh, not meaning to, I know; just by instinct. Well, give that +up. Give up the renunciatory gesture. Go to him and tell him the truth. +That you want, in a perfectly human selfish way, all you can get, both of +him and of a career. They aren't mutually exclusive really. It ought to +be possible to have quite a lot of each." + +"You think you know such a lot," she protested rebelliously, "but +there's only one thing I want, just the same, and that's John, himself." + +"No doubt that's true this afternoon," he admitted. "You sang _Thais_ +last night and several thousand people, according to this morning's +paper, cheered you at the end of the second act. But I believe I can tell +you your day-dream. It's to be the greatest dramatic soprano in the +world--home for a vacation. With John and perhaps one or two small +children of the affectionate age around you." + +Her face flamed at that. "John _has_ been talking about me this morning!" +she cried. + +He shook his head. "It was only a chance shot," he told her. "I'm sorry +if it came close enough home to hurt. But there couldn't be a better +day-dream than that and there's no reason I can see why it shouldn't come +reasonably true, if you'll honestly try for as much of it as you can get. +That's the prescription, anyhow. Give up nobility and all the heroic +poses that go with it and practise a little enlightened selfishness +instead. Perhaps by force of example you may persuade John Wollaston to +abandon about half of his conscience. Then you _would_ be settled." + +With that he went back to his score and by no protest or expostulation +could she provoke another word out of him. She fidgeted about the room +for a quarter of an hour or so. Then with the announcement that she was +going to dress, left it and went up-stairs. + +When she came down a while later in street things and a hat she presented +him with a new perplexity. + +"I've been trying everywhere I can think of to get a car," she said, "and +there simply isn't one to be had. I even tried to borrow one." + +He asked her what she wanted of a car. Where she wanted to go. + +"Oh, can't you see!" she cried, "I don't want to send for John again to +come to me. I want to go to him. It's too maddening!" + +"Well," he said, with a grin, "if you really want--desperately--to go to +him, of course there's the trolley." + +She stared at him for a moment and then perceiving, or thinking she +perceived, something allegorical about the suggestion, she gave a laugh, +swooped down and kissed him and went. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE KALEIDOSCOPE + + +It was the next Sunday morning that Miss Wollaston, who had decided to +stay in town even though the emergency she had been summoned to meet was +found mysteriously to have evanesced when she arrived, asked Wallace +Hood, walking home with her from church, to come in to lunch. + +"I haven't the least idea," she said, "whether we shall be quite by +ourselves or whether the entire family, including the latest addition to +it, will come straggling in before we've finished." + +She would not have considered it quite delicate to have owned to him how +very clearly she hoped to have him, for an hour or two, all to herself. +He would be found, she was confident, not to have gone through the +looking-glass into the world of topsy-turvey that all the rest of them +seemed to be inhabiting, these days. It would be comforting to talk with +somebody who was still capable of regarding things right side to. + +She was much too penetrating a person not to have been perfectly aware +from the first that, astonishing as were the facts John had communicated +to her, upon her arrival from Hickory Hill a week ago, other facts of +major importance were being suppressed. + +She had found her brother apparently occupied in the normal Sunday +morning manner with his newspaper, and he had answered her rather +breathless inquiries about Mary by saying that she was all right. She was +finishing off her night's sleep but would, he supposed, be down by and +by. There was nothing the matter. Rush had been unnecessarily alarmed, +lacking the fact which explained the case. And then he sprang his mine, +informing her that Mary was engaged to marry Anthony March. + +When, after a speechless interval, she had asked him, feebly, whether he +didn't mean Graham Stannard, he had been very short with her indeed. The +engagement to March was an accomplished fact, and the sooner we took it +for granted the better. He showed a great reluctance to go further into +detail about the matter and he flinched impatiently from the innocent +question;--when had he himself been informed of this astounding state of +things. Well, naturally, since in the train of his answer the fact had +been elicited that he hadn't come to town until this morning and that +Mary had spent another night alone. And it was not Mary but March who +had, already this morning, told him about it. + +Beyond that John couldn't be driven to go. He concluded by putting a +categorical injunction upon her. She wasn't to expostulate with Mary nor +to attempt to examine either into her reasons for this step nor into her +state of mind in making it. He was satisfied that the girl knew what she +was doing and that it represented her real wishes. His sister's +satisfaction on these points would have to be vicarious. + +The surmise had formed itself irresistibly in Lucile's mind that John +himself was involved in this decision of Mary's. Had she done this +thing--involved herself in the beginnings of it, anyhow,--as a desperate +measure to bring her father and his wife together again? By removing a +temptation that Paula was still in danger of yielding to? She didn't put +it to herself quite as crudely as that to be sure. + +Certainly she had no intention of asking Wallace Hood what he thought +about it. But perhaps he might have some other explanation of her +niece's sacrifice. It must have been a sacrifice to something. An answer +to some fancied call of duty. Unless it were a freak of sheer perversity. +But this was dangerous ground for Lucile. + +The queerest thing about it all was the way it seemed--magically--to be +producing such beneficent results. John and Paula were reconciled by +it,--or at least as soon as it happened. Paula had come down from Ravinia +that very day, had had some sort of scene with her husband, and the two +had been almost annoyingly at one upon every conceivable subject since. +Something had happened also during the week to Rush, which lightened the +gloom that had been hanging on him so long,--some utterly surprising +interview with Graham Stannard's father. Pure coincidence one must +suppose this to be, of course. Mary's engagement couldn't have anything +to do with it. And then Mary herself! The girl was a new person. +Absolutely radiant. Orthodox conduct of course for a just engaged +girl--but in the circumstances one would think... + +Lucile saw that Wallace hesitated a little about accepting her +invitation to lunch and recalled the fact that he hadn't dropped in on +them once during the week though he had known that they were more or +less back in town. + +"Why, yes, I'll come with pleasure," he said. "I don't know precisely +what sort of terms I'm on with John. He felt for a few days, I know, that +I'd been rather officious, but I may as well have it out with him now as +later. And I shall be glad of an opportunity to give Mary my best wishes. +I wrote her a note, of course, the day I read the announcement of the +engagement in the newspapers." He added, "I certainly was in the dark as +to that affair." + +"Aren't you--still more or less, in the dark about it?" Miss Wollaston +inquired. "I don't mind owning that I am. Mary's sense of social values +always seemed to me to be at least adequately developed. On the surface +one would have to call her rather worldly, I think." + +"On the surface perhaps," Wallace interposed, "but not really; not at +heart. Still, I'll grant it isn't easy to understand. There's a certain +attraction about the man of course. And then there's his music." + +"And Mary," Miss Wollaston observed, "happens to be the one utterly +unmusical person in the family. She's completely absorbed in the +preparation for his opera however." Then after a little pause, "She may +prove rather more explanatory with you than she has been with me. She +seems to take a certain pleasure in mystifying me. In saying things in a +matter-of-fact way that are quite astounding. That's the new generation, +of course. They talk a different language from mine. It will be a +comfort," she concluded, rather pathetically, as they mounted the high +steps to her brother's door, "to talk the matter over quietly with some +one to whom my ideas and standards are still intelligible." + +But this comfort was, for the present, to be denied her. Mary had spent +the morning in her room writing notes and was coming down the stairs when +the church-goers came in. + +She negotiated what were left of the steps in a single swoop, gave her +visitor both hands along with the "Wallace! How nice!" that welcomed him, +and then, drawing back with a gesture which invited his scrutiny, said, +"Well? What do you think?--Oh, but thanks for your note, first. I've just +answered it." + +Radiant was the word. There couldn't be any doubt of that. And younger. +There was a twinkle of mischief that he had to go back-five years, +anyhow, to remember the like of. + +He had none of Lucile's feeling that decency required one's joy over an +event of this sort to be of the chastened variety and he brightened in +instantaneous response to the girl's mood, but the mere impact of her +left him for a moment wordless. + +"You needn't try to make me a speech," she said. "I know you're pleased. +Not as pleased as you would be if you knew all about it, but ..." + +"As pleased as possible, anyhow," he said. On that, amicably arm in arm, +they followed Miss Wollaston into the drawing-room. + +"I don't believe we've seen each other," she said, "since the night we +had dinner together at the Saddle and Cycle, weeks and weeks ago." + +"No," he said. "I remember very well that we haven't." + +Miss Wollaston had drifted away from them (occupied, as she so often +was when there were no persons present in the formal status of guests, +in