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diff --git a/old/30301.txt b/old/30301.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..631a553 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/30301.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14414 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Side Of The Angels, by Basil King + +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: The Side Of The Angels + A Novel + +Author: Basil King + +Illustrator: Elizabeth Shippen Grimm + +Release Date: October 20, 2009 [EBook #30301] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS *** + + + + +Produced by Chris Curnow, Michael, Mary Meehan and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + The Side of the Angels + + A Novel + + By BASIL KING + + Author of "The Way Home," Etc. + + +With Frontispiece +By ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN + +A. L. BURT COMPANY +Publishers New York + +Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers + +The Side of the Angels + +Copyright, 1915, 1916, by Harper & Brothers +Printed in the United States of America +Published February, 1916 + + + + +[Illustration: "I'M CLAUDE. DON'T YOU REMEMBER ME?"] + + + + +THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS + + "_My lord, I am on the side of the angels._"--DISRAELI. + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +The difficulty was, in the first place, one of date--not the date of a +month or a year, but of a generation or a century. Had Thorley Masterman +found himself in love with Rosie Fay in 1760, or even in 1860, there +would have been little to adjust and nothing to gainsay. In 1860 the +Fays were still as good as the Thorleys, and almost as good as the +Mastermans. Going back as far as 1760, the Fays might have been +considered better than the Thorleys had the village acknowledged +standards of comparison, while there were no Mastermans at all. That is, +in 1760 the Mastermans still kept their status as yeomen, clergymen, and +country doctors among the hills of Derbyshire, untroubled as yet by that +spirit of unrest for conscience' sake which had urged the Fays and the +Thorleys out of the flat farmlands of East Anglia one hundred and thirty +years before. + +During the intervening period the flat farmlands remained only as an +equalizing symbol. Thorleys, Fays, Willoughbys, and Brands worked for +one another with the community of interests developed in a beehive, and +intermarried. If from the process of intermarriage the Fays were, on the +whole, excluded, the discrimination lay in some obscure instinct for +affinity of which no one at the time was able to forecast the +significance. + +But by 1910 there was a difference, the difference apparent when out of +the flat farmlands seismic explosion has thrown up a range of mountain +peaks. For the expansion of the country which the middle nineteenth +century had wrought, the Thorleys, Mastermans, Willoughbys, and Brands +had been on the alert, with eyes watchful and calculations timed. The +Fays, on the other hand, had gone on with the round of seed-time and +harvest, contented and almost somnolent, awakening to find that the ages +had been giving them the chances that would never come again. It was +across the wreck of those chances, and across some other obstacles +besides, that Thorley Masterman, for the first time since childhood, +looked into the gray-green eyes of Rosie Fay and got the thrill of their +wide-open, earnest beauty. + +He was then not far from thirty years of age, having studied at a great +American university, in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and obtained other +sorts of knowledge of mankind. He knew Rosie Fay, in this secondary, +grown-up phase of their acquaintance, as the daughter of his first +patient, and he had obtained his first patient through the kindly +intervention of Uncle Sim. From February to November, 1910, his +"shingle" had hung in one of the two streets of the village without +attracting a patient at all. He had already begun to feel his position a +trial when his half-brother's daily jest turned it into a humiliation. + +"Must be serious matter, Thor," Claude would say, "to be responsible for +so many valuable lives." + +Mr. Leonard Willoughby, his father's partner in the old +"banking-and-broking" house of Toogood & Masterman, enjoyed the same +sort of chaff. "Looking pale, Thor. Must be working too hard." + +"Never mind, Thor," Mrs. Willoughby would encourage him. "When I'm ill +you shall get me--but then I'm never ill." + +At such minutes her daughter Lois could only smile sympathetically and +talk hurriedly of something else. As he had meant since boyhood to marry +Lois Willoughby when the moment for marriage came, Thor counted this +tactfulness in her favor. + +Nevertheless, he was puzzled. Having disregarded his future possession +of money and prepared himself for a useful career with all the +thoroughness he could command, nobody seemed to want him. It was not +that the village was over-provided with doctors. Every one admitted that +it wasn't--otherwise he would not have settled in his native place. The +village being really a township with a scattered population--except on +the Thorley estate, which was practically part of a great New England +city, where there were rows of suburban streets--it was quite +insufficiently served by Dr. Noonan at one end and Dr. Hill at the +other, for Uncle Sim in the Old Village could scarcely be said to count. +No; the opening was good enough. The trouble lay, apparently, in Thorley +Masterman himself. Making all allowances for the fact that a young +physician must wait patiently, and win his position by degrees, he had +reason to feel chagrined. He grew ashamed to pass the little house in +the Old Village which he had fitted up as an office. He grew ashamed to +go out in his runabout. + +The runabout had been worse than an extravagance, since, on the ground +that it would take him to his patients the more quickly, he had felt +justified in borrowing its price. The most useful purpose it served now +was to bring Mr. Willoughby home from town when unfit to come by +himself. Otherwise its owner hated taking it out of the garage, +especially if Claude were in sight. Claude had envied him the runabout +at first, but soon found a way to work his feeling off. + +"Anybody dying, old chap?" he would ask, with a curl of his handsome +lip. "Hope you'll get to him in time." + +It was while in the runabout, however, in the early part of a November +afternoon, that the young doctor met his uncle Sim. + +"Hello, Thor!" the latter called. "Where you off to? Was looking for +you." + +Thor brought the machine to a standstill. Uncle Sim threw a long, thin +leg over his mare's back and was on the ground. "Whoa, Delia, whoa! Good +old girl!" + +He liked to believe that the tall bay was spirited. Standing beside +Thor's runabout, he held the reins loosely in his left hand, while the +right arm was thrown caressingly over Delia's neck. The outward and +visible sign of his eccentricity was in his difference from every one +else. In a community--one might say a country--in which each man did his +utmost to look like every other man, the fact that Simeon Masterman was +willing to look like no one but himself was sufficient to prove him, in +the language of his neighbors, "a little off." It was sometimes said +that he suggested Don Quixote--he was so tall, so gaunt, and so +eager-eyed--and, except that there was no melancholy in his face, +perhaps he did. + +"Got a job for you." The old man's voice was nasal and harsh without +being disagreeable. + +Grown sensitive, Thor was on his guard. "Not one of your jobs that are +given away with a pound of tea?" he said, suspiciously. + +"I don't know about the pound of tea--but it's given away. Giving it +away because I can't deal with it myself. Calls for some one with more +ingenuity--so I've told 'em about you." + +Thor laughed. "Don't wonder you're willing to give it up, Uncle Sim." + +"You'll wonder still less when you've seen the patient. By the way, it's +Fay's wife. 'Member old Fay, don't you?" + +The young man nodded. "Used to be Grandpa Thorley's gardener. Has the +greenhouses on father's land north of the pond. Some sort of row going +on between him and father now. What's she got?" + +"It's not what she's got, poor woman; it's what she hasn't got. That's +what's the matter with her." + +"I'm afraid it's a variety of symptom I never heard of." + +"No; but you'll hear of it soon. Whoa, Delia! Steady! Good girl! If you +can treat it you'll be the most distinguished specialist in the country. +Whoa, Delia! I'm giving you the chance to begin." + +Thor wondered what was at the back of the old fellow's mind. There was +generally something in what he said if you could think it out. "Since +you've diagnosed the case, Uncle Sim--" he began, craftily. + +"Can't I give you a tip for the treatment? No, I can't. And it wouldn't +do any good if I did, because she won't take my medicine." + +"Perhaps I could make her." + +The old man laughed harshly. "You! That's good. Why, you'd be the first +to make game of it yourself." + +He had his left foot in the stirrup and his right leg over Delia's back +before Thor could formulate another question. As with head thrown back +he continued his amused chuckling, there was about him, in spite of his +sixty years, a something irresponsible and debonair that would have +pleased Franz Hals or Simon de Vos. + + * * * * * + +Within ten minutes Thor was knocking at the door of a small house with a +mansard roof, situated in what had once been the apple-orchard of a +farm. All but a sparse half-dozen of the trees had given place to lines +of hothouses, through the glass of which he could see oblongs of vivid +green. He was so preoccupied with the fact of paying his first visit to +his first patient as scarcely to notice that the girl who opened the +door was pretty. He almost ignored her. + +"How do you do, Miss Fay? I'm Dr. Thorley Masterman. I believe your +mother would like to see me. May I go to her at once?" + +He was in the narrow hallway and at the foot of the stairs when she +said: "You can go right up. But perhaps I ought to tell you that she's +not--well, she's not very sick." + +He looked at her inquiringly, getting the first faint impression of her +beauty. "What's the matter, then?" + +"That's what we don't know." After a second's hesitation she added, +"Perhaps it's melancholy." Another second passed before she said, "We've +had a good deal of trouble." + +The tone touched him. Her way of holding her head, rather meekly, rather +proudly, sufficiently averted to give him the curve of the cheek, +touched him, too. "What kind of trouble?" + +"Oh, every kind. But she'll tell you about it herself. It's all she'll +talk about. That's why we can't do anything for her--and I don't believe +you can." + +"I'd better see." + +Following her directions given from the foot of the stairs, he entered a +barely furnished bedroom of which two sides leaned inward, to correspond +to the mansard grading of the roof. One window looked out on the +greenhouses, another toward Thorley's Pond. Beside the former, in a +high, upholstered arm-chair, sat a tall woman, fully dressed in black, +with a patchwork quilt of many colors across her knees. In spite of gray +hair slightly disheveled, and wild gray eyes, she was a handsome woman +who on a larger scale made him think of the girl down-stairs. + +"How do you do, Mrs. Fay?" he began, feeling the burden of the situation +to be on himself. "I'm Dr. Thor--" + +"I know who you are," the woman said, ungraciously. "If you hadn't been +a Masterman I shouldn't have sent for you." + +He took a small chair, drawing it up beside her. "I know you've been +treated by my uncle Sim--" + +"He's a fool. Tries to heal a broken heart by feeding it on rainbows." + +Thor smiled. "That's like him. And yet rainbows have been known to heal +a broken heart before now." + +"They won't heal mine. What I want is down on the solid earth." There +was a kind of desperate pleading in her face as she added, "Why can't I +have it?" + +"That depends on what it is. If it's health--?" + +"It's better than health." + +He smiled. "I've always heard that health is pretty good, as things +go--" + +"It's good enough. But there's something better, and that's patience. If +you've got patience you can do without health." + +"I don't think you're much in need of a doctor, Mrs. Fay," he laughed. + +"I am," she declared, savagely. "I am, because I 'ain't got either of +'em; and if I had I'd give them both for something else." She held him +with her wild gray eyes, as she said: "I'd give 'em both for money. +Money's better than patience and better than health. If I had money I +shouldn't care how sick I was, or how unhappy. If I had money my son +wouldn't be in jail." + +Though startled, he knew that, like a confessor, he must show no sign of +surprise. He remembered now that there had been a boy in the Fay family, +two or three years younger than himself. "I didn't know--" he began, +sympathetically. + +"You didn't know, because we're not even talked about. If your brother +was in jail for stealing money it's the first thing the town would +tattle of. But you've been back from your travels for a year or more, +and you 'ain't even heard that our Matt is doing three years at +Colcord." + +"But you'd rather people didn't hear it, wouldn't you?" + +"I'd rather that they'd care whether I'm alive or dead," she said, +fiercely. "I've lived all my life in this village, and my ancestors +before me. Fay's family has done the same. But we're pushed aside and +forgotten. It's as much as ever if some one will tell you that Jasper +Fay raises lettuce in the winter, and cucumbers in spring, and a few +flowers all the year round, and can't pay his rent. I don't believe +you've heard that much. _Have_ you?" + +He dodged the subject by asking the usual professional questions and +giving some elementary professional advice. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Fay, +you're taking a discouraged view of life," he went on, by way of doing +his duty. + +She sat still more erect in her arm-chair, her eyes flashing. "If you'd +seen yourself driven to the wall for more'n thirty year, and if when you +got to the wall you were crushed against it, and crushed again, wouldn't +you take a discouraged view of life? I've lived on bread and water, or +pretty near it, ever since I was married, and what's come of it? We're +worse off than we ever were. Fay's put everything he could scrape +together into this bit of land, and now your father is shilly-shallying +again about renewing the lease." + +"Oh, so that's it!" + +"That's it--but it's only some of it. Look out there. All Fay's sweat +and blood and all of mine is in those greenhouses and that ground. It's +everything we've got to live on, and God knows what kind of a living it +is. Your father has never given us more'n a three years' lease, and +every three years he's raised the rent on us. He's had us in his power +from the first--Oh, he's crafty, getting us to rent the land from him +instead of buying it, and Fay that soft that he believed him to be his +friend!--he's had us in his power from the first, and he's never spared +us. No wonder he's rich! And you're coming in for that Thorley money, +too. I know what your grandfather Thorley's will was. Going to get it +when you're thirty. Must be pretty nigh that now, ain't you?" + +To humor her Thor named the date in the following February when he +should reach the age fixed by his grandfather for entering on the +inheritance. + +"What'd I tell you? I remember your grandfather as plain as plain. Big, +hard-faced man he was, something like you. My folks could remember him +when he hawked garden-trucks to back doors in the city. Nothing but a +farmer's son he was, just like the rest of us--and he died rich. Only +difference between the Thorleys and the Fays was that the Thorleys held +on to their land and the Fays didn't. Neither did my folks, the +Grimeses. If we'd been crafty and hadn't sold till the city was creeping +down our chimneys like the Thorleys and the Brands, we should be as rich +as them. Cut your father out of his will good and hard, your grandfather +did, and now it'll all come to you. Why, there was a time when the +Thorleys hired out to my folks, and so did the Willoughbys! And now--!" +She threw the quilt from off her knees and spread her hands outward. +"Oh, I'm sick of it! I've spent my life watching every one else go up +and me and mine go down--and I'm sick of it. I'm not sick any other +way--" + +"No, I don't think you are," he said, gently. + +"But that's bad enough, isn't it? If I had a fever or a cold you could +give me something to take it away. But what can you do for the state of +mind I'm in?" + +He answered, slowly, "I can't do much just yet--though I can do a +little--but by and by, perhaps--when I know more exactly what the +trouble is--" + +"You can't know it better than I can tell you now. It's just this--that +I've all I can do to keep from stealing down to Thorley's Pond, when no +one's looking, and throwing myself in. What do you think of that?" + +"I think you won't do it," he smiled, "but I wouldn't play with the idea +if I were you." + +"Look here," she cried, seizing him by the arm and pulling him out of +his chair. "Look out of that window." He followed the pointing of her +finger to a high bluff covered with oaks, to which the withered brown +foliage still clung, though other trees were bare. "That's Duck Rock. +Well, there's a spot there where the water's thirty foot deep. What do +you think of that?" + +He moved back from the window, but remained standing. "I think that it +doesn't matter to you and me whether it's thirty foot deep or sixty or a +hundred." + +"It matters to me. In thirty foot of water I'd go down like a stone; and +then it'd be all over. After that nothing but--sleep." Her eyes held him +again. "_You_ don't believe there'll be anything after it but sleep, do +you?" + +He dodged that question, too. "But you do." + +"I was brought up an orthodox Congregational--but what's the good? All +I've ever got out of it was rainbows; and what I've wanted is solid. +I've wanted to do something, and be something, and have something--and +not be pushed back and trampled out of sight by people who used to hire +out to my folks and can treat me like dirt to-day, just because they've +got the money. Why haven't I got it, too? I'm fit for it. I had good +schooling. Louisa Thorley--your own mother, that is--and me went to +school together. Your father ran away with her and she died when you +were born. We went to school to old Miss Brand--aunt to Bessie Brand +that's now Bessie Willoughby and holds her head so high. Poor as church +mice they was in those days. But then every one was poor. We was all +poor together--and happy. And now some are poor and some are rich--and +there's upper classes and lower classes--and everything's got +uneven--and I'm sick of it." + +To calm her excitement he talked to her with the inspiration of young +earnestness, getting his reward in an attention accorded perhaps for the +very reason that the earnestness was young. "I think I must run off +now," he finished, when he thought her slightly comforted, "but I'll +send you something I want you to take at once. You'll take a +tablespoonful in half a glass of water--" + +The rebellious spirit revived, though less bitterly. "And it'll do me as +much good as a dose of your uncle's rainbows. What I want is what I +shall never get--or sleep." + +"Well, you'll get sleep," he said, smiling and holding out his hand. +"You'll sleep to-night--and I'll come again to-morrow." + +He was at the door when she called out: "Do you know what our Matt got +his three years for? It was for stealing money from Massy's +grocery-store, where he was bookkeeper. And do you know what made him +steal it? It was to help us pay the rent the last time your father +raised it. I'll bet he's done worse than that twenty times a year; but +he's driving round in automobiles, while my poor boy's in Colcord." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +On going down-stairs, Thor looked about him for Rosie Fay. She was +nowhere to be seen, and the house was cheerless. He could imagine that +to an ambitious woman circumscribed by its dreary neatness Duck Rock +with its thirty feet of water might be a welcome change. + +Continuing his search when he went outside, he gazed round what was left +of the old orchard. He remembered Fay--a slim fellow with a gentle, +dreamy face and starry eyes. He had seen him occasionally during the +past eighteen years, though rarely. As a matter of fact, Fay's +greenhouses lay on that part of the shore of Thorley's Pond most out of +the way of the pedestrian. Only of late had new roads wormed themselves +up the steep northern bank of the pond, bringing from the city +well-to-do, country-loving souls who desired space and sunshine. It was +a satisfaction to Thor's father, Archie Masterman, that only the best +type of suburban residence was going up among these sylvan glades, and +that the property was justifying his foresight as an investor. + +The young man could understand that it should be so, for the spot was +picturesque. Sheltered from the north by a range of wooded hills, it was +like a great green cup held out to the sunshine. The region was +favorable, therefore, to the raising of early "garden-truck." Whenever +the frost was out of the ground, oblongs of green things growing in +straight lines gave a special freshness to the landscape, while from any +of the knolls over which the township clambered clusters of greenhouses +glinted like distant sheets of water. One had to get them in contrast to +the sparkling blue eye of Thorley's Pond to perceive that they were not +tiny lakes. With so pleasing a view, hemmed in by the haze of the city +toward the south, and a hint of the Atlantic south of that, there was +every reason why Fay's plot of land should appreciate in value. + +On these grounds it became comprehensible to Thor that his father might +raise the rent and still not be an instrument of oppression. It was +consoling to him to perceive this. It helped to allay certain +uncomfortable suspicions that had risen in his mind since coming home, +and which were not easy to dispel. + +He caught sight at last of Rosie's dull-green frock in the one hothouse +in which there were flowers. Through the glass roof he could see the red +disks of poinsettias and the crimson or white of azaleas coming into +bloom. The other two houses sheltered long, level rectangles of tender +green, representing lettuce in different stages of the crop. A +bow-legged Italian was closing the skylights that had been opened for +the milder part of the day; another Italian replaced the covers on +hot-beds that might have contained violets. From the high furnace +chimney a plume of yellow-brown smoke floated heavily on the windless +air. The place looked undermanned and forlorn. + +On opening the door he was met by the sweet, warm odor of damp earth and +green things growing and blossoming. Pausing in her work, the girl +looked down the half-length of the greenhouse as a hint for him to +advance. He went toward her between feathery banks of gray-green +carnations, on which the long, oval, compact buds were loosening their +sheaths to display the dawn-pink within. Half covered up by a coarse +apron or pinafore, she stood at a high table, like a counter, against a +background of poinsettias. + +"We don't go in for flowers, really," she explained to him, after he had +given her certain directions concerning her mother. "It would be better +if we didn't try to raise them at all." + +Thor, whose ear was sensitive, noticed that her voice was pleasant to +listen to, and her speech marked by a simple, unaffected refinement. He +lingered because he was interested in her work. He found a kind of +fascination in watching her as she took a moist red flower-pot from one +end of the table, threw in a handful or two of earth from the heap at +the other end, then a root that looked like a cluster of yellow, +crescent-shaped onions, then a little more earth, after which she turned +to place the flower-pot as one of the row on the floor behind her. There +was something rhythmic in her movements. Each detail took the same +amount of action and time. She might have been working to music. Her +left hand made precisely the same gesture with each flower-pot she took +from the line in which they lay telescoped together. Her right hand +described the same graceful curve with every impatient, petulant handful +of earth. + +"Why do you raise them, then?" he asked, for the sake of saying +something. + +She answered, wearily: "Oh, it's father. He can't make up his mind what +to do. Or, rather, he makes up his mind both ways at once. Because some +people make a good thing out of raising flowers he thinks he'll do that. +And because others do a big business in garden-stuff, he thinks he'll do +that." + +"And so he falls between two stools. I see." + +"It's no use being a market-gardener," she went on, disdainfully tossing +the earth into another pot, "unless you're a big market-gardener, and +it's no use being a florist unless you're a big florist. Everything has +to be big nowadays to make it pay. And the trouble with father is that +he does so many things small. He sees big," she analyzed, continuing her +work--"so big that he goes all to pieces when he tries to carry his +ideas out." + +"And you think that if he concentrated his forces on raising +garden-stuff--" + +She explained further: People had to have lettuce and radishes and +carrots and cucumbers whatever happened, whereas flowers were a luxury. +Whenever money was scarce they didn't buy them. If it were not for +weddings and funerals and Christmas and Easter they wouldn't buy them at +all. Then, too, they were expensive to raise, and difficult. You +couldn't do it by casting a little seed into the ground. Every azalea +was imported from Belgium; every lily-bulb from Japan. True, the +carnations were grown from slips, but if he only knew the trouble they +gave! Those at which he was looking, and which had the innocent air of +springing and blooming of their own accord, had been through no less +than four tedious processes since the slips were taken in the preceding +February. First they had been planted in sand for the root to strike; +then transferred to flats, or shallow wooden boxes; then bedded out in +the garden; and lastly brought into the house. If he would only consider +the labor involved in all that, to say nothing of the incessant watching +and watering, and keeping the house at the proper temperature by night +and by day--well, he could see for himself. + +He did see for himself. He said so absently, because he was noting the +fact that her serious, earnest eyes were of the peculiar shade which, +when seen in eyes, is called green. It was still absently that he added, +"And you have to work pretty hard." + +She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I don't mind that. Anything to live." + +"What are you doing there?" + +There was an exasperated note in her voice as she replied: "Oh, these +are the Easter lilies. We have to begin on them now." + +"And do you do them all?" + +"I do, when there's no one else. Father's men keep leaving." She flung +him a look he would have thought defiant if he hadn't found it frank. "I +don't blame them. Half the time they're not paid." + +"I see. So that you fill in. Do you like it?" + +"Would you like doing what isn't of any use?--what will never be of any +use? Would you like to be always running as hard as you can, just to +fall out of the race?" + +He tried to smile. "I shouldn't like it for long." + +"Well, there's that," she said, as though he had suggested a form of +consolation. "It won't be for long. It can't be. Father won't be able to +go on like this." + +He decided to take the bull by the horns. "Is that because my father +doesn't want to renew the lease?" + +She shrugged her shoulders again. "Oh no, not particularly. It _is_ +that--and everything else." + +He felt it the part of tact to make signs of going, uttering a few +parting injunctions with regard to the mother as he did so. + +"And I wouldn't leave her too much alone," he advised. "She could easily +slip out without attracting any one's attention. Tell your father I said +so. I suppose he's not in the house." + +"He's off somewhere trying to engage a night fireman." + +He ignored this information to emphasize his counsels. "It's most +important that while she's in this state of mind some one should be with +her. And if we knew of anything she'd specially like--" + +She continued to work industriously. "The thing she'd like best in this +world won't do her any good when it happens." She threw in a bulb with +impetuous vehemence. "It's to have Matt out of jail. He will be out in +the course of a few months. But he'll be--a jail-bird." + +"We must try to help him live that down." + +She turned her great greenish eyes on him again with that look which +struck him as both frank and pitiful. "That's one of the things people +in our position can't do. It's the first thing mother herself will think +of when she sees Matt hanging about the house--for he'll never get a +job." + +"He can help your father. He can be the night fireman." + +She shrugged her shoulders with the fatalistic movement he was beginning +to recognize. "Father won't need a night fireman by that time." + +He could only say: "All the same, your mother must be watched. She can't +be allowed to throw herself from Duck Rock, now, can she?" + +"I don't say allowed. But if she did--" + +"Well, what then?" + +"She'd be out of it. That would be something." + +"Admitting that it would be something for her, what would it be for your +father and you?" + +She relaxed the energy of her hands. He had time to notice them. It hurt +him to see anything so shapely coarsened with hard work. "Wouldn't it be +that much?" she asked, as if reaching a conclusion. "If she were out of +it, it would be a gain all round." + +Never having heard a human being speak like this, he was shocked. "But +everything can't be so black. There must be something somewhere." + +She glanced up at him obliquely. Months afterward he recalled the look. +Her tone, when she spoke, seemed to be throwing him a challenge as well +as making an admission. "Well, there is--one thing." + +He spoke triumphantly. "Ah, there _is_ one thing, then?" + +"Yes, but it may not happen." + +"Oh, lots of things may not happen. We just have to hope they will. +That's all we've got to live by." + +There was a lovely solemnity about her. "And even if it did happen, so +many people would be opposed to it that I'm not sure it would do any +good, after all." + +"Oh, but we won't think of the people who'd be opposed to it--" + +"We should have to, because"--the sweet fixity of her gaze gave him an +odd thrill--"because you'd be one." + +He laughed as he held out his hand to say good-by. "Don't be too sure. +And in any case it won't matter about me." + +She declined to take his hand on the ground that her own was soiled with +loam, but she mystified him slightly when she said: "It will matter +about you; and if the thing ever happens I want you to remember that I +told you so. I can't play fair; but I'll play as fair as I can." + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Thor was deaf to these enigmatic words in the excitement of perceiving +that the girl had beauty. The discovery gave him a new sort of pleasure +as he turned his runabout toward the town. Beauty had not hitherto been +a condition to which he attached great value. If anything, he had held +it in some scorn. Now, for the first time in his emotional life, he was +stirred by a girl's mere prettiness--a quite unusual prettiness, it had +to be admitted; a slightly haggard prettiness, perhaps; a prettiness a +little worn by work, a little coarsened by wind and weather; a +prettiness too desperate for youth and too tragic for coquetry, but for +those very reasons doubtless all the more haunting. He was obliged to +remind himself that it was nothing to him, since he had never swerved +from the intention to marry Lois Willoughby as soon as he had made a +start in practice and come into the money he was to get at thirty; but +he could see it was the sort of thing by which other men might be +affected, and came to a mental standstill there. + +Driving on into the city, he went straight to his father's office in +Commonwealth Row. It was already after four o'clock, and except for two +young men sorting checks and putting away ledgers, the cagelike +divisions of the banking department were empty. One of the men was +whistling; the other was calling in a loud, gay voice, "Say, Cheever, +what about to-night?"--signs that the enforced decorum of the day was +past. + +Claude was in the outer office reserved for customers. He wore his +overcoat, hat, and gloves. A stick hung over his left arm by its crooked +handle. The ticker was silent, but a portion of the tape fluttered +between his gloved fingers. + +Though his back was toward the door, he recognized his half-brother's +step with that mixture of envy and irritation which Thor's presence +always stirred in him. He was not without fraternal affection, +especially when Thor was away; when he was at home it was difficult for +Claude not to resent the elder's superiority. Claude called it +superiority for want of a better word, though he meant no more than a +combination of advantages he himself would have enjoyed. He meant Thor's +prospective money, his good spirits, good temper, and good health. +Claude had not good health, which excused, in his judgment, his lack of +good spirits and good temper. Neither had Claude any money beyond the +fifteen hundred dollars a year he earned in his father's office. He was +in the habit of saying to himself, and in confidence to his friends, +that it was "damned hard luck" that he should be compelled to live on a +pittance like that, when Thor, within a few months, would come into a +good thirty thousand a year. + +It was some consolation that Thor was what his brother called "an ugly +beast"--sallow and lantern-jawed, with a long, narrow head that looked +as if it had been sat on. The eyes were not bad; that had to be +admitted; they were as friendly as a welcoming light; but the mouth was +so big and aggressive that even the mustache Thor was trying to grow +couldn't subdue its boldness. As for the nose and chin, they +looked--according to Claude's account--as if they had been created soft, +and subjected to a system of grotesque elongation before hardening. +Claude could the more safely make game of his brother's looks seeing +that he himself was notably handsome, with traits as regular as if they +had been carved, and a profile so exact that it was frequently exposed +in photographers' windows, to the envy of gentlemen gazers. While Thor +had once tried to mitigate his features by a beard that had been +unsuccessful and had now disappeared, Claude wouldn't disfigure himself +by a hair. He was as clean-shaven as a marble Apollo, and not less +neatly limbed. + +"Gone." Claude raised his eyes just long enough to utter the word. + +Thor came to an abrupt stop. "Club?" + +"Suppose so." He added, without raising his head, "Wish to God the +drunken sot would stay there." He continued, while still apparently +reading the tape in his hand, "Father wishes it, too." + +Thor was not altogether taken by surprise. Ever since his return from +Europe, a year earlier, he had wondered how his father's patience could +hold out. He took it that there was a reason for it, a reason he at once +expressed to Claude: + +"Father can't wish it. He can't afford to." + +Claude lifted his handsome, rather insolent face. "Why not?" + +"For the simple reason that he's got his money." + +"Much you know about it. Len Willoughby hasn't enough money left in +Toogood & Masterman's to take him on a trip to Europe." + +Thor backed toward the receiving-teller's wicket, where he rested the +tips of his elbows on the counter. He was visibly perturbed. "What's +become of it, then?" + +"Don't ask me. All I know is what I'm telling you." + +"Did father say so himself?" + +"Not in so many words. But I know it." He tossed the tape from him and +began to smooth his gloves. "Father means to ship him." + +"Ship him? He can't do that." + +"Can't? I should like to know why not." + +"Because he can't. That's why. Because he has--" + +"Yes? Cough it up. Speak as if you had something up your sleeve." + +Thor reflected as to the wisdom of saying more. "Well, I have," he +admitted. "It's something I remember from the time we were kids. You +were too young to notice. But _I_ noticed--and I haven't forgotten. +Father can't ship Len Willoughby without being sure he has enough to +live on." He decided to speak out, if for no other reason than that of +securing Claude's co-operation. "Father persuaded Mr. Willoughby to put +Mrs. Willoughby's money into the business when he didn't want to." + +"Ah, shucks!" Claude exclaimed, contemptuously. + +"He did," Thor insisted. "It was back in 1892, in Paris, that first time +they took us abroad. You were only nine and I was twelve. I heard them. +I was hanging round one evening in that little hotel we stayed at in the +rue de Rivoli--the Hotel de Marsan, wasn't it? The Willoughbys had been +living in Paris for five or six years, and father got them to come home. +I heard him ask mother to talk it up with Mrs. Willoughby. Mother said +she didn't want to, but father got round her, and she agreed to try. She +said, too, that Bessie might be willing because Len had already begun to +take too much and it would brace him up if he got work to do." + +"Work!" Claude sniffed. "Him!" + +"Father knew he couldn't work--knew he'd tried all sorts of +things--first to be an artist, then to write, then to get into the +consular service, and the Lord knows what. It wasn't his work that +father was after. It was just when the Toogood estate withdrew old Mr. +Toogood's money, and father had to have more capital." + +"Well, Len Willoughby didn't have any." + +"No; but his wife had. It came to the same thing. Suppose she must have +had between three and four hundred thousand from old man Brand. I +remember hearing father say to mother that Len was making ducks and +drakes of it as fast as he could, and that it might as well help the +firm of Toogood & Masterman as go to the deuce. Can still hear father +feeding the poor fool with bluff about the great banker he'd make and +how it was the dead loss of a fortune that he hadn't had a seat on the +Stock Exchange years before." + +Claude sniffed again. "You'd better carry your load to father himself." + +"I will--if I have to." Before Claude had found a rejoinder, Thor went +on, changing the subject abruptly, so as not to be led into being +indiscreet, "Say, Claude, do you remember Fay, the gardener?" + +Claude was still smoothing his gloves, but he stopped, with the thumb +and fingers of his right hand grasping the middle finger of the left. +More than ever his features suggested a marble stoniness. "No." + +"Oh, but you must. Used to be Grandpa Thorley's gardener. Has the +greenhouses on father's land north of the pond." + +Claude recovered himself slightly. "Well, what about him?" + +"Been to see his wife. Patient of Uncle Sim's. Turned her on to me. +They're having the deuce of a time." + +Claude recovered himself still more. He looked at his brother curiously. +"Well, what's it got to do with me?" + +"Nothing directly." + +"Well, then--indirectly?" Claude asked, defiantly. + +"Only this, that it has to do with both of us, since it concerns +father." + +Claude was by this time master of himself. "Look here, Thor. Are you +getting a bee in your bonnet about father?" + +"Good Lord! no. But father's immersed in business. He can't be expected +to know how all the details of his policy work out. He's not young any +longer, and he isn't in touch with modern social and economic ideas." + +"Oh, stow the modern social and economic ideas, and let's get to +business. What's up with this family--of--of--What-d'you-call-'ems?" + +With his feet planted firmly apart, Claude swung his stick airily back +and forth across the front of his person, though he listened with +apparent attention. + +"You know, Thor, as a matter of fact," he explained, when the latter had +finished his account, "that the kindest thing father can do for Fay is +to let him peter out. Fay thinks that father and the lease are the +obstacle he's up against, when in reality it's the whole thing." + +"Oh, so you do know about it?" + +Claude saw his mistake, and righted himself quickly. "Y-yes. Now that +you--you speak of it, I--I do. It comes--a--back to me. I've heard +father mention it." + +"And what did father say?" + +"Just what I'm telling you. That the lease isn't the chief factor in +Fay's troubles--isn't really a factor at all. Poor old fellow's a +dunderhead. That's where it is in a nutshell. Never could make a living. +Never will. Remember him?" + +"Vaguely. Haven't seen him for years." + +"Well, when you do see him you'll understand. Nice old chap as ever +lived. Only impractical, dreamy. Gentle as a sheep--and no more capable +of running that big, expensive plant than a motherly old ewe. That's +where the trouble is. When father's closed down on him and edged him +out--quietly, you understand--it'll be the best thing that ever happened +to them all." + +Thor reflected. "I see that you know more about it than you thought. You +know all about it." + +Again Claude caught himself up, shifting his position adroitly. "Oh no, +I don't. Just what I've heard father say. When you spoke of it at first +the name slipped my memory." + +Thor reverted to the original theme. "The son's in jail. Did you know +that?" + +But Claude was again on his guard. "Oh, so there's a son?" + +"Son about your age. Matt his name is. Surely you must recall him. Used +to pick pease with us when Fay'd let us do it." + +Claude shook his head silently. + +"And there's a girl." + +Claude's stick hung limply before him. His face and figure resumed their +stony immobility. "Oh, is there? Plain?" + +"No; pretty. Very pretty. Very unusually pretty. Come to think of it, I +shouldn't mind saying--Yes, I will say it! She's the prettiest girl I've +ever seen." The eyes of the two brothers met. "Bar none." + +The smile on Claude's lips might have passed for an expression of +brotherly chaff. "Go it, old chap. Seem smitten." + +"Oh, it isn't that. Nothing of the sort at all. I speak of her only +because I'm sorry for her. Brunt of whole thing comes on her." + +"Well, what do you propose that we should do?" + +"I haven't got as far as proposing. Haven't thought the thing out at +all. But I think we ought to do something--you and I." + +"We can't do anything without father--and father won't. He simply won't. +Fay'll have to go. Good thing, too; that's what I say. Get 'em all on a +basis on which they can manage. Fay'll find a job with one of the other +growers--" + +"Yes; but what's to become of the girl?" + +Claude stared with a kind of bravado. "How the devil do I know? She'll +do the best she can, I suppose. Go into a shop. Lots of girls go into +shops." + +Thor studied his brother with mild curiosity. "You're a queer fellow, +Claude. A minute ago you couldn't remember Fay's name; and now you've +got his whole business at your fingers' ends." + +But Claude repeated his explanation. "Got father's business at my +fingers' ends, if that's what you mean. In such big affairs chap like +Fay only a detail. Couldn't recall him at first, but once I'd caught on +to him--" + +By moving away toward the inner office, where Cheever was still at work, +Claude intimated that, as far as he was concerned, the conversation was +ended. Thor returned to his runabout. + +"Say, Claude," Cheever called, "comin' to see 'The Champion' to-night, +ain't you? Countin' on you." + +Claude laid a friendly hand on Cheever's arm. He liked to be on easy +terms with his father's clerks. "Awfully sorry, Billy, but you must +excuse me. Fact is, that damn-fool brother of mine has been putting his +finger in my pie. Got to do something to get it out--and do it quick. +Awfully sorry. Sha'n't be free." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Beside his favorite window at the club, commanding the movement of the +street and the bare trees of the park, Len Willoughby had got together +the essentials to a pleasant hour. They consisted of the French and +English illustrated papers, two or three excellent Havanas, a bottle of +Scotch whisky, and a siphon of aerated water. On the table beside him +there was also an empty glass that had contained a cocktail. + +It was the consoling moment of the day. After the strain of a +nine-o'clock breakfast and the rush to the city before eleven, after the +hours of purposeless hanging about the office of Toogood & Masterman, +where he could see he wasn't wanted, he found it restful to retire into +his own corner and sink drowsily into his cups. He did sink into them +drowsily, and yet through well-marked phases of excitement. He knew +those phases now; he could tell in advance how each stage would pass +into another. + +There was first the comfort of the big chair and the friendly covers of +_L'Illustration_ and the _Graphic_. He didn't care to talk. He liked to +be let alone. When he came from the office he was generally dispirited. +Masterman's queer, contemptuous manner was enough to discourage any one. +He was sure, too, that Claude and Billy Cheever ridiculed his big, fat +figure behind his back. But once he sank into the deep, red-leather +arm-chair he was safe. It was ridiculous that a man of his age should +come to recognize the advantages of such a refuge, but he laid it to the +charge of a mean and spiteful world. + +The world did not cease to be mean and spiteful till after he had had +his cocktail. It was wonderful the change that took place then--not +suddenly, but with a sweet, slow, cheering inner transformation. It was +a surging, a glowing, a mellowing. It was like the readjustment of the +eyes of the soul. It was seeing the world as generous, kindly. It was +growing generous and kindly himself, with the happy conviction that more +remained to be got out of life than he had ever wrung from it. + +Still, it was something to be a rich banker. Every one couldn't be that. +Archie Masterman had certainly possessed a quick eye when he singled out +Len Willoughby as the man who could put the firm of Toogood & Masterman +on its feet. Three hundred thousand dollars of Bessie's money had gone +into that business in 1892, just in time to profit by the panic of 1893. +Lord, how they had bought!--gilt-edged stocks for next to nothing!