making minute readjustments of pillows and things as a sort of +standing protest against the demon of disorder), and having noted this +fact he went on: + +"I didn't come for the picnic tea you invited me to the other day. If I'd +known how the land lay, I shouldn't have sent a substitute. I'm afraid, +perhaps, that was rather--tactless of me." + +He saw the queerest look come into her face,--enough in itself to startle +him rather though it wasn't without a gleam of humor. + +"I was just wondering," she explained, "whether if you had come that +particular day, I mightn't be engaged to you now instead of to Tony." + +Unluckily Lucile heard that and froze rigid for a moment with horror. +Then recovering her motor faculties, she moved in a stately manner +toward the door. + +"I think if you will excuse me," she said, "I'll go up and prepare for +luncheon." + +Mary gazed conscience-stricken from her to Wallace who was blushing like +a boy caught stealing apples. "I'm sorry," she gasped, but not quickly +enough for the apology to overtake her aunt. "It's terrible of me to say +things like that and I do, every now and then. Can you bear with me until +I've had time to quiet down? It's all so new, to be happy like this, I'm +a little--wild with it." + +In his nice neutral unexaggerated way he told her that her happiness +could never be anything but a joy to him; and after that, when they were +seated side by side upon the cane davenport he asked about her plans; +when they were going to be married, where they meant to live, and so on. + +"Why, we'll be married, I suppose," she said, "at the end of the +customary six weeks' engagement. There isn't a thing to wait for, +really." + +"I'm glad of that," he remarked. + +Anybody but Mary would have taken that at its face value; he was glad +that they would have to wait no longer. But he flinched as she glanced +round toward him and at that she laughed and patted his hand +reassuringly. + +"We're doing everything correctly," she told him; "beginning with +father's announcement of the engagement in the papers, Tuesday. We +remain on exhibition during the conventional six weeks and then we're +married at noon over in the Fourth Church. Impeccable! That's going to +be our middle name." + +Mary used so very little slang that she was able to produce quite +extraordinary effects with it when she did. + +"I'm glad," Wallace said, a little ruffled by the start she had given +him, "that you have not been persuaded to do anything--differently." + +"Who do you suppose it was," she asked, "who insisted, in an adamantine +manner, that it be done like that? It wasn't me and it wasn't Aunt +Lucile. It was Anthony March." She added, after a reflective silence, "He +was right about it, of course, because when that's over it's done with. +And then--what he hasn't thought of, and I wouldn't have, most likely +until it was too late--he'll have a friendlier audience next Tuesday +night than if he'd given me my way and made a trip to the City Hall with +me last Monday. I wanted to burn my bridges, you see;--and he laughed at +me. I haven't told that to any one but you.--All the same, if he thinks, +from that, that he can go on accumulating--millstones ..." + +"Tell me where you are planning to live," Wallace said, getting back as +he was always glad to do, to firm ground again. "Not too far away, I +hope, for us to go on seeing a lot of you." + +"Oh, it's very sad about that," she told him. "I was hoping to live with +him in his secret lair over the Italian grocery. No, but it was really +delightful. One big room, bigger than this, with dormers and dusty beams +and an outside stair. He's had it for years. It's not half a mile from +here--and Paula could never find out where it was! But, unexpectedly, +he's being turned out. I could have wept when he told me." + +"Unexpectedly!" quoted Wallace, the professional real estate man in +him touched by this evidence of lay negligence. "March hadn't any +lease, I suppose." + +"He didn't need any," said Mary. "He owned it." + +"If he owns it how can they turn him out--unexpectedly?" + +"What he owned was the second story. Well, he still does, of course. But +when they tear the first floor and the basement out from under him, as +they're going to do next week, his second story won't do him much good." + +"But, good gracious, they can't do that!" Wallace cried. "They must +leave him his floor and his ceiling just where they are now. And his +light. They can build above and below--I suppose that's what they're +tearing the old building down for--but that layer of space, if he +really bought it and has got anything to show that he really bought it, +belongs to him." + +"Do you mean seriously," she demanded, "that it's possible to buy the +second story of a building? It's like Pudd'n-'head Wilson's joke about +buying half a dog and killing his half." + +"Of course I mean it," he insisted. "An easement like that cost our +estate thousands of dollars only a year or two ago. Serious! I should +think it was! Ask Rodney Aldrich. See what he says.--Of course, it's +nothing unless he can show some instrument that proves his title. But if +he can it might be worth ... Well, it's just a question how badly they +happen to need that particular bit of land. Those people we fell foul of +managed to hold us up for a tidy sum." + +She was looking at him thoughtfully, a faint, rather wry smile just +touching her lips. "A minute ago," she said, "I was about to fling myself +upon your neck and thank you for so wonderful a wedding present to us as +that would be. And now I'm wondering ... Wallace, I don't suppose it +would strike you that there would be anything--shady about doing a thing +like that." + +"Shady!" He was, for a moment, deeply affronted by the mere suggestion. +Then, remembering her total ignorance of all such matters, he smiled at +her. "My dear Mary, do you think--leaving my rectitude aside--that I'd +have referred you to Rodney Aldrich if I'd felt that there was anything +questionable about it?" + +"I know," she conceded. "And Martin Whitney would feel the same way. And +father, I suppose, and Rush. Everybody we know. Yet I was wondering +whether I'd say anything to Tony about it. I've decided I will, but I'm +going to ask you not to, nor to anybody else, until I've talked to him. +I'd like it left--altogether to him, you see." + +He agreed, rather blankly to this. Presently she went on: + +"I'm glad he's a real genius, not just a fragment of one as so many of +them are. There's something--robust about him. And since that's so, I +don't believe we'll do him any real harm; we--advantage-snatchers, you +know. That's so very largely how we live, we nice people (it's why we're +able to be nice, of course)--that we get perfectly blind to it. But he's +so strong, and he can see in so deep, that I guess he's safe. That's the +belief I have to go on, anyhow." + +She sprang up and gave him another pat upon the shoulder. "He'll be +getting here in a few minutes, I suspect. Father telephoned that he and +Paula were going to bring him down as soon as his rehearsal was over. I'm +going up now to try to make my peace with Aunt Lucile." + +After lunch she told the family that she had matters to talk over with +Tony and meant to take him for a walk. His father and mother expected +them to drop in at their house about five and the intervening two hours +would give them just about time to "cover the ground." She was openly +laughing at her own pretense at being matter-of-fact. + +It was pretty hot for walking, her father thought. Why not let Pete drive +them around a while in the car? Or take the small car and drive herself? +But she was feeling pedestrian, she said, and, anyhow, the topic she had +in mind couldn't be discussed in a motor-car. They'd go to Lincoln Park +and stroll around in the shade. + +"And if we get tired," she added with a flicker, in response to her +aunt's movement of protest, "we can squeeze in among the other couples on +some grassy bank.--Oh, Aunt Lucile, don't mind! We _won't_ do +anything--disgraceful." + +"You see what a cat I am," she told March as they set out. "I make her +squirm without meaning to, and then, when she squirms, I scratch. Now +talk to me until I can get in good humor with myself again." + +"I've two or three things to tell you," he said. "I saw Sylvia Stannard +this morning. She came to rehearsal with the little Williamson girl, and +carried me off bodily for a talk. She's had a long letter from Graham. + +"He's quite well," he went on swiftly, ignoring the gasp she gave, "and +doesn't want to be, as he says, fussed over." + +"Where is he?" she asked. "I'll write him a letter, of course. Only +you'll have to tell me what to say." + +"He's visiting a friend--a college classmate--on Long Island. And he's +already had a job offered him by his friend's father, in an engineering +office. He's a pretty good engineer, I believe. He thinks he'll accept +it. Anyhow, he is definitely not coming back to Hickory Hill. Sylvia +attaches some significance to the fact that his friend also has a pretty +sister, but that's just the cynicism of youth, I suspect." + +This last suggestion silenced her--with another gasp, as perhaps he had +meant it to do. He added, presently: + +"As for writing, I've already done that myself." + +"You!" she exclaimed. "Where's the letter?" + +"It's already despatched. I wrote it as soon as the rehearsal was over. +But I'll tell you what I said in it. I told him I supposed he had heard +of our engagement, but that I knew you wished him to be told of it +personally. You were very fond of him, I said, and the only thing that +clouded your happiness was a fear that he might not be able to share it. +I assured him that I was completely in your confidence and knew that you +had been through a period of very severe nervous stress, verging upon a +nervous breakdown, but that I believed you were on the way to a speedy +recovery. And I ended by saying that I believed a line from him to you, +setting some of your misgivings at rest, would hasten it. And I was his +most cordially." + +She didn't try to pretend she wasn't aghast at this. "But what +an--extraordinary letter. Won't he be--furious? At you for +writing?