--and +how they had sold, a few years later! Len never knew how much money they +made. He supposed Archie didn't, either. There were years when the Stock +Exchange had been like a wheat-field, yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold +and a hundredfold for every seed they had sown. He had never attempted +to keep a tally on what came in; it was sufficient to know that there +was always plenty to take out. Besides, it had been an understanding +from the first that Archie was to do the drudgery. Len liked this, +because it left him free--free for summers in Europe and winters in +Egypt or at Palm Beach. + +By degrees reminiscence tended toward somnolence. And yet it couldn't be +said that Len slept. He kept sufficiently awake to put out his hand from +time to time and seize the tumbler. He could even brew himself another +glass. If a brother clubman strolled near enough to say, "Hello, Len!" +or, "Hello, Willoughby!" he could respond with a dull, "Hello, Tom!" or, +"Hello, Jones!" But he spoke as out of a depth; he spoke with some of +that weariness at being called back to life which Rembrandt depicts on +the face of Lazarus rising from the tomb. It was delicious to sink away +from the prosaic and the boresome, to be so fully awake that he could +follow the movement in the street and the hopping of the sparrows in the +trees, and yet be, as it were, removed, enchanted, seeing and hearing +and thinking and even drinking through the medium of a soothing, +slumbrous spell. + +It could hardly ever be said that he went beyond this point. Though +there were occasions on which he miscalculated his effects, they could +generally be explained as accidental. Above all, they didn't rise from +an appetite for drink. The phrase was one he was fond of; he often used +it in condemning a vice of which he disapproved. He used it on this +particular afternoon, when Thor Masterman, who had come to drive him +homeward in his runabout, was sitting in the opposite arm-chair, waiting +to make the start. + +"There's one thing about me, Thor--never had an appetite for drink. Not +to say _drink_. Thing I despise. Your father's all wrong about me. Don't +know what's got into him. Thinks I take too much. Rot! That's what it +is--bally rot! _You_ know that, Thor, don't you? Appetite for drink +something I despise." + +Thor considered the moment one to be made use of. "Has father been +saying anything about it?" + +"No; but he looks it. Suppose I don't know what he means? Sees double, +your father does. Anybody'd think, from the way he treats me, that I was +a disgrace to the firm. I'd like to know what that firm'd be without +me." + +Thor tried to frame his next question discreetly. "I hope there's been +no suggestion of the firm's doing without you, Mr. Willoughby?" + +To this Len gave but an indirect reply. "There'll be one soon, if your +father doesn't mind himself. I'll retire--and take my money out. +Where'll he be then?" + +Thor felt his way. "You've taken out a good deal already, haven't you?" + +"Not any more than belonged to me. You can bet your boots on that." + +"No; not any more than belonged to you, of course. I was only thinking +that with the splendid house you've built--and its up-keep--and your +general expenses--which are pretty heavy, aren't they?--" + +"Not any more than belonged to me, Thor. You can bet your boots on +that." + +The repetition was made drowsily. The big head of bushy white hair, with +its correlative of bushy white beard, swayed with a slow movement that +ended in a jerk. It was obvious that the warnings and admonitions to +which Thor had been leading up were not for that day. They were useless +even when, a half-hour later, the movement of the runabout and the keen +air of the high lands as they approached the village roused the big +creature to a maudlin cursing of his luck. + +On nearing the house, the delicate part of the task which of late Thor +had taken almost daily on himself became imminent. It was to get his +charge into the house, up to his room, and stretched on a couch without +being seen by Lois. Thor had once caught her carrying out this duty +unaided. She had evidently called for her father in her mother's +limousine, and as Thor passed down the village street she was helping +the staggering, ungainly figure toward the door. The next day Thor took +his runabout from the garage and went on the errand himself. He was also +more ingenious than she in finding a way by which the sorry object could +be smuggled indoors. The carriage entrance of the house was too near the +street. That it should be so was a trial to Mrs. Willoughby, who would +have preferred a house standing in grounds, but there never had been any +help for it. When money came in it had been Len's desire to buy back a +portion of the old Willoughby farm, and build a mansion on what might +reasonably be called his ancestral estate. Of this property there was +nothing in the market but a snip along County Street; and though he was +satisfied with the site as enabling him to display his prosperity to +every one who passed up and down, his wife regretted the absence of a +dignified approach. + +By avoiding County Street when he came out from town, and following a +road that scrambled over the low hillside till it made a juncture with +Willoughby's Lane, by descending that ancient cow-path and bringing Len +to the privacy of his side-door, Thor endeavored to keep his father's +partner from becoming an object of public scandal. He took this trouble +not because he bothered about public scandal in itself, but in order to +protect Lois Willoughby. + +So far his methods had been successful. They failed to-day only because +Lois herself was at the side-door. With a pair of garden shears in her +gloved hands she was trimming the leafless vine that grew over the +pillars of the portico. Thor could see, as she turned round, that she +braced herself to meet the moment's humiliation, speaking on the instant +he drew up at the steps. + +"So good of you to bring papa out from town! I'm sure he's enjoyed the +drive." Her hand was on the lever that opened the door of the machine. +"Poor papa! You look done up. I dare say you're not well. Be careful, +now," she continued, as he lumbered heavily to his feet. "That's a long +step there. Take my hand. I know you must be as tired as can be." + +"Dog tired," the father complained, as he lowered himself cautiously. +"Dog's life. Tha's wha' I lead. No thanks for it, either. Damn!" The +imprecation was necessary because he missed his footing and came down +with a jerk. "Can't you see I'm gettin' out?" he groaned, peevishly. +"Stan'in' right in my way." + +"Better leave him to me," Thor whispered. "I know just what to do with +him. One of the advantages of being a doctor." + +Willoughby had mind enough to clutch at this suggestion. "Doctor's what +I want, hang it all! Sick as a dog. I do' know what'll happen to me some +day. Head aches fit to split. Never had appetite for drink. Tha's one +good thing about me." + + * * * * * + +Lois was still standing near the portico when Thor had assisted his +charge to his room, stretched him on a couch, covered him with a rug, +left him in a heavy sleep, and crept down the stairs again. It did not +escape his eye, quickened by the minutes he had spent with Rosie Fay, +that Lois lacked color. For the first time in his life he acutely +observed the difference between a plain woman and a pretty one. + +"Oh, Thor," she began, as soon as he came out, "I don't know how to +thank you for your kindness to papa! How is it to go on? Where is it to +end? Oh, Thor, you're a doctor! Tell me what you think. Is there +anything I can do?" + +His kind, searching eyes, as he stood with one hand on the +steering-wheel, rested on her silently. After all, she was twenty-seven, +and must take her portion of life's responsibilities. Besides, whatever +she might have to bear he meant to share with her. She should not be +obliged, like Rosie Fay, for instance, to carry her load alone. + +And yet she didn't look as if she would shirk her part. With that tall, +erect figure, delicate in outline but strong with the freedom of an +open-air life, that proud head which was nevertheless carried meekly, +and that straightforward gaze, she gave the impression of being ready to +meet anything. The face might be irregular, lacking in many of the +tender prettinesses as natural to other girls, even at twenty-seven, as +flowers to a field; but no one could deny its force of character. + +"I'll tell you something you could do," he said, at last. "You could +see--or try to see--that he doesn't spend too much." A slight pause +marked his hesitation before adding, "That no one spends too much." + +"You mean mamma and me?" + +He smiled faintly. "I mean whoever does the spending--but your father +most of all, because I'm afraid he's rather reckless. He's spent a good +deal during the last twelve or fifteen years, hasn't he?" + +She was very quick. "More than he had a right to spend?" + +"Well, more than my father," he felt it safe to say. + +"But he had more than your father to spend, hadn't he?" + +"Do you know that for a certainty?" + +"I only know it from papa himself. But, oh, Thor, what is it? Why are +you asking?" + +He ignored these questions to say: "Couldn't your mother tell us? After +all, it was her money, wasn't it?" + +She shook her head. "Oh, mamma wouldn't know. If you're in any doubt +about it, why don't you ask Mr. Masterman? He could tell you better than +any one. Besides, mamma isn't in." + +He spoke with a touch of scorn. "I suppose she's in town." + +The tone evoked on Lois's part a little smile. They had had battles on +the subject before. "That's just where she is." + +"That's just where she always is." + +"Oh no; not always. Sometimes she stays at home. But she's there pretty +often, I admit. She has to make calls, partly because I won't--when I +can help it." + +He spoke approvingly. "You, at any rate, don't fritter away your time +like other women." + +"It depends on what other women you mean. I fritter away my time like +some women, even though it isn't like the women who make calls. I play +golf, for instance, and tennis; I even ride." + +"All the same, you don't like the silly thing called society any more +than I do." + +There was daylight enough to show him the blaze of bravado in her eyes. +Her way of holding her head had a certain daring--the daring of one too +frank, perhaps too proud, to shrink at truth. "Oh, I don't know. I dare +say I should have liked society well enough if society had liked me. But +it didn't. As mamma says, I wasn't a success." To compel him to view her +in all her lack of charm, she added, with a persistent smile, "You know +that, don't you?" + +He did know it, though he could hardly say so. He had heard Claude +descant on the subject many a time in the years when Lois was still +putting in a timid appearance at dances. Claude was interested in +everything that had to do with girls, from their clothes to their +complexions. + +"Can't make it out," he would say at breakfast, after a party; "dances +well; dresses well; but doesn't take. Fellows afraid of her. Everybody +shy of a girl who isn't popular. Hasn't enough devil. Girl ought to have +some devil, hang it all! Dance with her myself? Well, I do--about three +times a year. Have her left on my hands an hour at a time. Fellow can't +afford that. Think we have no chivalry? Should come to dances yourself, +old chap. You'd be a godsend to the girls in the dump." + +Thor's dancing days were over before Lois's had begun, but he could +imagine what they had been to her. He could look back over the four or +five years that separated her from the ordeal, and still see her in "the +dump"--tall, timid, furtively watching the young men with those swimming +brown orbs of hers, wondering whether or not she should have a partner; +heartsore under her finery, often driving homeward in the weary early +hours with tears streaming down her cheeks. He knew as much about it as +if he had been with her. He suffered for her retrospectively. He did it +to a degree that made his long face sorrowful. + +The sorrow caused Lois some impatience. "For mercy's sake, Thor, don't +look at me like that! It isn't as bad as you seem to think. I don't mind +it." + +"But I do," he declared, with indignation, only to feel that he was +slowly coloring. + +He colored because the statement brought him within measurable distance +of a declaration which he meant to make, but for which he was not ready. + +She seemed to divine his embarrassment, speaking with forced lightness. +"Please don't waste your sympathy on me. If any one's to be pitied, it's +mamma. I'm such a disappointment to her. Let's talk of something else. +Where have you been to-day, and what have you been doing?" + +He was not blind to her tact, counting it to her credit for the future, +and asked abruptly if she knew Fay, the gardener. + +"Fay, the gardener?" she echoed. "I know who he is." She went more +directly to the point in saying, "I know his daughter." + +"Well, she's having a hard time." + +"Is she? I should think she might." + +His face grew keener. "Why do you say that?" + +"Oh, I don't know--she's that sort. At least, I should judge she was +that sort from the little I've seen of her." + +"How much have you seen of her?" + +"Almost nothing; but little as it was, it impressed itself on my mind. I +went to see her once at Mr. Whitney's suggestion." + +"Whitney? He's the rector at St. John's, isn't he? What had he to do +with her? She doesn't belong to his church?" + +Lois explained. "It was when we established the branch of the Girl's +Friendly Society at St. John's. Mr. Whitney thought she might care to +join it." + +"And did she?" + +"No; quite the other way. When I went to ask her, she resented it. She +had an idea I was patronizing her. That's the difficulty in approaching +girls like that." + +He looked at her with a challenging expression. "Girls like what?" + +"I suppose I mean girls who haven't much money--or who've got to work." + +He still challenged her, his head thrown back. "They probably don't +consider themselves inferior to you for that reason. It wouldn't be +American if they did." + +"And it wouldn't be American if I did; and I don't. They only make me +feel so because they feel it so strongly themselves. That's what's not +American; and it isn't on my part, but on theirs. They force their +sentiment back on me. They make me patronizing whether I will or no." + +"And were you patronizing when you went to see Miss Fay?" + +To conceal the slightly irritated attentiveness with which he waited for +her reply he began to light his motor lamps. Condescension toward Rosie +Fay suddenly struck him as offensive, no matter from whom it came. + +"I'm sure I don't know," she replied, indifferently. "There was +something about her that disconcerted me." + +"She's as good as we are," he declared, snapping the little door of one +of the lanterns. + +"I don't deny that." + +"A generation or two ago we were all farming people together. The +Willoughbys and the Brands and the Thorleys and the Fays were on an +equal footing. They worked for one another and intermarried. The +progress of the country has taken some of us and hurled us up, while it +has seized others of us and smashed us down; but we should try to get +over that when it comes to human intercourse." + +"That's what I was doing when I asked her to join our Friendly Society." + +"Pff! The deuce you were! I know your friendly societies. Keep those who +are down down. Help the humble to be humbler by making them obsequious." + +"You know nothing at all about it," she declared, with spirit. "In +trying to make things better you're content to spin theories, while we +put something into practice." + +He snapped the door of the second lamp with a little bang. "Put +something into practice, with the result that people resent it." + +"With the result that Rosie Fay resented it; but she's not a fair +example. She's proud and rebellious and intense. I never saw any one +just like her." + +"You probably never saw any one who had to be like her because they'd +had her luck. Look here, Lois," he said, with sudden earnestness, "I +want you to be a friend to that girl." + +She opened her eyes in mild surprise at his intensity. "There's nothing +I should like better, if I knew how." + +"But you do know how. It's easy enough. Treat her as you would a girl in +your own class--Elsie Darling, for instance." + +"It's not so simple as that. When Elsie Darling came back after five or +six years abroad mamma and I drove into town and called on her. She +wasn't in, and we left our cards. Later, we invited her to lunch or to +dinner. I should be perfectly willing to go through the same formalities +with Miss Fay--only she'd think it queer. It would be queer. It would be +queer because she hasn't got--what shall I say?--she hasn't got the +social machinery for that kind of ceremoniousness. The machinery means +the method of approach, and with people who have to live as she does +it's the method of approach that presents the difficulty. It's not as +easy as it looks." + +"Very well, then; let us admit that it's hard. The harder it is the more +it's the job for you." + +There was an illuminating quality in her smile that atoned for lack of +beauty. "Oh, if you put it in that way--" + +"I do put it in that way," he declared, with an earnestness toned down +by what was almost wistfulness. "There are so many things in which I +want help, Lois--and you're the one to help me." + +She held out her hand with characteristic frankness. "I'll do anything I +can, Thor. Just tell me what you want me to do when you want me to do +it--and I'll try." + +"Oh, there'll be a lot of things in which we shall have to pull +together," he said, as he held her hand. "I want you to remember, if +ever any trouble comes, that"--he hesitated for a word that wouldn't say +too much for the moment--"that I'll be there." + +"Thank you, Thor. That's a great comfort." + +She withdrew her hand quietly. Quietly, too, she assured him, as she +moved toward the steps, that she would not fail to force herself again +on Rosie Fay. "And about that other matter--the one you spoke of +first--you'll tell me more by and by, won't you?" + +After her capacity for ringing true, his conscientiousness prompted him +to let her see that she could feel quite sure of him. "I'll tell you +anything I can find out; and one of these days, Lois, I must--I +must--say a lot more." + +She mounted a step or two without turning away from him. "Oh, well," she +said, lightly, as though dismissing a topic of no importance, "there'll +be plenty of time." + +But her smile was a happy one--so happy that he who smiled rarely smiled +back at her from the runabout. + +He could scarcely be expected to know as yet that his pleasure was not +in any happiness of hers, but in the help she might bring to a little +creature whose image had haunted him all the afternoon--a little +creature whose desperate flower-like face looked up at him from a +background of poinsettias. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +On coming to the table that evening Claude begged his mother to excuse +him for not having dressed for dinner, on the ground that he had an +engagement with Billy Cheever. Mrs. Masterman pardoned him with a +gracious inclination of the head that made her diamond ear-rings +sparkle. No one in the room could be unaware that she disapproved of +Claude's informality. Not only did it shock her personal delicacy to +dine with men who concealed their shirt-bosoms under the waistcoats they +had worn all day, but it contravened the aims by which during her entire +married life she had endeavored to elevate the society around her. She +herself was one to whom the refinements were as native as foliage to a +tree. "It's all right, Claudie dear; but you do know I like you to dress +for the evening, don't you?" Without waiting for the younger son to +speak, she continued graciously to the elder: "And you, Thor. What have +you been doing with yourself to-day?" + +Her polite inclusion of her stepson was meant to start "her men," as she +called them, in the kind of conversation in which men were most at ease, +that which concerned themselves. Thor replied while consuming his soup +in the manner acquired in Parisian and Viennese restaurants frequented +by young men: + +"Got a patient." + +Hastily Claude introduced a subject of his own. "Ought to go and see +'The Champion,' father. Hear it's awfully good. Begins with a +prize-fight--" + +But the father's attention was given to Thor. "Who've you picked up?" + +"Fay's wife--Fay, the gardener." + +"Indeed? Have to whistle for your fee." + +"Oh, I know that--" + +"Thor, _please_!" Mrs. Masterman begged. "Don't eat so fast." + +"If you know it already," the father continued, "I should think you'd +have tried to squeak out of it." He said "know it alweady" and "twied to +squeak," owing to a difficulty with the letter _r_ which gave an +appealing, childlike quality to his speech. "If you start in by taking +patients who are not going to pay--" + +Claude sought another diversion. "What does it matter to Thor? In three +months' time he'll be able to pay sick people for coming to him--what?" + +"That's not the point," Masterman explained. "A doctor has no right to +pauperize people"--he said "pauper-wize people"--"any more than any one +else." + +"Oh, as to that," Thor said, forcing himself to eat slowly and sit +straight in the style commended by his stepmother, "it won't need a +doctor to pauperize poor Fay." + +"Quite right there," his father agreed. "He's done it himself." + +Thor considered the moment a favorable one for making his appeal. +"Claude and I have been talking him over--" + +"The devil we have!" Claude exclaimed, indignantly. + +"What's that?" Masterman's handsome face, which after his day's work was +likely to be gray and lifeless, grew sharply interrogative. Time had +chiseled it to an incisiveness not incongruous with a lingering air of +youth. His hair, mustache, and imperial were but touched with gray. His +figure was still lithe and spare. It was the custom to say of him that +he looked but the brother of his two strapping sons. + +Claude emphasized his annoyance. "Talking him over! I like that! You +blow into the office just as I'm ready to come home, and begin +cross-questioning me about father's affairs. I tell you I don't know +anything about them. If you call that talking him over--well, you're +welcome to your own use of terms." + +The head of the house busied himself in carving the joint which had been +placed before him. "If you want information, Thor, ask me." + +"I don't want information, father; and I don't think Claude is fair in +saying I cross-questioned him. I only said that I thought he and I ought +to do what we could to get you to renew Fay's lease." + +"Oh, did you? Then I can save you the trouble, because I'm not going +to." + +The declaration was so definite that it left Thor with nothing to say. +"Poor old Fay has worked pretty hard, hasn't he?" he ventured at last. + +"Possibly. So have I." + +"But with the difference that you've been prosperous, and he hasn't." + +Masterman laughed good-naturedly. "Which is the difference between me +and a good many other people. You don't blame me for that?" + +"It's not a question of blaming any one, father. I only supposed that +among Americans it was the correct thing for the lucky ones to come to +the aid of the less fortunate." + +"Take it that I'm doing that for Fay when I get him out of an impossible +situation." + +Thor smiled ruefully. "When you get him out of the frying-pan into the +fire?" + +"Well," Claude challenged, coming to his father's aid, "the fire's no +worse than the frying-pan, and may be a little better." + +"I've seen the girl," Mrs. Masterman contributed to the discussion. +"She's been in the greenhouse when I've gone to buy flowers. I must say +she didn't strike me very favorably." The two brothers exchanged glances +without knowing why. "She seemed to me so much--so very much--above her +station." + +"What _is_ her station?" Thor asked, bridling. "Her station's the same +as ours, isn't it?" + +The father was amused. "The same as _what_?" + +"Surely we're all much of a muchness. Most of us were farmers and +market-gardeners up to forty or fifty years ago. I've heard," he went +on, utilizing the information he had received that afternoon, "that the +Thorleys used to hire out to the Fays." + +"Oh, the Thorleys!" Mrs. Masterman smiled. + +"The Mastermans didn't," Archie said, gently. "You won't forget that, my +boy. Whatever you may be on any other side, you come from a line of +gentlemen on mine. Your grandfather Masterman was one of the best-known +old-school physicians in this part of the country. His father before him +was a Church of England clergyman in Derbyshire, who migrated to America +because he'd become a Unitarian. Sort of idealist. Lot of 'em in those +days. Time of Napoleon and Southey and Coleridge and all that. Thought +that because America was a so-called republic, or a so-called democracy, +he'd find people living for one another, and they were just looking out +for number one like every one else. Your Uncle Sim takes after him. Died +of a broken heart, I believe, because he didn't find the world made over +new. But you see the sort of well-born, high-minded stock you sprang +from." + +Thor lifted his big frame to an erect position, throwing back his head. +"I don't care a fig for what I sprang from, father. I don't even care +much for what I am. It strikes me as far more important to see that our +old friends and neighbors--who are just as good as we are--don't have to +go under when we can keep them up." + +"Yes, when we can," Thor's father said, with unperturbed gentleness; +"but very often we can't. In a world where every one's swimming for his +own dear life, those who can't swim have got to drown." + +"But every one is not swimming for his own dear life. Most of us are +safe on shore. You and I are, for example. And when we are, it seems to +me the least we can do is to fling a life-preserver to the poor chaps +who are throwing up their hands and sinking." + +Mrs. Masterman rallied her stepson indulgently. "Oh, Thor, how +ridiculous you are! How you talk!" + +Claude patted his mother's hand. He was still trying to turn attention +from bearing too directly on the Fays. "Don't listen to him, mumphy. +Beastly socialist, that's what he is. Divide up all the money in the +world so that everybody'll have thirty cents, and then tell 'em to go +ahead and live regardless. That'd be his way of doing things." + +But the father was more just. "Oh no, it wouldn't. Thor's no fool! Has +some excellent ideas. A little exaggerated, perhaps, but that'll cure +itself in time. Fault of youth. Good fault, too." He turned +affectionately to his elder son, "Rather see you that way, my boy, than +with an empty head." + +Thor fell silent, from a sense of the futility of talking. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +At the moment when Claude was excusing himself further, begging to be +allowed to run away so as not to keep Billy Cheever waiting, Rosie Fay +was noticing with relief that her mother was asleep at last. Thor's +sedative had taken effect in what the girl considered the nick of time. +Having smoothed the pillow, adjusted the patchwork quilt, and placed the +small kerosene hand-lamp on a chair at the foot of the bed, so as to +shade it from the sleeper's eyes, she slipped down-stairs. + +She wore a long, rough coat. Over her hair she had flung a scarf of some +gauzy green stuff that heightened her color. The lamplight, or some +inner flame of her own, drew opalescent gleams from her gray-greenish +eyes as she descended. She was no longer the desperate, petulant little +Rosie of the afternoon. Her face was aglow with an eager life. The +difference was that between a blossom wilting for lack of water and the +same flower fed by rain. + +In the tiny living-room at the foot of the stairs her father was eating +the supper she had laid out for him. It was a humble supper, spread on +the end of a table covered with a cheap cotton cloth of a red and +sky-blue mixture. Jasper Fay, in his shirt-sleeves, munched his cold +meat and sipped his tea while he entertained himself with a book propped +against a loaf of bread. Another small kerosene hand-lamp threw its +light on the printed page and illumined his mild, clear-cut, +clean-shaven face. + +"She's asleep," Rosie whispered from the doorway. "If she wakes while +I'm gone you must give her the second dose. I've left it on the +wash-stand." + +The man lifted his starry blue eyes. "You going out?" + +"I'm only going for a little while." + +"Couldn't you have gone earlier?" + +"How could I, when I had supper to get--and everything?" + +He looked uneasy. "I don't like you to be running round these dark +roads, my dear. You've been doing it a good deal lately. Where is it you +go?" + +"Why, father, what nonsense! Here I am cooped up all day--" + +He sighed. "Very well, my dear. I know you haven't much pleasure. But +things will be different soon, I hope. The new night fireman seems a +good man, and I expect we'll do better now. He'll be here at ten. Were +you going far?" + +She answered promptly. "Only to Polly Wilson's. She wants me to"--Rosie +turned over in her mind the various interests on which Polly Wilson +might desire to consult her--"she wants me to see her new dress." + +"Very well, my dear, but I hope after this evening you'll be able to do +your errands in the daytime. You know how it was with Matt. If he hadn't +gone roaming the streets at night--" + +Rosie came close to the table. Her face was resolute. "Father, I'm not +Matt. I know what I'm doing." She added, with increased determination, +"I'm acting for the best." + +He was mildly surprised. "Acting for the best in going to see Polly +Wilson's new dress?" + +She ignored this. "I'm twenty-three, father. I've got to follow my own +judgment. If I've a chance I must use it." + +"What sort of a chance, my dear?" + +"There's nothing to hope for here," she went on, cruelly, "except from +what I can do myself. Mother's no good; and Matt's worse than if he was +dead. I wish to God he would die--before he comes out. And you know what +you are, father." + +"I do the best I can, my dear," he said, humbly. + +"I know you do; but we can all see what that is. Everybody else is going +ahead but us." + +"Oh no, they're not, my dear. There are lots that fall behind as bad as +we do--and worse." + +She shook her head fiercely. "No, not worse. They couldn't. And +whatever's to be done, I've got to do it. If I don't--or if I +can't--well, we might as well give up. So you mustn't try to stop me, +father. I know what I'm doing. It's for your sake and everybody's sake +as much as for my own." + +He dropped his eyes to his book, in seeming admission that he had no +tenable ground on which to meet her in a conflict of wills. "Very well, +my dear," he sighed. "If you're going to Polly Wilson's you'd better be +off. You'll be home by ten, won't you? I must go then to show the new +fireman his way about the place." + + * * * * * + +Outside it was a windy night, but not a cold one. Shreds of dark cloud +scudded across the face of a three-quarters moon, giving it the +appearance of traveling through the sky at an incredible rate of speed. +In the south wind there was the tang of ocean salt, mingled with the +sweeter scents of woodland and withered garden nearer home. There was a +crackling of boughs in the old apple-trees, and from the ridge behind +the house came the deep, soft, murmurous soughing of pines. + +If Rosie lingered on the door-step it was not because she was afraid of +the night sounds or of the dark. She was restrained for a minute by a +sense of terror at what she was about to do. It was not a new terror. +She felt it on every occasion when she went forth to keep this tryst. As +she had already said to her father, she knew what she was doing. She was +neither so young nor so inexperienced as to be unaware of the element of +danger that waited on her steps. No one could have told her better than +she could have told herself that the voice of wise counsel would have +bidden her stay at home. But if she was not afraid of the night, neither +was she irresolute before the undertaking. Being forewarned, she was +forearmed. Being forearmed, she could run the risks. Running the risks, +she could enjoy the excitement and find solace in the romance. + +For it was romance, romance of the sort she had dreamed of and planned +for and got herself ready to be equal to, if ever it should come. +Somehow, she had always known it would come. She could hardly go back to +the time when she did not have this premonition of a lover who would +appear like a prince in a fairy-tale and lift her out of her low estate. + +And he had come. He had come late on an afternoon in the preceding +summer, when she was picking wild raspberries in the wood above Duck +Rock. It was a lonely spot in which she could reasonably have expected +to be undisturbed. She was picking the berries fast and deftly, because +the fruitman who passed in the morning would give her a dollar for her +harvest. Was it the dollar, or was it the sweet, wandering, summer air? +Was it the mingled perfumes of vine and fruit and soft loam loosened as +she crept among the brambles, or was it the shimmer of the waning +sunlight or the whir of the wings of birds or the note of a +hermit-thrush in some still depth of the woodland ever so far away? Or +was it only because she was young and invincibly happy at times, in +spite of a sore heart, that she sang to herself as her nimble fingers +secured the juicy, delicate red things and dropped them into the pan? + +He came like Pan, or a faun, or any other woodland thing, with no sound +of his approach, not even that of oaten pipes. When she raised her eyes +he was standing in a patch of bracken. She had been stooping to gather +the fruit that clustered on a long, low, spiny stem. The words on her +lips had been: + + At least be pity to me shown + If love it may na be-- + +but her voice trailed away faintly on the last syllable, for on looking +up he was before her. He wore white flannels, and a Panama hat of which +the brim was roguishly pulled down in front to shade his eyes. + +He was smiling unabashed, and yet with a friendliness that made it +impossible for her to take offense. "Isn't it Rosie?" he asked, without +moving from where he stood in the patch of trampled bracken. "I'm +Claude. Don't you remember me?" + +A Delphic nymph who had been addressed by Apollo, in the seclusion of +some sacred grove, could hardly have felt more joyous or more dumb. +Rosie Fay did not know in what kind of words to answer the glistening +being who had spoken to her with this fine familiarity. Later, in the +silence of the night, she blushed with shame to think of the figure she +must have cut, standing speechless before him, the pan of red +raspberries in her hands, her raspberry-red lips apart in amazement, and +her eyes gleaming and wide with awe. + +She remained vague as to what she answered in the end. It was confusedly +to the effect that though she remembered him well enough, she supposed +that he had long ago forgotten one so insignificant as herself. +Presently he was beside her, dropping raspberries into her pan, while +they laughed together as in those early days when they had picked peas +by her father's permission in Grandpa Thorley's garden. + +Their second meeting was accidental--if it was accidental that each had +come to the same spot, at the same hour, on the following day, in the +hope of finding the other. The third meeting was also on the same spot, +but by appointment, in secret, and at night! Claude had been careful to +impress on her the disaster that would ensue if their romance were +discovered. + +But Rosie Fay knew what she was doing. She repeated that statement often +to herself. Had she really been a Delphic nymph, or even a young lady of +the best society, she might have given herself without reserve to the +rapture of her idyl; but her circumstances were peculiar. Rosie was +obliged to be practical, to look ahead. A fairy prince was not only a +romantic dream in her dreary life, but an agency to be utilized. The +least self-seeking of drowning maids might expect the hero on the bank +to pull her out of the water. The very fact that she recognized in +Claude a tendency to dally with her on the brink instead of landing her +in a place of safety compelled her to be the more astute. + +But she was not so astute as to be inaccessible to the sense of terror +that assailed her every time she went to meet him. It was the fright of +one accustomed to walk on earth when seized and borne into the air. +Claude's voice over the telephone, as she had heard it that afternoon, +was like the call to adventures at once enthralling and appalling, in +which she found it hard to keep her head. She kept it only by saying to +herself: "I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. My father is +ruined; my brother is in jail. But I love this man and he loves me. If +he marries me--" + +But Rosie's thoughts broke off abruptly there. They broke off because +they reached a point beyond which imagination would not carry her. If he +marries me! The supposition led her where all was blurred and roseate +and golden, like the mists around the Happy Isles. Rosie could not +forecast the conditions that would be hers as the wife of Claude +Masterman. She only knew that she would be transported into an +atmosphere of money, and money she had learned by sore experience to be +the sovereign palliative of care. Love was much to poor Rosie, but +relief from anxiety was more. It had to be so, since both love and light +are secondary blessings to the tired creature whose first need is rest. +It was for rest that Claude Masterman stood primarily in her mind. He +was a fairy prince, of course; he was a lover who might have satisfied +any girl's aspirations. But before everything else he was a hero and a +savior, a being in whose vast potentialities, both social and financial, +she could find refuge and lie down at last. + +It needed but this bright thought to brace her. She clasped her hands to +her breast; she lifted her eyes to the swimming moon; she drew deep +breaths of the sweet, strong air; she appealed to all the supporting +forces she knew anything about. A minute later she was speeding through +the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Between the greenhouses, of which the glass gleamed dimly in the +moonlight, Rosie followed a path that straggled down the slope of her +father's land to the new boulevard round the pond. The boulevard here +swept inland about the base of Duck Rock, in order to leave that wooded +bluff an inviolate feature of the landscape. So inviolate had it been +that during the months since Rosie had picked wild raspberries in its +boskage the park commissioners had seized on it as a spot to be subdued +by winding paths and restful benches. To make it the more civilized and +inviting they had placed one of the arc-lamps that now garlanded the +circuit of the pond just where it would guide the feet of lovers into +the alluring shade. Rosie was glad of this friendly light before +engaging on the rough path up the bluff under the skeleton-like trees. +She was not afraid; she was only nervous, and the light gave her +confidence. + +But to-night, as she emerged on the broad boulevard from the weedy +outskirts of her father's garden, the clatter of horse-hoofs startled +her into drawing back. She would have got herself altogether out of +sight had there been anything at hand in the nature of a shrub high +enough to conceal her. As it was she could only shrink to the extreme +edge of the roadside, hoping that the rider, whoever he was, would pass +without seeing her. This he might have done had not the bay mare Delia, +unaccustomed to the sight of young ladies roaming alone at night, +thought it the part of propriety to shy. + +"Whoa, Delia! whoa! What's the matter? Steady, old girl! steady!" There +was a flash of the quick, penetrating eyes around the circle made by the +arc-light. "Why, hello, Rosie! 'Pon my soul! Look scared as a stray +kitten. Where you going?" + +Rosie could only reply that she wasn't going anywhere. She was +just--out. + +"Well, it's a fine night. Everybody seems to be out. Just met Claude." + +The girl was unable to repress a startled "Oh!" though she bit her +tongue at the self-betrayal. + +Uncle Sim laughed merrily. "Don't wonder you're frightened--pretty girl +like you. Devil of a fellow, Claude thinks he is. Suppose you don't know +him. Ah, well, that wouldn't make any difference to him, if he was to +run across you. I'll tell you what! You come along with me." Chuckling +to himself, he slipped from Delia's back, preparing to lead the mare and +accompany the girl on foot. "We'll go round by the Old Village and up +Schoolhouse Lane. The walk'll do you good. You'll sleep better after it. +Come along now, and tell me about your mother as we go. Did my nephew, +Thor, come to see her? What did he give her? Did she take it? Did it +make her sleep?" + +But Rosie shrank away from him with the eyes of a terrified animal. "Oh +no, Dr. Masterman! Please! I don't want to take that long walk. I'll go +back up the path--the way I came. I just ran out to--to--" + +He looked at her with suspicious kindliness. "Will you promise me you'll +go back the way you came?" + +"Yes, yes; I will." + +"Then that's all right. It's an awful dangerous road, Rosie. Tramps--and +everything. But if you'll go straight back up the path I'll be easy in +my mind about you." He watched her while she retreated. "Good night!" he +called. + +"Good night," came her voice from half-way up the garden. + +She was obliged to wait in the shadow of an outlying hothouse till the +sound of Delia's hoofs, clattering off toward the Old Village, died away +on the night. She crept back again, cautiously. Cautiously, too, she +stole across the boulevard and into the wood. Once there, she flew up +the path with the frantic eagerness of a hare. She was afraid Claude +might have come and gone. She was afraid of the incident with old Sim. +What did he mean? Did he mean anything? If he betrayed Claude at home, +would it keep the latter from meeting her? She had no great confidence +in Claude's ability to withstand authority. She had no great confidence +in anything, not even in his love, or in her own. The love was true +enough; it was ardently, desperately true; but would it bear the strain +that could so easily be put upon it? She felt herself swept by an +immense longing to be sure. + +She had so many subjects to think of and to dread that she forgot to be +frightened as she sped up the bluff. It was only on reaching the summit +and discovering that Claude wasn't there that she was seized by fear. +There was a bench beside her--a round bench circling the trunk of an +oak-tree--and she sank upon it. + + * * * * * + +The crunching of footsteps told her some one was coming up the slope. In +all probability it was Claude; but it might be a stranger, or even an +animal. The crunching continued, measured, slow. She would have fled if +there had been any way of fleeing without encountering the object of her +alarm. The regular beat of the footsteps growing heavier and nearer +through the darkness rendered her almost hysterical. When at last +Claude's figure emerged into the moonlight, his erect slenderness +defined against the sky, she threw herself, sobbing, into his arms. + +It was not the least of Claude's attractions that he was so tender with +women swept by crises of emotion. Where Thor would have stood helpless, +or prescribed a mild sedative, Claude pressed the agitated creature to +his breast and let her weep. + +When her sobs had subsided to a convulsive clinging to him without +tears, he explained his delay in arriving by his meeting with Uncle Sim. +They were seated on the bench by this time, his arms about her, her face +close to his. + +"Awful nuisance, he is. Regular Paul Pry. Can't keep anything from him. +Scours the country night and day like the Headless Horseman of Sleepy +Hollow. Never know when you'll meet him." + +"I met him, too," Rosie said, getting some control of her voice. + +"The deuce you did! Did he speak to you? Did he say anything about me?" + +"He said he'd seen you." + +"Is that all?" + +She weighed the possible disadvantages of saying too much, coming to the +conclusion that she had better tell him more. "No, it isn't quite all. +He seemed to--warn me against you." + +"Oh, the devil!" In his start he loosened his embrace, but grasped her +to him again. "What's he up to now?" + +"Do you think he's up to anything?" + +"What else did he say? Tell me all you can think of." + +She narrated the brief incident. + +"Will it make any difference to us?" she ventured to ask. + +"It'll make a difference to us if he blabs to father. Of course!" + +"What sort of difference, Claude?" + +"The sort of difference it makes when there's the devil to pay." + +She clasped him to her the more closely. "Does that mean that we +shouldn't be able to see each other any more?" + +The question being beyond him, Claude smothered it under a selection of +those fond epithets in which his vocabulary was large. In the very +process of enjoying them Rosie was rallying her strength. She was still +clasping him as she withdrew her head slightly, looking up at him +through the moonlight. + +"Claude, I want to ask you something." + +With his hand on the knot of her hair, he pressed her face once more +against his. "Yes, yes, darling. Ask me anything. Yes, yes, yes, yes." + +She broke in on his purring with the words, "Are we engaged?" + +The purring ceased. Without relaxing his embrace he remained passive, +like a man listening. "What makes you ask me that?" + +"It's what people generally are when they're--when they're like us, +isn't it?" + +Brushing his lips over the velvet of her cheeks, he began to purr again. +"No one was ever like us, darling. No one ever will be. Don't worry your +little head with what doesn't matter." + +"But it does matter to me, Claude. I want to know where I am." + +"Where you are, dearie. You're here with me. Isn't that enough?" + +"It's enough for now, Claude, but--" + +"And isn't what's enough for now all we've got to think of?" + +"No, Claude dearest. A girl isn't like a man--" + +"Oh yes, she is, when she loves. And you love me, don't you, dearie? You +love me just a little. Say you love me--just a little--a very little--" + +"Oh, Claude, my darling, my darling, you know I love you. You're all +I've got in the world--" + +"And you're all I've got, my little Rosie. Nothing else counts when I'm +with you--" + +"But when you're not with me, Claude? What then? What am I to think when +you're away from me? What am I to be?" + +"Be just as you are. Be just as you've always been since the day I first +saw you--" + +"Yes, yes, Claude; but you don't understand. If any one were to find out +that I came here to meet you like this--" + +"No one must find out, dear. We must keep that mum." + +"But if they did, Claude, it wouldn't matter to you at all--" + +"Oh, wouldn't it, though? Father'd make it matter, I can tell you." + +"Yes, but you wouldn't be disgraced. I should be. Don't you see? No one +would ever believe--" + +"Oh, what does it matter what any one believes. Let them all go hang." + +"We can't let them all go hang. You can't let your father go hang, and I +can't let mine. Do you know what my father would do to me if he knew +where I am now? He'd kill me." + +"Oh, rot, Rosie!" + +"No, no, Claude; I'm telling you the truth. He's that sort. You wouldn't +think it, but he is. He's one of those mild, dreamy men who, when +they're enraged--which isn't often--don't know where to stop. If he +thought I'd done wrong he'd put a knife into me, just like that." She +struck her clenched hand against his heart. "When Matt was arrested--" + +He tore himself from her suddenly. The sensitive part of him had been +touched. "Oh, Lord, Rosie, don't let's go into that. I hate that +business. I try to forget it." + +"No one can forget it who remembers me." + +"Oh yes, they can. _I_ can--when you don't drag it up. What's the use, +Rosie? Why not be happy for the few hours every now and then that we can +get together? What's got into you?" He changed his tone. "You hurt me, +Rosie, you hurt me. You talk as if you didn't trust me. You seem to have +suspicions, to be making schemes--" + +"Oh, Claude! For God's sake!" Rosie, too, was touched on the quick, +perhaps by some truth in the accusation. + +He kissed her ardently. "I know, dear; I know. I know it's all +right--that you don't mean anything. Kiss me. Tell me you won't do it +any more--that you won't hurt the man who adores you. What does anything +else matter? You and I are everything there is in the world. Don't let +us talk. When we've got each other--" + +Rosie gave it up, for the present at any rate. She began to perceive +dimly that they had different conceptions of love. For her, love was +engagement and marriage, with the material concomitants the two states +implied. But for Claude love was something else. It was something she +didn't understand, except that it was indifferent to the orderly +procession by which her own ambitions climbed. He loved her; of that she +was sure. But he loved her for her face, her mouth, her eyes, her hair, +the color of her skin, her roughened little hands, her lithe little +body. Of nothing else in her was he able to take cognizance. Her hard +life and her heart-breaking struggles were conditions he hadn't the eyes +to see. He was aware of them, of course, but he could detach her from +them. He could detach her from them for the minutes she spent with him, +but he could see her go back to them and make no attempt to follow her +in sympathy. + +But he loved her beauty. There was that palliating fact. After all, +Rosie was a woman, and here was the supreme tribute to her womanhood. It +was not everything, and yet it was the thing enchanting. It was the kind +of tribute any woman in the world would have put before social rescue or +moral elevation, and Rosie was like the rest. She could be lulled by +Claude's endearments as a child is lulled by a cradle-song. With this +music in her ears doubts were stilled and misgivings quieted and +ambitions overruled. Return to the world of care and calculation +followed only on Claude's words uttered just as they were parting. + +"And you'd better be on your guard against Thor. So long as he's going +to your house you mustn't give anything away." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Dressed for going out, Mrs. Willoughby was buttoning her gloves as she +stood in the square hall hung with tapestries of a late Gobelins period +and adorned with a cabinet in the style of Buhl flanked by two +decorative Regency chairs. Her gaze followed the action of her fingers +or wandered now and then inquiringly up the stairway. + +Her broad, low figure, wide about the hips, tapered toward the feet in +lines suggestive of a spinning-top. She was proud of her feet, which +were small and shapely, and approved of a fashion in skirts that +permitted them to be displayed. Being less proud of her eyes, she also +approved of a style of hat which allowed the low, sloping brim, worn +slantwise across the brows, to conceal one of them. + +"You're surely not going in that rag!" + +The protest was called forth by Lois's appearance in a walking-costume +on the stairs. + +"But, mamma, I'm not going at all. I told you so." + +"Told me so! What's the good of telling me so? There'll be loads of men +there--simply loads. Goodness me! Lois, if you're ever going to know any +men at all--" + +"I know all the men I want to know." + +"You don't know all the men you want to know, and if you do I should be +ashamed to say it. A girl who's had all your advantages and doesn't make +more show! What on earth are you doing that you don't want to come?" + +Lois hesitated, but she was too frank for concealments. "I'm going to +see a girl Thor Masterman wants me to look after. He thinks I may be +able to help her." + +The mother subsided. "Oh, well--if it's that!" She added, so as not to +seem to hint too much: "I always like you to do what you can toward +uplift. I'll take you as far as the Old Village, if you're going that +way." + +There had been a time when such concessions at the mention of Thor +Masterman would have irritated Lois more than any violence of +opposition; but that time was passing. She could hardly complain if +others saw what was daily becoming more patent to herself. She could +complain of it the less since she found it difficult to conceal her +happiness. It was a happiness that softened the pangs of care and +removed to a distance the conditions incidental to her father's habits +and impending financial ruin. + +Nevertheless, the conditions were there, and had to be confronted. She +made, in fact, a timid effort to confront them as she sat beside her +mother in the admirably fitted limousine. + +"Mother, what are we going to do about papa?" + +Mrs. Willoughby's indignant rising to the occasion could be felt like an +electric wave. "Do about him? Do about what?" + +"About the way he is." + +"The way he is? What on earth are you talking about?" + +"I mean the way he comes home." + +"He comes home very tired, if that's what you're trying to say. Any man +who works as they work him at that office--" + +"Do you think it's work?" + +"No, I don't think it's work. I call it slavery. It's enough to put a +man in his grave. I've seen him come home so that he could hardly speak; +and if you've done the same you may know that he's simply tired enough +to die." + +Lois tried to come indirectly to her point by saying, "Thor Masterman +has been bringing him home lately." + +"Oh, well; I suppose Thor knows he doesn't lose anything by that move." + +Lois ignored the remark to say, "Thor seems worried." + +The mother's alertness was that of a ruffled, bellicose bird defending +its mate. "If Thor's worried about your father, he can spare himself the +trouble. He can leave that to me. I'll take care of him. What he needs +is rest. When everything is settled I mean to take him away. Of course +we can't go _this_ winter. If we could we should go to Egypt--he and I. +But we can't. We know that. We make the sacrifice." + +These discreet allusions, too, Lois thought it best to let pass in +silence. "It wasn't altogether about papa that Thor was worried. He +seems anxious about money." + +Bessie tossed her head. "That may easily be. If your father takes our +money out of the firm, as he threatens to do, the Mastermans will +be--well, I don't know where." + +The girl felt it right to go a step further. "He seemed to hint--he +didn't say it in so many words--that perhaps papa wouldn't have so very +much to take out." + +This was dismissed lightly. "Then he doesn't know what's he talking +about. Archie's frightfully close in those things, I must say. He's +never let either of the boys know anything about the business. He won't +even let me. But your father knows. If Thor thinks for a minute the +money isn't nearly all ours he may come in for a rude awakening." + +Reassured by this firmness of tone, Lois began to take heart. Getting +out at the Old Village, she continued her way on foot, and found Rosie +among the azaleas and poinsettias. + + * * * * * + +Thor Masterman met her an hour later, as she returned homeward. He knew +where she had been as soon as he saw her turn the corner at which the +road descends the hill, recognizing with a curious pang her promptness +in carrying out his errand. The pang was a surprise to him--the +beginning of a series of revelations on the subject of himself. + +Her desire to please him had never before this instant caused him +anything but satisfaction. It had been but the response to his desire to +please her. He had not been blind to the goal to which this mutual +good-will would lead them, but he had quite made up his mind that she +would make him as good a wife as any one. As a preliminary to marriage +he had weighed the possibility of falling ardently in love, coming at +last to the conclusion that he was not susceptible to that passion. + +His long-standing intention to marry Lois Willoughby was based on the +fact that besides being sympathetic to him she was plain and lonely. If +the motive hadn't taken full possession of his heart it was because the +state of being plain and lonely had never seemed to him the worst of +calamities, by any means. The worst of calamities, that for which no +patience was sufficient, that for which there was no excuse, that which +kings, presidents, emperors, parliaments, congresses, embassies, and +armies should combine their energies to prevent, was to be poor. He was +entirely of Mrs. Fay's opinion, that with money ill-health and +unhappiness were details. You could bear them both. You could bear being +lonely; you could bear being plain. Consequently, the menace that now +threatened Lois Willoughby's fortunes strengthened her claim on him; but +all at once he felt, as he saw her descend the hill, that the claim +might make complications. + +Was it because she was plain? Curious that he had never attached +importance to that fact before! But it blinded him now to her graceful +carriage as well as to the way she had of holding her head with a noble, +independent poise that made her a woman of distinction. + +She was smiling with an air at once intimate and triumphant. "I think +I've won in the first encounter, at any rate." + +In his wincing there was the surprise of a man who in a moment of +expansion has made a sacred confidence only to find it crop up lightly +in subsequent conversation. He was obliged to employ some self-control +in order to say, with a manner sufficiently offhand, "What happened?" + +She told of making her approaches under the plea of buying potted +plants. A cold reception had given way before her persistent +friendliness, while there had been complete capitulation on the tender +of an invitation to County Street to tea. The visit had been difficult +to manage, but amusing, and a little pitiful. + +To the details that were difficult or pitiful he could listen with calm, +but he was inwardly indignant that Lois should find anything in her +meeting with Rosie that lent itself to humor. He knew that humor. The +superior were fond of indulging in it at the expense of the less +fortunate. Even Lois Willoughby had not escaped that taint of class. +Fearing to wound her by some impatient word, he made zeal in his round +of duties the excuse for an abrupt good-by. + +But zeal in his round of duties changed to zeal of another kind as with +set face and long, swinging stride he hurried up the hill. The plans he +had been maturing for the psychological treatment of Mrs. Fay melted +into eagerness to know how the poor little thing had taken Lois's +advances. He was disappointed, therefore, that Rosie should receive him +coldly. + +Within twenty-four hours his imagination had created between them +something with the flavor of a friendship. He had been thinking of her +so incessantly that it was disconcerting to perceive that apparently she +had not been thinking of him at all. He was the doctor to her, and no +more. She continued to direct Antonio, the Italian, who was opening a +crate of closely packed azalea-plants, while she discussed the effect of +his sedative on her mother. Her manner was dry and business-like; her +replies to his questions brief and to the point. + +But professional duty being done, he endeavored to raise the personal +issue. "What did you mean yesterday when you said that you couldn't play +fair, but that you'd play as fair as you could?" + +She turned from her contemplation of the stooping Antonio's back. "Did I +say that?" + +He hardly heeded the question in the pleasure he got from this glimpse +of her green eyes. "You said that--or something very much like it." + +His uncertainty gave her the chance to correct that which, in the light +of Claude's warning, might prove to have been an indiscretion. "I'm sure +I can't imagine. You must have--misunderstood me." + +He pursued the topic not because he cared, but in order to make her look +at him again. "Oh no, I didn't. Don't you remember? It was after you +said that there was one thing that might happen--" + +She was sure of her indiscretion now. He might even be setting a snare +for her. Dr. Sim Masterman might have withdrawn from her mother's case +in order to put the one brother on the other's tracks. If Claude was +right in his suspicions, there was reasonable ground for alarm. She +said, with assumed indifference: "Oh, that! That was nothing. Just a +fancy." + +He still talked for the sake of talking, attaching no importance to her +replies. "Was it a fancy when you said that I would be one of the people +opposed to it--if it happened?" + +"Well, yes. But you'd only be one among a lot." She shifted to firmer +ground. "I wasn't thinking of you in particular--or of any one in +particular." + +"Were you thinking of any _thing_ in particular?" + +The question threw her back on straight denial. "N-no; not exactly; just +a fancy." + +"But I shouldn't be opposed to it, whatever it is--if it was to your +advantage." + +His persistence deepened her distrust. A man whom she had seen only once +before would hardly display such an interest in her and her affairs +unless he had a motive, especially when that man was a Masterman. She +took refuge in her task with the azaleas. "No, not there, Antonio. Put +them there--like this--I'll show you." + +The necessity for giving Antonio practical demonstration taking her to +the other side of the hothouse, Thor felt himself obliged to go. He went +with the greater regret since he had been unable to sound her on the +subject of Lois Willoughby's advances, though her skill in eluding him +heightened his respect. His disdain for the small arts of coquetry being +as sincere as his scorn of snobbery, he counted it to her credit that +she eluded him at all. There would be plenty of opportunities for speech +with her. During them he hoped to win her confidence by degrees. + +In the bedroom up-stairs, where the mother was again seated in her +upholstered arm-chair with the quilt across her knees, he endeavored to +put into practice his idea of mental therapeutics. He began by speaking +of Matt, using the terms that would most effectively challenge her +attention. "When he comes back, you know, we must make him forget that +he's ever worn stripes." + +She eyed him sternly. "What'd be the good of his forgetting it? He'll +have done it, just the same." + +"Some of us have done worse than that, and yet--" + +"And yet we didn't get into Colcord for them. But that's what counts. +You can do what you like as long as you ain't put in jail. Look at your +father--" + +"So when he comes home--" he interrupted, craftily. + +She leaned forward, throwing the quilt from her knees. "See here," she +asked, confidentially, "how would you feel if you saw your son coming up +out of hell?" + +"How should I feel? I should be glad he was coming up instead of going +down. You would, too, wouldn't you? And now that he's coming up we must +keep him up. That's the point. So many poor chaps that have been in his +position feel that because they've once been down they've got to stay +down. We must make him see that he's come back among friends--and you +must tell us what to do. You must give your mind to it and think it out. +He's your boy--so it's your duty to take the lead." + +Her cold eye rested on him as if she were giving his words +consideration. "Why don't you ask your father to take the lead? He sent +him to Colcord." + +Thor got no further than this during the hour he spent with her, seeing +that Uncle Sim had been right in describing the case as one for +ingenuity--and something more. Questioning himself as to what this +something more could be, he brought up the subject tentatively with +Jasper Fay, whom he met on leaving the house. Thor himself stood on the +door-step, while Fay, who wore gardening overalls, confronted him from +the withered grass-plot that ended in a leafless hedge of bridal-veil. + +"She's never been a religious woman at all, has she?" + +Fay answered with a distant smile. "She did go in for religion at one +time, sir; but I guess she found it slim diet. It got to seem to her +like Thomas Carlyle's hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed. +After that she quit." + +"I had an idea that you belonged to the First Church and were Dr. +Hilary's parishioners." + +Fay explained. "Dr. Hilary married us, but we haven't troubled the +church much since. I never took any interest in the Christian religion +to begin with; and when I looked into it I found it even more fallacious +than I supposed." To account for this advanced position on the part of a +simple market-gardener he added, "I've been a good deal of a reader." + +Thor spoke slowly and after meditation. "It isn't so much a question of +its being fallacious as of its capacity for producing results." + +Fay turned partially round toward the south, where a haze hung above the +city. His tone was infused with a mild bitterness. "Don't we see the +results it can produce--over there?" + +"That's right, too." Thor was so much in sympathy with this point of +view that he hardly knew how to go on. "And yet some of us doctors are +beginning to suspect that there may be a power in Christianity--a purely +psychological power, you understand--that hasn't been used for what it's +worth." + +Fay nodded. He had been following this current of contemporary thought. +"Yes, Dr. Thor. So I hear. Just as, I dare say, you haven't found out +all the uses of opium." + +"Well, opium is good in its place, you know." + +"I suppose so." He lifted his starry eyes with their mystic, visionary +rapture fully on the young physician. "And yet I remember how George +Eliot prayed that when her troubles came she might get along without +being drugged by that stuff--meaning the Christian religion, sir--and I +guess I'd kind o' like that me and mine should do the same." + +Thor dropped the subject and went his way. As far as he had opinions of +his own, they would have been similar to Fay's had he not within a year +or two heard of sufficiently authenticated cases in which sick spirits +or disordered nerves had yielded to spiritual counsels after the doctor +had had no success. He had been so little impressed with these instances +that he might not have allowed his speculations with regard to Mrs. Fay +to go beyond the fleeting thought, only for the fact that on passing +through the Square he met Reuben Hilary. In general he was content to +touch his hat to the old gentleman and go on; but to-day, urged by an +impulse too vague to take accurate account of, he stopped with +respectful greetings. + +"I've just been to see an old parishioner of yours, sir," he said, when +the preliminaries of neighborly conversation had received their due. + +"Have you, now?" was the non-committal response, delivered with a +North-of-Ireland intonation. + +"Mrs. Fay--wife of Fay, the gardener. I can't say she's ill," Thor +went on, feeling his way, "but she's mentally upset." He decided to +plunge into the subject boldly, smiling with that mingling of +frankness and perplexity which people found appealing because of its +conscientiousness. "And I've been wondering, Dr. Hilary, if you couldn't +help her." + +"Have you, now? And what would you be wanting me to do?" + +Thor reflected as to the exact line to take, while the kindly eyes +covered him with their shrewd, humorous twinkle. "You see," Thor tried +to explain, "that if she could get the idea that there's any other stand +to take toward trouble than that of kicking against it, she might be in +a fair way to get better. At present she's like a prisoner who dashes +his head against a stone wall, not seeing that there's a window by which +he might make his escape." + +There was renewed twinkling in the merry eyes. "But if there's a window, +why don't you point it out to her?" + +Thor grinned. "Because, sir, I don't see it myself." + +"T't, t't! Don't you, then? And how do you know it's there?" + +Thor continued to grin. "To be frank with you, sir, I don't believe it +is there. But if you can make her believe it is--" + +"That is, you want me to deceive the poor creature." + +"Oh no, sir," Thor protested. "You wouldn't be deceiving her because you +do believe it." + +"So that I'd only be deceiving her to the extent that I'm deceived +myself." + +"You're too many for me," Thor laughed again, preparing to move on. "I +didn't know but that if you gave her what are called the consolations of +religion--that's the right phrase, isn't it--" + +"There is such a phrase. But you can't _give_ people the consolations of +religion; they've got to find them for themselves. If they won't do +that, there's no power in heaven or earth that can force consolation +upon them." + +"But religion undertakes to do something, doesn't it?" + +The old man shook his head. "Nothing whatever--no more than air +undertakes that you shall breathe it, or water that you shall drink it, +or fire that you shall warm yourself at its blaze." + +Thor mused. When he spoke it was as if summing up the preceding remarks. +"So that you can't do anything, sir, for my friend, Mrs. Fay?" + +"Nothing whatever, me dear Thor--but help her to do something for +herself." + +"Very well, sir. Will you try that?" + +"Sure, I'll try it. I'm too proud of the Word of God to thrust it where +it isn't wanted--_margaritas ante porcos_, if you've Latin enough for +that--but when any one asks for it as earnestly as you, me dear Thor--" + +Having won what he asked, Thor shook the old man's hand and thanked him, +after which he hurried off to the garage to take out his runabout and +bring Lois's father home from town. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +As November and December passed and the new year came in, small +happenings began to remind Thorley Masterman that he was soon to inherit +money. It was a fact which he himself could scarcely credit. Perhaps +because he was not imaginative the condition of being thirty years of +age continued to seem remote even when he was within six weeks of that +goal. + +He was first impressed with the rapidity of his approach to it on a +morning when he came late to breakfast, finding at his plate a long +envelope, bearing in its upper left-hand corner the request that in the +event of non-delivery it should be returned to the office of Darling & +Darling, at 27, Commonwealth Row. A glance, which he couldn't help +reading, passed round the table as he took it up. It was not new to him +that among the other members of the household, closely as they were +united, there was a sense of vague injustice because he was coming into +money and they were not. + +The communication was brief, stating no more than the fact that in view +of the transfer of the estate which would take place a few weeks later, +Mr. William Darling, the sole trustee, would be glad to see the heir on +a day in the near future, to submit to him the list of investments and +other properties that were to make up his inheritance. Thor saw his +grandfather's money, so long a fairy prospect, as likely to become a +matter of solid cash. The change in his position would be considerable. + +As yet, however, his position remained that of a son in his father's +family, and, in obedience to what he knew was expected of him, he read +the note aloud. Though there was an absence of comment, his stepmother, +in passing him his coffee, murmured, caressingly, "Dear old Thor." + +"Dear old Thor," Claude mimicked, "will soon be able to do everything he +pleases." + +Mrs. Masterman smiled. It was her mission to conciliate. "And what will +that be?" + +"I know what it won't be," Claude said, scornfully. "It won't be +anything that has to do with a pretty girl." + +Thor flushed. It was one of the minutes at which Claude's taunts gave +him all he could do to contain himself. As far as his younger brother +was concerned, he meant well by him. It had always been his intention +that his first use of Grandpa Thorley's money should be in supplementing +Claude's meager personal resources and helping him to keep on his feet. +He could be patient with him, too--patient under all sorts of stinging +gibes and double-edged compliments--patient for weeks, for +months--patient right up to the minute when something touched him too +keenly on the quick, and his wrath broke out with a fury he knew to be +dangerous. It was so dangerous as to make him afraid--afraid for Claude, +and more afraid for himself. There had been youthful quarrels between +them from which he had come away pale with terror, not at what he had +done, but at what he might have done had he not maintained some measure +of self-control. + +The memory of such occasions kept him quiet now, though the irony of +Claude's speech cut so much deeper than any one could suspect. "Won't be +anything that has to do with a pretty girl!" Good God! When he was +beginning to feel his soul rent in the struggle between love and honor! +It was like something sprung on him--that had caught him unawares. There +were days when the suffering was so keen that he wondered if there was +no way of lawfully giving in. After all, he had never asked Lois +Willoughby to marry him. There had never been more between them than an +unspoken intention in his mind which had somehow communicated itself to +hers. But that was not a pledge. If he were to marry some one else, she +couldn't reproach him by so much as a syllable. + +It was not often that he was tempted to reason thus, but Claude's +sarcasm brought up the question more squarely than it had ever raised +itself before. It was exactly the sort of subject on which, had it +concerned any one else, Thor would have turned for light to Lois +herself. In being debarred from her counsels, he felt strangely at a +loss. While he said to himself that after all these years there was but +one thing for him to do, he was curious as to the view other people +might take of such a situation. It was because of this need, and with +Claude's sneer ringing in his heart, that later in the day he sprang the +question on Dearlove. Dearlove was the derelict English butler whom Thor +had picked out of the gutter and put in charge of his office so that he +might have another chance. He had been summoned into his master's +presence to explain the subsidence in the contents of a bottle of cognac +that Thor kept at the office for emergency cases and had neglected to +put under lock and key. + +"That was a full bottle a month ago," Thor declared, holding the +accusing object up to the light. + +"Was it, sir?" Dearlove asked, dismally. He stood in his habitual +attitude, his arms crossed on his stomach, his hands thrust, monklike, +into his sleeves. + +"And I've only taken one glass out of it--the day that young fellow fell +off his bicycle." + +Dearlove eyed the bottle piteously. "'Aven't you, sir? Perhaps you took +more out that day than you thought." + +But Thor broke in with what was really on his mind. "Look here, +Dearlove! What would you say to a man who was in love with one woman if +he married another?" + +Dearlove was so astonished as to be for a minute at a loss for speech. +"What'd I say to him, sir? I'd say, what did he do it for? If it was--" + +"Yes, Dearlove?" Thor encouraged. "If it was for--what?" + +"Well, sir, if he'd got money with her, like--well, that'd be one +thing." + +"But if he didn't? If it was a case in which money didn't matter?" + +Dearlove shook his head. "I never 'eard of no such case as that, sir." + +Thor grew interested in the sheerly human aspects of the subject. +Romance was so novel to him that he wondered if every one came under its +spell at some time--if there was no exception, not even Dearlove. He +leaned across the desk, his hands clasped upon it. + +"Now, Dearlove, suppose it was your own case, and--" + +"Oh, me, sir! I'm no example to no one--not with Brightstone 'anging on +to me the way she does. I can't look friendly at so much as a kitten +without Brightstone--" + +"Now here's the situation, Dearlove," Thor interrupted, while the +ex-butler listened, his head judicially inclined to one side: "Suppose a +man--a patient of mine, let us say--meant to marry one young lady, and +let her see it. And suppose, later, he fell very much in love with +another young lady--" + +"He'd 'ave to ease the first one off a bit, wouldn't he, sir?" + +"You think he ought to." + +"I think he'd 'ave to, sir, unless he wanted to be sued for breach." + +"It's the question of duty I'm thinking of, Dearlove." + +"Ain't it his dooty to marry the one he's in love with, sir? Doesn't the +Good Book say as 'ow fallin' in love"--Dearlove blushed becomingly--"as +'ow fallin' in love is the way God A'mighty means to fertilize the earth +with people? Doesn't the Good Book say that, sir?" + +"Perhaps it does. I believe it's the kind of primitive subject it's +likely to take up." + +"So that there's that to be thought of, sir. They say the children not +born o' love matches ain't always strong." He added, as he shuffled +toward the door, "We never had no little ones, Brightstone and me--only +a very small one that died a few hours after it was born." + +Thor was not convinced by this reasoning, but he was happier than +before. Such expressions of opinion, which would probably be indorsed by +nine people out of ten, assured him that he might follow the urging of +his heart and yet not be a dastard. + + * * * * * + +He felt on stronger ground, therefore, when he talked with Fay one +afternoon in the week following. "Suppose my father doesn't renew the +lease--what would happen to you?" + +Fay raised himself from the act of doing something to a head of lettuce +which was unfolding its petals like a great green rose. His eyes had the +visionary look that marked his inability to come down to the practical. +"Well, sir, I don't rightly know." + +"But you've thought of it, haven't you?" + +"Not exactly thought of it. He's said he wouldn't two or three times +already, and then changed his mind." + +"Would it do you any good if he did? Aren't you fighting a losing +battle, anyhow?" + +"That's not wholly the way I judge, Dr. Thor. Neither the losing battle +nor the winning one can be told from the balance-sheet. The success or +failure of a man's work is chiefly in himself." + +Thor studied this, gazing down the level of soft verdure to the end of +the greenhouse in which they stood. "I can see how that might be in one +way, but--" + +"It's the way I mostly think of, sir. Every man has his own habit of +mind, hasn't he? I agree with the great prophet Thomas Carlyle when he +says"--he brought out the words with a mild pomposity--"when he says +that a certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells in us which only +our works can render articulate. He speaks of the folly of the precept +'Know thyself' till we've made it 'Know what thou canst work at.' I can +work at this, Dr. Thor; I couldn't work at anything else. I know that +making both ends meet is an important part of it, of course--" + +"But to you it isn't the _most_ important part of it." + +Fay's eyes wandered to the other greenhouse in which lettuce grew, to +the hothouse full of flowers, and out over the forcing-beds of violets. +"No, Dr. Thor; not the most important part of it--to me. I've created +all this. I love it. It's my life. It's myself. And if--" + +"And if my father doesn't renew the lease--?" + +"Then I shall be done for. It won't be just going bankrupt in the money +sense; it'll be everything else--blasted." He subjoined, dreamily: "I +don't know what would happen to me after that. I'd be--I'd be equal to +committing crimes." + +Thor couldn't remember ever having seen tears on an elderly man's cheeks +before. He took a turn down half the length of the greenhouse and back +again. "Look here, Fay," he said, in the tone of one making a +resolution, "supposing my father would give _me_ a lease of the place?" + +"You, Dr. Thor?" + +"Yes, me. Would you work it for me?" + +Fay reflected long, while Thor watched the play of light and shadow over +the mild, mobile face. "It wouldn't be my own place any more, would it, +sir?" + +"No, I suppose it wouldn't--not strictly. But it would be the next best +thing. It would be better than--" + +"It would be better than being turned out." He reflected further. "Was +you thinking of taking it over as an investment, sir?" + +Not having considered this side of his idea, Thor sought for a natural, +spontaneous answer, and was not long in finding one. "I want to be +identified with the village industries, because I'm going into +politics." + +"Oh, are you, sir? I didn't know you was that way inclined." + +"I'm not," Thor explained, when they had moved from the greenhouse into +the yard. "I only feel that we people of the old stock hang out of +politics too much and that I ought to pitch in and make one more. So you +get my idea, Fay. It'll give me standing to hold a bit of property like +this, even if it's only on lease." + +There was no need for further explanations. Fay consented, not +cheerfully, but with a certain saddened and yet grateful resignation, of +which the expression was cut short by a cheery, ringing voice from the +gateway: + +"Hello, Mr. Fay! Hello, Dr. Thor! Whoa, Maud, whoa! Stand, will you? +What you thinking of?" + +The response to this greeting came from both men simultaneously, each +making it according to his capacity for heartiness. "Hello, Jim!" They +emphasized the welcome by unconsciously advancing to meet the tall, +stalwart young Irishman of the third generation on American soil who +came toward them with the long, loose limbs and swinging stride +inherited from an ancestry bred to tramping the hills of Connemara. A +pair of twinkling eyes and a mouth that was always on the point of +breaking into a smile when it was not actually smiling tempered the +peasant shrewdness of a face that got further softening, and a touch of +superiority, from a carefully tended young mustache. + +Thor and Jim Breen had been on friendly terms ever since they were boys; +but the case was not exceptional, since the latter was on similar terms +with every one in the village. From childhood upward he had been a local +character, chiefly because of a breezy self-respect that was as free +from self-consciousness as from self-importance. There was no one to +whom he wasn't polite, but there had never been any one of whom he was +afraid. "Hello, Mr. Masterman!" "Hello, Dr. Hilary!" "Hello, Father +Ryan!" "Hello Dr. Sim!" had been his form of greeting ever since he had +begun swaggering around the village, with head up and face alert, at the +age of five. No one had ever been found to resent this cheerful +familiarity, not even Archie Masterman. + +As a man in whom friendliness was a primary instinct, Jim Breen never +entered a trolley-car nor turned a street corner without speaking or +nodding to every one he knew. Never did he visit a neighboring town +without calling on, or calling up, every one he could claim as an +acquaintance. He was always on hand for fires, for fights, for fallen +horses, for first-aid in accidents, for ball-games, for the outings of +Boy Scouts, and for village theatricals and dances. There were rumors +that he was sometimes "wild," but the wildness being confined to his +incursions into the city--which generally took place after dark--it was +not sufficiently in evidence to shock the home community. It was a +matter of common knowledge that he used, in village phrase, "to go with" +Rosie Fay--the breaking of the friendship being attributed by some of +the well-informed to his reported wildness, and by others to differences +in religion. As Thor had been absent in Europe during this episode, and +was without the native suspicion that would have connected the two +names, he took Jim's arrival pleasantly. + +Having finished his bit of business, which concerned an order for +azaleas too large for his father to meet, and in which Mr. Fay might +find it to his advantage to combine, Jim turned blithely toward Thor. +"Hear about the town meeting, Dr. Thor?--what old Billy Taylor said +about the new bridge? What do you think of that for nerve? Tell you +what, there's some things in this town needs clearing up." + +The statement bringing out Thor's own intention to run as a candidate +for office at the next election, Jim expressed his interest in the +vernacular of the hour, "What do you know about that?" Further +discussion of politics ending in Jim's pledging his support to his +boyhood's friend, Thor shook hands with an encouraging sense of being +embarked on a public career, and went forward to visit his patient in +the house. + +His steps were arrested, however, by hearing Jim say with casual +light-heartedness, "Rosie anywheres about, Mr. Fay?" + +The old man having nodded in the direction of the hothouse, Jim advanced +almost to the door, where Thor, on looking over his shoulder, saw him +pause. + +It was a curious pause for one so self-confident as the young +Irishman--a pause like that of a man grown suddenly doubtful, timid, +distrustful. His hand was actually on the latch when, to Thor's +surprise, he wheeled away, returning to his "team" with head bent and +stride slackened thoughtfully. By the time he had mounted the wagon, +however, and begun to tug at Maud he was whistling the popular air of +the moment with no more than a subdued note in his gaiety. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +But Thor was pleased with the idea that his father could scarcely refuse +him the lease. He would in fact make it worth his while not to do so. +Rosie Fay and those who belonged to her might, therefore, feel solid +ground beneath their feet, and go on working and, if need were, +suffering, without the intolerable dread of eviction. It would be a +satisfaction to him to accomplish this much, whatever the dictates of +honor might oblige him to forego. + +He felt, too, that he was getting his reward when, after Jim's +departure, Rosie nodded through the glass of the hothouse, giving him +what might almost be taken for a smile. He forbore to go to her at once, +keeping that pleasure for the end of his visit. After seeing his +patient, there were generally small directions to give the daughter +which afforded pretexts for lingering in her company. His patient was +getting better, not through ministrations of his own, but through some +mysterious influence exerted by Reuben Hilary. As a man of science and a +skeptic, Thor was slightly impatient of this aid, even though he himself +had invoked it. + +He was half-way up the stairs on his way to the bedroom in the mansard +roof when, on hearing a man's voice, he paused. The voice was saying, +with that inflection in which there was no more than a hint of the +brogue: + +"Now there's what we were talking of the last time I was here: 'Let not +your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye believe in God; +believe also in me.' There's the two great plagues of human +existence--fear and trouble--staggered for you at a blow. And you do +believe in God, now, don't you?" + +Thor had turned to tiptoe down again when he heard the words, spoken in +the rebellious tones with which he was familiar, modulated now to an odd +submissiveness: "I don't know whether I do or not. Isn't there something +in the Bible about, 'Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief'?" + +"There is, and it's a good way to begin." + +Thor was out in the yard before he could hear more. Standing for a +minute in the windy sunshine, he wondered at the curious phenomenon +presented by men in evident possession of their faculties who relied for +the dispersion of human care on means invisible and mystic. The fact +that in this case he himself had appealed to the illusion rendered the +working of it none the less astonishing. His own method for the +dispersion of human care--and the project was dear to him--was by +dollars and cents. It was, moreover, a method as to which there was no +trouble in proving the efficiency. + +He took up the subject of her mother with Rosie, who, with the help of +Antonio, was rearranging the masses of azaleas, carnations, and +poinsettias after the depletion of the Christmas sales. "She's really +better, isn't she?" + +Rosie pushed a white azalea to the place on the stand that would best +display its domelike regularity. "She seems to be." + +"What do you think has helped her?" + +She gave him a queer little sidelong smile. "You're the doctor. I should +think you'd know." + +He adored those smiles--constrained, unwilling, distrustful smiles that +varied the occasional earnest looks that he got from her green eyes. +"But I don't know. It isn't anything I do for her." + +She banked two or three azaleas together, so that their shades of pink +and pomegranate-red might blend. "I suppose it's Dr. Hilary." + +"I know it's Dr. Hilary. But he isn't working by magic. If she's getting +back her nerve it isn't because he wishes it on her, as the boys say." + +Suspecting all his approaches, she confined herself to saying, "I'm sure +I don't know," speaking like a guilty witness under cross-examination. +The assiduity of his visits, the persistency with which he tried to make +her talk, kept her the more carefully on her guard against betraying +anything unwarily. + +But to him the reserve was an added charm. He called it shyness or +coyness or maidenly timidity, according to the circumstance that called +it forth; but whatever it was, this apathy to his passionate dumb-show +piqued him to a frenzy infused with an element of homage. Any other girl +in her situation would have come half-way at least toward a man in his. +His training having rendered him analytical of the physical side of +things, he endeavored, more or less unsuccessfully, to account for the +extraordinary transformation in himself, whereby every nerve in his body +yearned and strained toward this hard, proud little creature who, too +evidently--as yet, at any rate--refused to take him into account. She +made him feel like a man signaling in the dark or speaking across a +vacuum through which his voice couldn't carry, while he was conscious at +the same time of searchings of heart at making the attempts to do +either. + +He was beset by these scruples when, after taking his runabout from the +garage, in order to go to town, he met Lois Willoughby in the Square. On +the instant he remembered Dearlove's counsel of a few days +earlier--"He'd 'ave to ease the first one off a bit." Whatever was to be +his ultimate decision, the wisdom of this course was incontestable. As +she paused, smiling, expecting him to stop, he lifted his hat and drove +onward. Perhaps it was only his imagination that caught in her great, +velvety brown eyes an expression of surprise and pain; but whether his +sight was accurate or not, the memory of the moment smote him. The +process of "easing the first one off" would probably prove difficult. "I +shall have to explain to her that I was in a hurry," he said, to comfort +himself, as he flew onward to the town. + + * * * * * + +The explanation would have been not untrue, since he was already overdue +at his appointment with Mr. William Darling, his grandfather's executor. + +It was the second of the meetings arranged for giving him a general idea +of the estate he was coming into. At the first he had gone over the +lists of stocks, mortgages, and bonds. To-day, with a map of the city +and the surrounding country spread out, partially on the desk and +partially over Mr. Darling's knees as he tilted back in a +revolving-chair, Thor learned the location of certain bits of landed +property which his grandfather, twenty or thirty years before, had +considered good investments. The astuteness of this ancestral foresight +was illustrated by the fact that Thor was a richer man than he had +supposed. While he would possess no enormous wealth, according to the +newer standards of the day, he would have something between thirty and +forty thousand dollars of yearly income. + +"And that," Mr. Darling explained with pride, "at a very conservative +rate of investment. You could easily have more; but if you take my +advice you'll not be in a hurry to look for more till you need it. I +don't want to hurt any one's feelings. You surely understand that." + +Thor was not sure that he did understand it. He was not sure; and yet he +hesitated to ask for the elucidation of what was intended perhaps to +remain cryptic. In a small chair drawn up beside Mr. Darling's revolving +seat of authority, his elbow on his knee, his chin supported by his +fist, he studied the map. + +"I don't want to hurt any one's feelings," the lawyer declared again, +"either before or after the fact." + +This time an intention of some sort was so evident that Thor felt +obliged to say, "Do you mean any one in particular, sir?" + +The trustee threw the map from off his knees, and, rising, walked to the +window. He was a small, neat, sharp-eyed man of fresh, frosty +complexion, his exquisite clothes making him something of a dandy, while +his manner of turning his head, with quick little jerks and perks, +reminded one of a bird. At the window he stood with his hands behind his +back, looking over the jumble of nineteenth-century roofs--out of which +an occasional "skyscraper" shot like a tower--to where a fringe of masts +and funnels edged the bay. He spoke without turning round. + +"I don't mean any one in particular unless there should be any one in +particular to mean." + +With this oracular explanation Thor was forced to be content, and, as +the purpose of the meeting seemed to have been accomplished, he rose to +take his leave. + +Mr. Darling was quick in showing himself not only faithful as a trustee, +but cordial as a man of the world. "My wife would like you to come and +see her," he said, in shaking hands. "She asked me to say, too, that she +hopes you and your brother will come to the dance she's going to give +for Elsie in the course of a month or two. You'll get your cards in +time." + +Warmly expressing the pleasure this entertainment would give him, while +knowing in his heart that he wouldn't attend it, the young man took his +departure. + + * * * * * + +But no later than that evening he began to perceive why the oracle had +spoken. Claude having excused himself from dressing for dinner on the +ground of another mysterious engagement with Billy Cheever, and Mrs. +Masterman having retired up-stairs, Thor was alone in the library with +his father. + +It was a mellow room, in which the bindings of long rows of books, +mostly purchased by Grandpa Thorley in "sets," an admirable white-marble +chimney=piece in a Georgian style, and a few English eighteenth-century +prints added by Archie Masterman himself, disguised the heavy +architectural taste of the sixties. Grandpa Thorley had built the house +at the close of the Civil War, the end of that struggle having found +him--for reasons he was never eager to explain--a far richer man than +its beginning. He had built the house, not on his own old farm, which +was already being absorbed into the suburban portion of the city, but on +a ten-acre plot in County Street, which, with its rich bordering fields, +its overarching elms, and its lofty sites, was revealing itself even +then as the predestined quarter of the wealthy. So long as there had +been no wealthy, County Street had been only a village highway; but the +social developments following on the Civil War had required a Faubourg +St.