--Speaking for me in a case like that. Telling him you knew all +about it!" + +"Well, that was more or less the idea," he confessed, with a rueful grin. +"He'll think I stole you away from him; he'll think I gave you the +nervous prostration I hinted at. Heaven knows what he won't think! But, +of course, the more of a villain I am the less you're to be held +responsible. And there's nothing insupportable or--ludicrous about a +grievance against another man. At all events it enables him to get round +the statement you demolished him with. No, you'll see. He'll write you a +letter, correctly affectionate but rather chilly, and after that you'll +be off his mind. And if the pretty sister Sylvia alleges doesn't exist, +there'll be another one along pretty soon, who will." + +She was obviously a little dazed by all this. It was the first time they +had talked of Graham since that night in his room and he knew the bruise +from that experience must still be painful to touch. So he hastened to +produce his other item of news--also provided by Sylvia. + +"This is a perfectly dead secret of hers," he began. "Told me in sacred +confidence. She finished, however, by saying that she knew, of course, +I'd go straight and tell you. So to justify her penetration, I will. +Sylvia has accounted for her father's amazing change of attitude toward +Hickory Hill. It seems she's persuaded her father to give Graham's share +of it to her. She told him--what's obviously true--that she's a better +farmer now than Graham would ever be. She hates town and society and all +that, she says, and never will be happy anywhere but on a farm--anywhere, +indeed, but on that farm. He was very rough and boisterous about the +suggestion, she says, for a day or two, but finally he quieted down like +a lamb and gave in. He never has refused her anything, of course." + +"But a partnership between her and Rush!" Mary cried. "It's perfectly +impossibly mad. Unless, of course ... You don't mean...?" + +"Yes, that's the idea, exactly," March said. "Only Rush, as yet, knows +nothing about it. Hence the need for secrecy. Sylvia acknowledged to her +father that she couldn't possibly own a farm in partnership with a young +man of twenty-three unless she married him, but she said she'd intended +to marry Rush ever since she was twelve years old. She's confident that +he's only waiting for her eighteenth birthday to ask her to marry him, +but she says that if he doesn't, she means to ask him. And if he refuses, +she pointed out to her father, he can't do less than consent to sell the +other half of the farm to her. She treats that alternative, though, as +derisory.--And I haven't a doubt she's right. Evidently her father has +none, either. + +"Well, it accounts for the change in Mr. Stannard's attitude toward the +farm, of course," he concluded. "A son's supposed to thrive on adversity. +It wouldn't be good morals not to make things difficult for him by way of +developing his character. But where a mere daughter is involved he can +chuckle and write checks. Under his tradition, he's entitled to regard +her as a luxury. Anyhow, your father has nothing more to worry about as +far as Rush and Hickory Hill are concerned." + +"Life's a kaleidoscope," Mary said. "I'm tired. Let's sit down."--They +were half-way up the park by that time.--"Oh, here on the grass. What +does it matter?" When they were thus disposed she went back to her +figure. "There's just a little turn, by some big wrist that we don't know +anything about, and a little click, and the whole pattern changes." + +"There are some patterns that don't change," he said soberly, but he +didn't try to argue the point with her. He knew too exactly how she felt. +"Tell me," he said, "what it was that you wanted to talk to me about." + +She acknowledged that she'd been hoping he'd forgotten that, of the +momentousness of his two items of news had left her, as her talk about +kaleidoscopes indicated, rather disoriented. So he threw in, to give her +time to get round to it, the information that both Sylvia and the little +Williamson girl had decided they wanted to study music with him. "I +agreed," he added, "to take them on, when I got around to it." + +"Tony," she said, "I won't let you do that. Not music lessons to little +girls. I won't." + +"Afternoons?" he asked gently. "When I'm through the real day's work? It +would be pretty good fun, trying to show a few people--young unspoiled +people--what music really is. Dynamite some of their sentimental ideas +about it; shake them loose from some of the schoolmasters' niggling rules +about it; make them write it themselves; show 'em the big shapes of it; +make a piano keyboard something they knew their way about in. That +wouldn't be a contemptible job for anybody.--Oh, well, we can talk that +out later. But you needn't be afraid for me, my dear." + +"That's what I said to Wallace Hood," she told him; "just before lunch. +When I was trying to decide to tell you what he'd been saying.--About +your room that they're turning you out of." + +With that, she repeated the whole of the talk with Wallace and the +serio-fantastic idea that it had led up to. + +He grinned over it a while in silence, then asked, "Are you willing to +leave it entirely to me?" + +"Of course," she said. + +"Well, then," he decided, "if I've still got that paper--and I think I +have ... I copied it, I remember, out of an old law-book, and to satisfy +Luigi's passion for the picturesque and the liturgical we took it to a +notary and got it sealed with a big red wafer--Well, if I've got it and +it's any good, I'll let Aldrich,--is that his name?--make what he can of +it. I'll square it with Luigi afterward of course." + +"It's a compromise for you," she said gravely. "You wouldn't have done +that two weeks ago." + +He laughed. "Folks use the word uncompromising as if it were always a +praiseworthy thing to be. But it hardly ever is, if you stop to think. +Certainly if life's an art, like composing music or painting pictures, +then compromise is in the very fabric of it. Getting different themes or +colors that would like to be contradictory, to work together; developing +a give and take. What's the important thing? To have a life that's full +and good and serviceable, or to mince along through it with two or three +sacred attitudes?--Wait a minute." + +She waited contentedly enough, watching him with a misty smile as he lay +upon the grass beside her wrestling with his idea. + +"All right," he said presently. "Here's the test that I'll agree to. I'll +agree to do things or to leave them undone, to the end that when +I'm--sixty, say, I'll have packed more of real value into my life--my +life as your husband and the father of your children--than that vagabond +you're so concerned about would have had in his if--if ..." + +"If I hadn't gone to him a week ago last night?" She said it steadily +enough, where he could not say it at all. + +"Yes," he said. "That's what I mean." + +He reached out for her hand and she gave it to him. Presently his face +brightened once more into a grin. "I'll even promise to write more music. +Lord, if I've really got anything, you couldn't stop me. Come along. +Father and mother will be looking for us before very long now." + +The critics agreed that the _premiere_ of March's opera was a "distinct +success," and then proceeded to disagree about everything else. The dean +of the corps found it somewhat too heavily scored in the orchestra and +the vocal parts rather ungrateful, technically. The reactionary put up +his regular plaintive plea for melody but supposed this was too much to +ask, these days. The chauvinist detected German influence in the music +(he had missed the parodic satire in March's quotations), and asked +Heaven to answer why an American composer should have availed himself of +a decadent French libretto. + +The audience showed a friendly bias toward it at the beginning and were +plainly moved by the dramatic power of it as it progressed, but they +seemed shocked and bewildered by the bludgeon blows of the conclusion and +the curtain fell upon a rather panicky silence. Then they rallied and +gave both the performers and the composer what would pass in current +journalese for an ovation. + +The Wollastons' friends, who were out in pretty good force, crowded +forward to be introduced to Mary's fiance and to offer him their +double congratulations. They found him rather unresponsive and decided +that he was temperamental (a judgment which did him no serious +disservice with most of them), though the kindlier ones thought he +might be shy. Mary herself found something not quite accountable in +his manner, but she forbore to press for an explanation and let him +off, good-humoredly enough, from the little celebration of his triumph +which she had had in mind. + +The fact was that he had come through the experience, which no one who +has not shared it with him can possibly understand, of discovering the +enormous difference between the effect of a thing on paper, or even in +its last rehearsal, and the effect of it when it is performed before an +audience which has paid to see it. It was no wonder he was dazed, for the +opera he found himself listening to seemed like a changeling. + +He worked all night over it and told LaChaise the next morning that he +had made serious alterations in it and would need more rehearsals. The +opera had been billed in advance for a repetition on the following +Saturday night, the understanding among the powers being that if it +failed to get a sufficient measure of favor the bill should be changed. +It was touch and go, but the final decision was that it should have +another chance. + +So LaChaise agreed to March's request, ran over the composer's revised +manuscript with a subtle French smile, sent for the timpani player, who +was an expert copyist, and put him to work getting the altered parts +ready, instanter. March told Mary he was making a few changes and asked +her to stay away from rehearsals so that on Saturday night, from out in +front, she might get the full effect. + +Really, as it turned out, he did not need any individual testimony, for +one could have learned the effect of the new ending from half a mile +away. When he came back into the wings from his fourth recall he saw +her face shining with joy through her tears. But his heart sank when he +saw, standing beside her, Paula. He