-Germain. + +In this house Miss Louisa Thorley had grown up and been wooed by Archie +Masterman. It had been the wooing of a very plain girl by a good-looking +lad, and had received a shock when Grandpa Thorley suspected other +motives than love to account for the young man's ardor. Her suitor being +forbidden the house, Miss Thorley had no resource but to meet him in the +city on the 7th of March, 1880, and go with him to a convenient +parsonage. Thor was born on the 10th of February of the year following. +Two days later the young mother died. + +Grandpa Thorley himself held out for another ten years, when his will +revealed the fact that he had taken every precaution to keep Archie +Masterman from profiting by a penny of the Thorley money. So strict were +the provisions of this document that on the father was thrown the entire +cost of bringing up and educating Louisa Thorley's son. + +But Archie Masterman was patient. He took a lease of the Thorley house +when Darling & Darling as executors put it in the market, and paid all +the rent it was worth. Moreover, there had never been a moment in Thor's +life when he had been made to feel that his maintenance was a burden +unjustly thrown on one who could ill afford to bear it. For this +consideration the son had been grateful ever since he knew its +character, and was now eager to make due return. + +For the minute he was moving restlessly about the room, not knowing what +to say. From the way in which his father, who was comfortably stretched +in an arm-chair before the fire, dropped the evening paper to the floor, +while he puffed silently at his cigar, Thor knew that he was expected to +give some account of the interview between himself and the trustee that +afternoon. Any father might reasonably look for such a confidence, while +the conditions of affectionate intimacy in which the Masterman family +lived made it a matter of course. + +The son was still marching up and down the room, smoking cigarettes +rapidly and throwing the butts into the fire, when he had completed his +summary of the information received in his two meetings with the +executor. + +The father had neither interrupted nor asked questions, but he spoke at +last. "What did you say was the approximate value of the whole estate?" + +Thor told him. + +"And of the income?" + +Thor repeated that also. + +"Criminal." + +Thor stopped dead for an instant, but resumed his march. He had stopped +in surprise, but he went on again so as to give the impression of not +having heard the last observation. + +"It's criminal," the father explained, with repressed indignation, "that +money should bring in so trifling a return." + +"He said it was very conservatively invested." + +"It's damned idiotically invested. Such incompetence deserves an even +stronger term. If my own money didn't earn more for me than that--well, +I'm afraid you wouldn't have seen Vienna and Berlin." + +The remark gave Thor an opening he was glad to seize. "I know that, +father. I know how much you've spent for me, and how generous you've +always been, with Claude to provide for, too; and now that I'm to have +enough of my own I want to repay you every--" + +"Don't hurt me, my boy. You surely don't think I'd take compensation for +bringing up my own son. It's not in the least what I'm driving at. I +simply mean that now that the whole thing is coming into your own hands +you'll probably want to do better with it than has been done +heretofore." + +Thor said nothing. There was a long silence before his father went on: + +"Even if you didn't want _me_ to have anything to do with it, I could +put you in touch with people who'd give you excellent advice." + +Thor paced softly, as if afraid to make his footfalls heard. Something +within him seemed frozen, paralyzed. He was incapable of a response. + +"Of course," the father continued, gently, with his engaging lisp, "I +can quite understand that you shouldn't want me to have anything to do +with it. The new generation is often distrustful of the old." + +Thor beat his brains for something to say that would meet the courtesies +of the occasion without committing him; but his whole being had grown +dumb. He would have been less humiliated if his father had pleaded with +him outright. + +"And yet I haven't done so badly," Masterman continued, with pathos in +his voice. "I had very little to begin with. When I first went into old +Toogood's office I had nothing at all. I made my way by thrift, +foresight, and integrity. I think I can say as much as that. Your +grandfather Thorley was unjust to me; but I've never resented it, not by +a syllable." + +It was a relief to Thor to be able to say with some heartiness, "I know +that, father." + +"Not that I didn't have some difficult situations to face on account of +it. When the Toogood executors withdrew the old man's money it would +have gone hard with me if I hadn't been able to--to"--Thor paused in his +walk, waiting for what was coming--"if I hadn't been able to command +confidence in other directions," the father finished, quietly. + +Thor hastened to divert the conversation from his own affairs. "Mr. +Willoughby put his money in then, didn't he?" + +"That was one thing," Masterman admitted, coldly. + +Thor could speak the more daringly because his march up and down kept +him behind his father's back. "And now, I understand, you think of +dropping him." + +"I shouldn't be dropping him. That's not the way to put it. He drops +himself--automatically." The clock on the mantelpiece ticked a few times +before he added, "I can't go on supporting him." + +"Do you mean that he's used up all the capital he put in?" + +"That's what it comes to. He's spent enormous sums. At times it's been +near to crippling me. But I can't keep it up. He's got to go. Besides, +the big, drunken oaf is a disgrace to me. I can't afford to be +associated with him any longer." + +Thor came round to the fireplace, where he stood on the hearth-rug, his +arm on the mantelpiece. "But, father, what'll he do?" + +"Surely that's his own lookout. Bessie's got money still. I didn't get +all of it, by any means." + +"No; but if you've got most of it--" + +Masterman shot out of his seat. "Take care, Thor. I object to your way +of expressing yourself. It's offensive." + +"I only mean, father, that if Mr. Willoughby saved the business--" + +"He didn't do anything of the kind," Masterman said, sharply. "No one +knows better than he that I never wanted him at all." + +But Thor ventured to speak up. "Didn't you tell mother one night in +Paris, when we were there in 1892, that his money might as well come to +you as go to the deuce? Mother said she hated business and didn't want +to have anything to do with it. She hoped you'd let the Willoughbys and +their money alone. Didn't that happen, father?" + +If Thor was expecting his father to blanch and betray a guilty mind, he +was both disappointed and relieved. "Possibly. I've no recollection. I +was looking for some one to enter the business. He wasn't my ideal, the +Lord knows; and yet I might have said something about it--carelessly. +Why do you ask?" + +The son tried to infuse his words with a special intensity as, looking +straight into his father's eyes, he said, "Because I--I remember the way +things happened at the time." + +"Indeed? And may I ask what your memories lead you to infer? They've +clearly led you to infer something." + +During the seconds in which father and son scrutinized each other Thor +felt himself backing down with a sort of spiritual cowardice. He didn't +want to accuse his father. He shrank from the knowledge that would have +justified him in doing so. To express himself with as little stress as +possible, he said, "They lead me to infer that we've some moral +responsibility toward Mr. Willoughby." + +"Really? That's very interesting. Now, I should have said that if I'd +ever had any I'd richly worked it off." It was perhaps to glide away +from the points already raised that he asked: "Aren't you a little hasty +in looking for moral responsibility? Let me see! Who was it the last +time? Old Fay, wasn't it?" + +Thor flushed, but he accepted the diversion. He even welcomed it. Such +glimpses as he got of his father's mind appalled him. For the present, +at any rate, he would force no issue that would verify his suspicions +and compel him to act upon them. Better the doubt. Better to believe +that Willoughby had been a spendthrift. He would have no difficulty as +to that, had it not been for those dogging memories of the little hotel +in the rue de Rivoli. + +Besides, as he said to himself, he had his own ax to grind. He +endeavored, therefore, to take the reference to Fay jocosely. "That +reminds me," he smiled, though the smile might have been a trifle +nervous, "that if you don't want to renew Fay's lease when it falls in, +I wish you'd make it over to me." Disconcerted by the look of amazement +his words called up, he hastened to add: "I'd take it on any terms you +please. You've only got to name them." + +Masterman backed away to the large oblong library table strewn with +papers and magazines. He seemed to need it for support. His tones were +those of a man amazed to the point of awe. "What in the name of Heaven +do you want that for?" + +Thor steadied his nerve by lighting a cigarette. "To give me a footing +in the village. I'm going into politics." + +"O Lord!" + +Thor hurried on. "Yes, I know how you feel. But to me it seems a duty." + +"Seems a--_what_?" + +The son felt obliged to be apologetic. "You see, father, so few men of +the old American stock are going into politics nowadays--" + +"Well, why should they?" + +"The country has to be governed." + +"Lots of fools to do that who are no good for anything else. Why should +_you_ dirty your hands with it?" + +"That isn't the way I look at it." + +"It's the way you _will_ look at it when you know a little more about it +than you evidently do now. Of course, with your money you'll have a +right to fritter away your time in anything you please; but as your +father I feel that I ought to give you a word of warning. You wouldn't +be a Masterman if you didn't need it--on that score?" + +"What score?" + +"The score of being caught by every humbugging socialistic scheme--" + +"I'm not a socialist, father." + +"Well, what are you? I thought you were." + +"I'm not now. I've passed that phase." + +"That's something to the good, at any rate." + +"With politics in this country as they are--and so many alien peoples to +be licked into shape--it's no use looking for the state to undertake +anything progressive for another two hundred years." + +"Ah! Want something more rapid-firing." + +"Want something immediate." + +"And you've found it?" + +"Only in the conviction that whatever's to be done must be done by the +individual. I've no theories any longer. I've finished with them all. +I'm driven back on the conclusion that if anything is to be accomplished +in the way of social betterment it must be by the man-to-man process in +one's own small sphere. If we could get that put into practice on a +considerable scale we should do more than the state will be able to +carry out for centuries to come." + +"Put what into practice?" + +"The principle that no man shall let a friend or a neighbor suffer +without relief when he can relieve him." + +"Thor, you should have been God." + +"I don't know anything about God, father. But if I were to create a God, +I should make that his first commandment." + +Masterman squared himself in front of his son. "So that's behind this +scheme of yours for taking over Fay's lease. You're trying to trick me +into doing what you know I won't do of my own accord. What could _you_ +do with the lease but make a present of it to old Fay? Politics be +hanged! Come, now. Be frank with me." + +Thor threw back his head. "I can't be wholly frank with you, father; but +I'll be as frank as I can. I do want to help the poor old chap; you'd be +sorry for him if you'd been seeing him as I have; but that was only one +of my motives. Leaving politics out of the question, I have others. But +I don't want to speak of them--yet. Probably I shall never need to speak +of them at all." + +Thor was willing that his father should say, "It's the girl!" but he +contented himself with the curt statement: "I'm sorry, Thor; but you +can't have the lease. I'm going to sell the place." + +"But, father," the young man cried, "what's to become of Fay?" + +"Isn't that what you asked me just now about Len Willoughby? Who do you +think I am, Thor? Am I in this world to carry every lame dog on my +back?" + +"It isn't a question of every lame dog, but of an old tenant and an old +friend." + +"Toward whom I have what you're pleased to call a moral responsibility. +Is that it?" + +"That's it, father--put mildly." + +"Well, I don't admit your moral responsibility; and, what's more, I'm +not going to bear it. Do you understand?" + +Thor felt himself growing white, with the whiteness that attended one of +his surging waves of wrath. He clenched his fists. He drew away. But he +couldn't keep himself from saying, quietly, with a voice that shook +because of his very effort to keep it firm: "All right, father. If you +don't bear it, I will." + +He was moving toward the door when Archie called after him, "Thor, for +God's sake, don't be a _fool_!" + +He answered from the threshold, over his shoulder, "It's no use asking +me not to do as I've said, father, because I can't help it." He was in +the hall when he added, "And if I could, I shouldn't try." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +By the time his anger had cooled down, Thor regretted the words with +which he had left his father's presence, and continued to regret them. +They were braggart and useless. Whatever he might feel impelled to do, +for either Leonard Willoughby or Jasper Fay, he could do better without +announcing his intentions beforehand. He experienced a sense of guilt +when, on the next day, and for many days afterward, his father showed by +his manner that he had been wounded. + +Lois Willoughby showed that she, too, had been wounded. The process of +"easing the first one off," besides affording him side-lights on a +woman's heart, involved him in an erratic course of blowing hot and cold +that defeated his own ends. When he blew cold the chill was such that he +blew hotter than ever to disperse it. He could see for himself that this +seeming capriciousness made it difficult for Lois to preserve the equal +tenor of her bearing, though she did her best. + +He had kept away from her for a week or more, and would have continued +to do so longer had he not been haunted by the look his imagination +conjured up in her eyes. He knew its trouble, its bewilderment, its +reflected heartache. "I'm a damned cad," he said to himself; and +whenever he worked himself up to that point remorse couldn't send him +quickly enough to pay her a visit of atonement. + +He knew she was at home because he met one or two of the County Street +ladies coming away from the house. With knowing looks they told him he +should find her. They did not, however, tell him that she had another +visitor, whose voice he recognized while depositing his hat and overcoat +on one of the Regency chairs in the tapestried square hall. + +"Oh, don't go yet," Lois was saying. "Here's Dr. Thor Masterman. He'll +want to see you." + +But Rosie insisted on taking her departure, making polite excuses for +the length of her call. + +She was deliciously pretty; he saw that at once on entering. Wearing the +new winter suit for which she had pinched and saved, and a hat of the +moment's fashion, she easily dazzled Thor, though Lois could perceive, +in details of material, the "cheapness" that in American eyes is the +most damning of all qualities. Rosie's face was bright with the flush of +social triumph, for the County Street ladies had been kind to her, and +she had had tea with all the ceremony of which she read in the +accredited annals of good society. If she had not been wondering whether +or not the County Street ladies knew her brother was in jail, she could +have suppressed all other causes for anxiety and given herself freely to +the hour's bliss. + +But she would not be persuaded to remain, taking her leave with a full +command of graceful niceties. Thor could hardly believe she was his +fairy of the hothouse. She was a princess, a marvel. "Beats them all," +he said, gleefully, to himself, referring to the ladies of County +Street, and almost including Lois Willoughby. + +He did not quite include her. He perceived that he couldn't do so when, +after having bowed Rosie to the door, he returned to take his seat in +the drawing-room. There was a distinction about Lois, he admitted to +himself, that neither prettiness nor fine clothes nor graceful niceties +could rival. He wondered if she wasn't even more distinguished since +this new something had come into her life--was it joy or grief?--which +he himself had brought there. + +Her greeting to him was of precisely the same shade as all her greetings +during the past two months. It was like something rehearsed and executed +to perfection. When she had given him his tea and poured another cup for +herself, they talked of Rosie. + +"Do you know," she said, in a musing tone, "I think the poor little +thing has really enjoyed being here this afternoon?" + +"Why shouldn't she?" + +"Yes, but why should she? Apart from the very slight novelty of the +thing--which to an American girl is no real novelty, after all--I don't +understand what it is she cares so much about?" + +He weighed the question seriously. "She finds a world of certain--what +shall I say?--of certain amenities to which she's equal--any one can see +that!--and which she hasn't got. That's something in itself--to a girl +with imagination." + +"I think she's in love," Lois said, suddenly. + +Thor was startled. "Oh no, she isn't. She can't be. Who on earth could +she be in love with?" + +"Oh, it's not with you. Don't be alarmed," Lois smiled. It was so like +Thor to be shy of a pretty girl. He had been so ever since she could +remember him. + +"That's good," he managed to say. He regained control of himself, though +he tingled all over. "It would have to be with me or Dr. Hilary. We're +the only two men, except the Italians, who ever appear on the place." + +"Oh, you don't know," Lois said, pensively. "Girls like that often have +what they call, rather picturesquely, a fellow." + +"Oh, don't!" His cry was instantly followed by a nervous laugh. He felt +obliged to explain. "It's so funny to hear you talk like that. It +doesn't go with your style." + +She took this pleasantly and they spoke of other things; but Thor was +eager to get away. A real visit of atonement had become impossible. That +must be put off for another day--perhaps for ever. He wasn't sure. He +couldn't tell. For the minute his head was in a whirl. He hardly knew +what he was saying, except that his rejoinders to Lois's remarks were +more or less at random. Vital questions were pounding through his brain +and demanding an answer. Who knew but that with regard to Rosie she was +right--and yet wrong? Women, with their remarkable powers of divination, +didn't always hit the nail directly on the head. It might be the case +with Lois now. She might be right in her surmise that Rosie was in love, +and mistaken in those light and cruel words: "Oh, not with you!" He +didn't suppose it was with him. And yet ... and yet...! + + * * * * * + +He got away at last, and tore through the winter twilight toward the old +apple-orchard above the pond. He knew what he would say. "Rosie, are you +in love with any one? If so, for God's sake, tell me." What he would do +when she answered him was matter outside his present capacity for +thought. + +It had begun to snow. By the time he reached the house on the hill his +shoulders were white. The necessity for shaking himself in the little +entry gave the first prosaic chill to his ardor. + +Rosie had returned and was preparing supper. The princess and marvel had +resolved herself again into the fairy of the hothouse. Not that Thor +minded that. What disconcerted him was her dry little manner of +surprise. She had not expected him. There was nothing in her mother's +condition to demand his call. She herself was busy. She had come from +the kitchen to answer the door. A smell of cooking filled the house. + +No one of these details could have kept him from carrying out his +purpose; but together they were unromantic. How could he adjure her to +tell him for God's sake whether or not she was in love with any one when +he saw she was afraid that something was burning on the stove? He could +only stammer out excuses for having come. Inventing on the spot new and +incoherent directions for the treatment of Mrs. Fay, he took himself +away again, not without humiliation. + +Being in a savage mood as he stalked down the hill, he was working +himself into a rage when an unexpected occurrence gave him other things +to think of. + +At the foot of the hill, just below the slope of the Square, was the +terminus of the electric tram-line from the city. In summer it was a +pretty spot, well shaded by ornamental trees, with a small Gothic church +and its parsonage in the center of a trimly kept lawn. It was prettier +still as Thor Masterman approached it, at the close of a winter's day, +with the great soft flakes, heaping their beauty on roof and shrub and +roadway, the whole lit up with plenty of cheerful electricity, and no +eye to behold it but his own. + +Because of this purity and solitude a black spot was the more +conspicuous; and because it was a moving black spot it caught the +onlooker's glance at once. It was a moving black spot, though it +remained in one place--on the cement seat that circled a +copper-beech-tree for the convenience of villagers waiting for the cars. +It was extraordinary that any one should choose this uninviting, +snow-covered resting-place, unless he couldn't do otherwise. + +The doctor in Thor was instantly alert, but before advancing many paces +he had made his guess. Patients were beginning to take his time, +rendering his afternoons less free; and so what might have been expected +had happened. Mr. Willoughby had managed to come homeward by the +electric car, but was unable to go any farther. + +Nevertheless, Thor was startled as he crossed the roadway to hear a +great choking sob. The big creature was huddled somehow on the seat, but +with face and arms turned to the trunk of the tree, against whose cold +bark he wept. He wept shamelessly aloud, with broken exclamations of +which "O my God! O my God!" was all that Thor could hear distinctly. + +"It's delirium this time, for sure," he said to himself, as he laid his +hand on the great snow-heaped shoulder. + +He changed his mind on that score as soon as Mr. Willoughby was able to +speak coherently. "I'm heart-broken, Thor. Haven't touched a thing +to-day--scarcely. But I'm all in." + +More sobs followed. It was with difficulty that Thor could get the +lumbering body on its feet. "You mustn't stay here, Mr. Willoughby. +You'll catch cold. Come along home with me." + +"I do' wan' to go home, Thor. Got no home now. Ruined--tha's what I am. +Ruined. Your father's kicked me out. All my money gone. No' a cent left +in the world." + +Thor dragged him onward. "But you must come home just the same, Mr. +Willoughby. You can't stay out here. The next car will be along in a +minute, and every one will see you." + +"I do' care who sees me, Thor. I'm ruined. Father says I'll have to go. +Got all the papers ready. O my God! what'll Bessie say?" + +As they stumbled forward through the snow Thor tried to learn what had +happened. + +"Got all my money and then kicked me out," was the only explanation. +"Not a cent in the world. What'll Bessie say? Oh, what'll Bessie say? +All her money. Hasn't got a hundred thousand dollars left out of tha' +grea' big estate. Make away with myself. Tha's what I'll do. O my God! +my God!" + +On arriving in front of the house Thor saw lights in the drawing-room. +Lois was probably still there. It was no more than a half-hour since he +had left her, and other callers might have succeeded him. He tried to +steer his charge round the corner toward the side entrance in +Willoughby's Lane. + +But Len grew querulous. "I do' want to go in the side door. Go in the +front door, hang it all! Father can't turn me out of my own house, the +infernal hound." + +The door opened, and Lois stood in the oblong of light. "Oh, what is +it?" she cried, peering outward. "Is it you, Thor? What's the matter?" + +"Treat me like a servant," Willoughby complained, as, with Thor +supporting him, he stumbled up the steps. "I do' want to go in the side +door. Front door good enough for me. No confounded kitchen-boy, if I +_am_ ruined. Look here, Lois," he rambled on, when he had got into the +hall and Thor was helping him to take off his overcoat--"look here, +Lois; we haven't got a cent in the world. Tha's wha' we haven't got--not +a cent in the world. Archie Masterman's got my money, and your money, +and your mother's money, and the whole damned money of all of us. Kicked +me out now. No good to him any more." + +With some difficulty Thor got him to his room, where he undressed him +and put him to bed. On his return to the hall he found Lois seated in +one of the arm-chairs, her face pale. + +"Oh, Thor, is this what you meant a few weeks ago?" + +He did his best to explain the situation to her gently. "I don't know +just what's happened, but I'm afraid there's trouble ahead." + +She nodded. "Yes; I've been expecting it, and now I suppose it's come." + +"I shouldn't wonder if it had. But you must be brave, Lois, and not +think matters worse than they are." + +"Oh, I sha'n't do that," she said, with a hint of haughtiness at his +solicitude. "Don't worry about me. I'm quite capable of bearing +whatever's to be borne. Please go on." + +"If