thanked his gods that Mary had a +sense of humor. + +Paula was smiling in high satisfaction, and she spoke first. "Well, +stupid," she demanded, "what have you got to say for yourself, now?" + +"Not a word," he answered, smiling too, "except that we have to live +to learn." + +Then he explained to Mary. "That ending--having the girl come back to +life again, to sing some more after she'd been shot--was one of the +things Paula was trying to make me do, all the while. And some of the +other changes were, too." + +"But not that trumpet," said Paula, and he could only blush. + +In a moment of dead silence, just before the crash that accompanied the +descent of the curtain, he had scored for the C trumpet, muted and +pianissimo, a phrase in the rhythm of the first three bars of the +_Marsellaise_, but going up on the open tones and sustaining the high G, +so that it carried also, a suggestion of _The Star Spangled Banner_. A +flagrant trick, but it had served to remind the audience, bruised by the +horror of abomination it had just witnessed, of the vengeance which, afar +off, was gathering. + +"I'd like to know what you'd have said to me," Paula went on, "if I'd +asked you to do that!" + +Mary laughed, and pushed her lover toward the stage. "Oh, go back," she +said. "They want you again, my dear." + +They gave _The Outcry_ two more performances during the next week, one of +them being the closing performance of the season, and by that time, so +far as a single success could be said to establish any one, March was +established. He and Mary discussed this rather soberly as they drove home +in the small car after the convivial wind-up supper at the Moraine, where +this fact had been effusively dwelt upon. Their wedding was now less than +a month off. + +"I know," she admitted, "it looks as if I were all wrong. To go on being +afraid of--harness and millstones and all that. But just the same ... +Oh, you can live my sort of life. That's been made plain enough. But I +wish I could think of some way of making you sure that I could live +yours, as well. Your old one; the _Chemineau_ one. The way it was when +you came to Hickory Hill." + +A few minutes later she gave a sudden laugh. "Tony," she said, "will you +swear you will do something for me--without knowing what it is? Oh, it's +nothing very serious. It's about our honeymoon. A girl has a right to +decide about that, hasn't she?" + +"You've got something up your sleeve, all right," he said dubiously; but +she remained severely silent until he gave in and promised. + +"Well, then," she said, "this is what our honeymoon is going to be. We'll +take one of the farm Fords-Rush can spare one, I'm sure, in October-and +we'll get some camping things and start out--oh, along any one of your +old routes--without one single cent of money. And we'll tune pianos as we +go. We'll live off the country. Really and honestly take to the road. For +a month. If we can't find any pianos we'll go hungry--or beg! The one +thing we won't do, whatever happens, is to telegraph. After we've done +that we'll come back and be--regular people. And I won't mind, then. +Because, don't you see, you'll know. And if it's ever necessary to do it +again, we'll do it again." + +"There's no one in the world," he remarked in a voice that wanted to +break, "--no one in the world who'd have thought of that but you. But, my +dear, I don't need any reassurance like that." + +"Tony, dearest, don't be solemn," she admonished him. "Won't it be +_fun_!" + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Mary Wollaston, by Henry Kitchell Webster + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY WOLLASTON *** + +***** This file should be named 11161.txt or 11161.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/1/6/11161/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's +eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII, +compressed (zipped), HTML and others. + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over +the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed. +VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving +new filenames and etext numbers. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000, +are filed in directories based on their release date. If you want to +download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular +search system you may utilize the following addresses and just +download by the etext year. + + https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06 + + (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, + 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90) + +EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are +filed in a different way. The year of a release date is no longer part +of the directory path. The path is based on the etext number (which is +identical to the filename). The path to the file is made up of single +digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename. For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/11161.zip b/old/11161.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b83ef34 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11161.zip |