anything has happened," he said, speaking from where he stood in the +middle of the floor, "it's that father wants to dissolve the +partnership." + +"I've been looking for that. So has mamma." + +"And if they do dissolve the partnership, I'm afraid--I'm afraid +there'll be very little money coming to Mr. Willoughby." + +"Whose fault would that be?" + +"Frankly, Lois, I don't know. It might be that of my father or of +yours--" + +"And I shouldn't think you'd want to find out." + +He looked down at her curiously. "Why do you say that? Shouldn't you?" + +She seemed to shiver. "Why should I? If the money's gone, it's gone. +Whether my father has squandered it or your father has--" She rose and +crossed the hall to the stairs, where, with a foot on the lowest of the +steps, she leaned on the pilaster of the balustrade. "I don't want to +know," she said, with energy. "If the money's gone, they've shuffled it +away between them; and I don't see that it would help either you or me +to find out who's to blame." + +It was a minute at which Thor could easily have brought out the words +which for so many years he had supposed he would one day speak to her. +His pity was such that it would have been a luxury to tell her to throw +all the material part of her care on him. If he could have said that +much without saying more he would have had no hesitation. But there was +still a chance of the miracle happening with regard to Rosie Fay. Love +was love--and sweet. It was first love, and, in its way, it was young +love. It was springtide love. The dew of the morning was on it, and the +freshness of sunrise. It was hard to renounce it, even to go to the aid +of one whose need of him was so desperate that to hide it she turned her +face away. Instead of the words of cheer and rescue that were almost +gushing to his lips, he said, soberly: + +"Has your mother any idea of what's going on?" + +She began pacing restlessly up and down. "Oh, she's been worried for the +last few weeks. She couldn't help knowing something. Papa's been +dropping so many hints that she's been meaning to see your father." + +"I suppose it will be very hard for her." + +She paused, confronting him. "It will be at first. But she'll rise to +it. She does that kind of thing. You don't know mother. Very few people +do. She simply adores papa. It's pathetic. All this time that he's been +so--so--she won't recognize it. She won't admit for a second--or let me +admit it--that he's anything but tired or ill. It's splendid--and yet +there's something about it that almost breaks my heart. Mamma has lots +of pluck, you know. You mightn't think it--" + +"Oh, I know it." + +"I'm glad you do. People in general see only one side of her, but it's +not the only side. She has her weaknesses. I see that well enough. She's +terribly a woman; and she can't grow old. But that's not criminal, is +it? There's a great deal in her that's never been called on, and perhaps +this trouble will bring it out." + +He spoke admiringly. "It will bring out a great deal in you." + +She began again to pace up and down. "Oh, me! I'm so useless. I've never +been of any help to any one. Do you know, at times, latterly, I've +envied that little Rosie Fay?" + +"Why?" + +"Because she's got duties and responsibilities and struggles. She's got +something more to do than dress and play tennis and make calls. There +are people who depend on her--" + +"She's splendid, isn't she?" + +She paused in her restless pacing. "She might be. She is--very nearly." + +Though he had taken the opportunity to get further away from the appeal +of her distress, he felt a pang of humiliation in the promptness with +which she followed his lead. + +But he couldn't go on with the discussion. It was too sickening. Every +inflection of her voice implied that with her own need he had no longer +anything to do--that it was all over--that she recognized the fact--that +she was trying her utmost to let him off easily. That she should suspect +the truth, or connect the change with Rosie Fay, he knew was out of the +question. It was not the way in which her mind would work. If she +accounted for the situation at all it would probably be on the ground +that when it came to the point he had found that he didn't care for her. +The promises he had tacitly made and she had tacitly understood she was +ready to give back. + +He was quite alive to the fact that her generosity made his impotence +the more pitiable. That he should stand tongue-tied and helpless before +the woman whom he had allowed to think that she could count on him was +galling not only to his manhood, but to all those primary instincts that +sent him to the aid of weakness. There was a minute in which it seemed +to him that if he did not on the instant redeem his self-respect it +would be lost to him for ever. After all, he did care for her--in a way. +There was no woman in the world toward whom he felt an equal degree of +reverence. More than that, there was no woman in the world whom he could +admit so naturally to share his life, whose life he himself could so +naturally share. If Rosie were to marry him, the whole process would be +different. In that case there would be no sharing; there would be +nothing but a wild, gipsy joy. His delight would be to heap happiness +upon her, content with her acceptance and the very little which was all +he could expect her to give him in return. With Lois Willoughby it would +be equality, partnership, companionship, and a life of mutual +comprehension and respect. That would be much, of course; it was what a +few months ago he would have thought enough; it was plainly that with +which he must manage to be satisfied. + +He was about to plunge in--to plunge in with one last backward look to +the more exquisite joys he must leave behind--and tell her that his +strength and loyalty were hers to dispose of as she would when she +herself unwittingly balked the impulse. + +It was still to hold open to him the way of escape that she continued to +speak of Rosie. "If she were to marry some nice fellow, like Jim Breen, +for instance--" + +Thor bounded. "Like--who?" + +She was too deeply preoccupied with her own emotions to notice his. "He +was attentive to her for a long time once." + +He cried out, incredulously: "Oh no; it couldn't be. She's too--too +superior." + +"I'm afraid the superiority is just the trouble--though I don't know +anything about it, beyond the gossip one hears in the village. Any one +who goes to so many of the working people's houses as I do hears it +all." + +He was still incredulous. "And you've heard--_that_?" + +"I've heard that poor Jim wanted to marry her--and she wouldn't look at +him. It's a pity, I think. She'd be a great deal happier in marrying a +man with the same kind of ways as herself than she'd be with some one--I +can only put it," she added, with a rueful smile, "in a way you don't +like, Thor--than she'd be with some one of another station in life." + +His heart pounded so that he could hardly trust himself to speak with +the necessary coolness. "Is there any question of--of any one of another +station in life?" + +"N-no; only that if she _is_ in love--and of course I'm only guessing at +it--I think it's very likely to be with some one of that kind." + +The statement which was thrown out with gentle indifference affected him +so profoundly that had she again declared that it was not with him he +could have taken it with equanimity. With whom else could it be? It +wasn't with Antonio, and it wasn't with Dr. Hilary. There was the +choice. Were there any other rival, he couldn't help knowing it. He had +sometimes suspected--no, it was hardly enough for suspicion!--he had +sometimes hoped--but it had been hardly enough for hope!--and yet +sometimes, when she gave him that dim, sidelong smile or turned to him +with the earnest, wide-open look in her greenish eyes, he had thought +that possibly--just possibly.... + +He didn't know what answers he made to her further remarks. A faint +memory remained with him of talking incoherently against reason, against +sentiment, against time, as, with her velvety regard resting upon him +sadly, he swung on his overcoat and hurried to take his leave. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +He hurried because inwardly he was running away from the figure he had +cut. Never had he supposed that in any one's time of need--to say +nothing of hers!--he could have proved so worthless. And he hurried +because he knew a decision one way or the other had become imperative. +And he hurried because his failure convinced him that so long as there +was a possibility that Rosie cared for him secretly he would never do +anything for Lois Willoughby. Whatever his sentiment toward the +woman-friend of his youth, he was tied and bound by the stress of a love +of which the call was primitive. He might be over-abrupt; he might +startle her; but at the worst he should escape from this unbearable +state of inactivity. + +So he hurried. It had stopped snowing; the evening was now fair and +cold. As it was nearly six o'clock, his father would probably have come +home. He would make him first an offer of new terms, and he would see +Rosie afterward. His excitement was such that he knew he could neither +eat nor sleep till the questions in his heart were answered. + +But on reaching his own gate he was surprised to see Mrs. Willoughby's +motor turn in at the driveway and roll up to the door. It was not that +there was anything strange in her paying his mother a call, but to-day +the circumstances were unusual. Anything might happen. Anything might +have happened already. On reaching the door he let himself in with +misgiving. + +He recognized the visitor's voice at once, but there was a note in it he +had never heard before. It was a plaintive note, and rather childlike: + +"Oh, Ena, _what's_ become of my money?" + +His mother's inflections were as childlike as the other's, and as full +of distress. "How do I know, Bessie? Why don't you ask Archie?" + +"I have asked him. I've just come from there. I can't make out anything +he says. He's been trying to tell me that we've spent it--when I know we +haven't spent it." + +There were tears in Ena's voice as she said: "Well, I can't explain it, +Bessie. _I_ don't know anything about business." + +From where he stood, with his hand on the knob, as he closed the door +behind him, Thor could see into the huge, old-fashioned, gilt-framed +mirror over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room. The two women were +standing, separated by a small table which supported an azalea in bloom. +His stepmother, in a soft, trailing house-gown, her hands behind her +back, seemed taller and slenderer than ever in contrast to Mrs. +Willoughby's dumpiness, dwarfed as it was by an enormous muff and +encumbering furs. + +The latter drew herself up indignantly. Her tone changed. "You do know +something about business, Ena. You knew enough about it to drag Len and +me into what we never would have thought of doing, if you and Archie +hadn't--" + +"I? Why, Bessie, you must be crazy." + +"I'm not crazy; though God knows it's enough to make me so. I remember +everything as if it had happened this afternoon." + +There was a faint scintillation in the diamonds in Ena's brooch and +ear-rings as she tossed her head. "If you do that you must recall that I +was afraid of it from the first." + +Bessie was quick to detect the admission. "Why?" she demanded. "If you +were afraid of it, _why_ were you afraid? You weren't afraid without +seeing something to be afraid of." + +Mrs. Masterman nearly wept. "I don't know anything about business at +all, Bessie." + +"Oh, don't tell me that," Bessie broke in, fiercely. "You knew enough +about it to see that Archie wanted our money in 1892." + +"But _I_ hadn't anything to do with it." + +"Hadn't anything to do with it? Then who had? Who was it suggested to me +that Len should go into business?--one evening?--in the Hotel de +Marsan?--after dinner? Who was that?" + +"If I said anything at all it was that I hated business and everything +that had to do with it." + +"Oh, I can understand that well enough," Bessie exclaimed, scornfully. +"You hated it because you saw already that your husband was going to +ruin us. Come now, Ena! Didn't you?" + +Mrs. Masterman protested tearfully. "I didn't know anything about it. I +only wished that Archie would let you and your money alone--and I wish +it still." + +"Very well, then!" Bessie cried, flinging her hands outward +dramatically. "Isn't that what I'm saying? You knew something. You knew +it and you let us go ahead. You not only let us go ahead, but you led us +on. You could see already that Archie was spinning his web like a +spider, and that he'd catch us as flies. Now didn't you? Tell the truth, +Ena. Wasn't it in your mind from the first? Long before it was in his? +I'll say that for Archie, that I don't suppose he really _meant_ to ruin +us, while you knew he _would_. That's the difference between a man and +his wife. The man only drifts, but the wife sees years ahead what he's +drifting to. You saw it, Ena--" + +When his stepmother bowed her head to sob into her handkerchief Thor +ventured to enter the room. Neither of the women noticed him. + +"I must say, Ena," Bessie continued, "that seems to me frightful. I +don't know what you can be made of that you've lived cheerfully through +these last eighteen years when you knew what was coming. If it had been +coming to yourself--well, that might be borne. But to stand by and watch +for it to overtake some one else--some one who'd always been your +friend--some one you liked, for I do believe you've liked me, in your +way and my way--that, I must say, is the limit--_cela passe les bornes_. +Now, doesn't it?" + +Mrs. Masterman struggled to speak, but her sobs prevented her. + +"In a way it's funny," Bessie continued, philosophically, "how bad a +good woman can be. You're a good woman, Ena, of a kind. That is, you're +good in as far as you're not bad; and I suppose that for a woman that's +a very fair average. But I can tell you that there are sinners whom the +world has scourged to the bone who haven't _begun_ to do what you've +been doing these past eighteen years--who wouldn't have had the nerve +for it. No, Ena," she continued, with another sweeping gesture. "'Pon my +soul, I don't know what you're made of. I almost think I admire you. I +couldn't have done it; I'll be hanged if I could. There are women who've +committed murder and who haven't been as cool as you. They've committed +murder in a frantic fit of passion that went as quick as it came, and +they've swung for it, or done time for it. But they'd never have had the +pluck to sit and smile and wait for this minute as you've waited for +it--when you saw it from such a long way off." + +It was the crushed attitude in which his stepmother sank weeping into a +chair that broke the spell by which Thor had been held paralyzed; but +before he could speak Bessie turned and saw him. + +"Oh, so it's you, Thor. Well, I wish you could have come a minute ago to +hear what I've been saying." + +"I've heard it, Mrs. Willoughby--" + +"Then I am sure you must agree with me. Or rather, you would if you knew +how things had been managed in Paris eighteen years ago. I've been +trying to tell your dear stepmother that we've been mistaken in her. We +haven't done her justice. We've thought of her as just a sweet and +gentle ladylike person, when all the while she's been a heroine. She's +been colossal--as Clytemnestra was colossal, and Lady Macbeth. She beats +them both; for I don't believe either of them could have watched the +sword of Damocles taking eighteen years to fall on a friend and not have +had nervous prostration--while she's as fresh as ever." + +He laid his hand on her arm. "You'll come away now, won't you, Mrs. +Willoughby?" he begged. + +She adjusted her furs hurriedly. "All right, Thor. I'll come. I only +want to say one thing more--" + +"No, no; please!" + +"I will say it," she insisted, as he led her from the room, "because +it'll do Ena good. It's just this," she threw back over her shoulder, +"that I forgive you, Ena. You're so magnificent that I can't nurse a +grudge against you. When a woman has done what you've done she may be +punished by her own conscience--but not by me. I'm lost in admiration +for the scale on which she carries out her crimes." + +By the time they were in the porch, with the door closed behind them, +Bessie's excitement subsided suddenly. Her voice became plaintive and +childlike again, as she said, wistfully: + +"Oh, Thor, do you think it's all gone?--that we sha'n't get any of it +back? I know we haven't spent it. We _can't_ have spent it." + +Since Thor was Thor, there was only one thing for him to say. He needed +no time to reflect or form resolutions. Whatever the cost to him, in +whatever way, he could say nothing else. "You'll get it all back, Mrs. +Willoughby. Don't worry about it any more. Just leave it to me." + +But Bessie was not convinced. "I don't see how that's going to be. If +your father says the money is gone, it _is_ gone--whether we've spent it +or not. Trust him!" Nevertheless, she kissed him, saying: "But I don't +blame you, Thor. If there were two like you in the world it would be too +good a place to live in, and Len and Lois think the same." + +He got her into the motor and closed the door upon her. Standing on the +door-step, he watched it crawl down the avenue, like a great black +beetle on the snow. As it passed the gateway his father appeared, coming +on foot from the electric car. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +On re-entering the house, Thor waited for his father in the hall. +Finding the drawing-room empty, and inferring that his mother had gone +up-stairs, he decided to say nothing of the scene between her and Mrs. +Willoughby. For the time being his own needs demanded right of way. +Nothing else could be attended to till they had received consideration. + +With that reflection something surged in him--surged and exulted. He was +to be allowed to speak of his love at last! He was to be forced to +confess it! If he was never to name it again, he would do so this once, +getting some outlet for his passion! He both glowed and trembled. He +both strained forward and recoiled. Already he felt drunk with a wine +that roused the holier emotions as ardently as it fired the senses. He +could scarcely take in the purport of his father's words as the latter +stamped the snow from his boots in the entry and said: + +"Has that poor woman been here? Sorry for her, Thor; sorry for her from +the bottom of my heart." + +The young man had no response to make. He was in a realm in which the +reference had no meaning. Archie continued, while hanging his overcoat +and hat in the closet at the foot of the stairs: + +"Impossible to make her understand. Women like that can never see why +they shouldn't eat their cake and have it, too. Books open for her +inspection. But what's one to do?" + +When he emerged from the closet Thor saw that his face was gray. He +looked mortally tired and sad. He had been sad for some weeks past--sad +and detached--ever since the night when he had made his ineffectual bid +for the care of Thor's prospective money. He had betrayed no hint of +resentment toward his son--nothing but this dignified lassitude, this +reserved, high-bred, speechless expression of failure that smote Thor to +the heart. But this evening he looked worn as well, worn and old, though +brave and patient and able to command a weary, flickering smile. + +"But I'm glad it's come. It will be a relief to have it over. Seen it +coming so long that it's been like a nightmare. Rather have come to +grief myself--assure you I would." + +"Father, could I speak to you for a few minutes?" + +"About this?" + +"No, not about this; about something else--something rather important." + +There was a sudden gleam in the father's eyes which gave Thor a second +pang. He had seen it once or twice already during these weeks of partial +estrangement. It was the gleam of hope--of hope that Thor might have +grown repentant. It had the sparkle of fire in it when, seated in a +business attitude at the desk which held the center of the library, he +looked up expectantly at his son. "Well, my boy?" + +Thor remained standing. "It's about that property of Fay's, father." + +"Oh, again?" The light in the eyes went out with the suddenness of an +electric lamp. + +"I only want to say this, father," Thor hurried on, so as to get the +interview over, "that if you want to sell the place, I'll take it. I'll +take it on your own terms. You can make them what you like." + +Archie leaned on the desk, passing his hand over his brow. "I'm sorry, +Thor. I can't." + +Thor had the curious reminiscent sensation of being once more a little +boy, with some pleasure forbidden him. "Oh, father, why? I want it +awfully." + +"So I see. I don't see why you should, but--" + +"Well, I'll tell you. I want to protect Fay, because--" + +Masterman interrupted without looking up. "And that's just what I don't +want to do. I want to get rid of the lot." + +Rid of the lot! The expression was alarming. In his father's mind the +issue, then, was personal. It was not only personal, but it was +inclusive. It included Rosie. She was rated in--the lot. Clearly the +minute had come at which to speak plainly. + +"If you want to get rid of them on my account, father, I may as well +tell you--" + +"No; it's got nothing to do with you." He was still resting his forehead +on his hand, looking downward at the blotting-paper on his desk. "It's +Claude." + +Thor started back. "Claude? What's he got to do with it?" + +"I hadn't made up my mind whether to tell you or not; but--" + +"He doesn't even know them. Of course he knows who they are. Fay was +Grandpa Thorley's--" + +Masterman continued to speak wearily. "He may not know them all. It's +motive enough for my action that he knows--the girl." + +"Oh no, he doesn't." + +"You'd better ask him." + +"I have asked him." + +"Then you'd better ask him again." + +"But, father, she couldn't know him without my seeing it. I'm at the +house nearly every day. The mother, you know." + +"Apparently your eyes aren't sharp enough. You should take a lesson from +your uncle Sim." + +"But, father, I don't understand--" + +"Then I'll tell you. It seems that Claude has known this girl for the +past four or five months--" + +"Oh no, no! That's all wrong. It isn't three months since I talked to +Claude about her. Claude didn't even remember they had a girl. He'd +forgotten it." + +"I know what I'm talking about, Thor. Don't contradict. Seems your uncle +Sim has had his eye on them all along." + +Thor smote his side with his clenched fist. "There's some mistake, +father. It can't _be_." + +"I wish there was a mistake, Thor. But there isn't. If I could afford it +I should send Claude abroad. Send him round the world. But I can't just +now, with this mix-up in the business. There's no doubt but that the +girl is bad--" + +"Father!" + +If Masterman had been looking up he would have seen the convulsion of +pain on his son's face, and got some inkling of his state of mind. + +"As bad as they make 'em--" he went on, tranquilly. + +"No, no, father. You mustn't say that." + +"I can't help saying it, Thor. I know how you feel about Claude. You +feel as I do myself. But you and I must take hold of him and save him. +We must get rid of this girl--" + +"But she's not bad, father--" + +Masterman raised himself and leaned back in his chair. He saw that Thor +was white, with curious black streaks and shadows in his long, gaunt +face. "Oh, I know how you feel," he said, again. "It does seem monstrous +that the thing should have happened to Claude; but, after all, he's +young, and with a little tact we can pull him out. I've said nothing to +your mother, and don't mean to. No use alarming her needlessly. I've not +said anything to Claude, either. Only known the thing for four or five +days. Don't want to make him restive, or drive him to take the bit +between his teeth. High-spirited young fellow, Claude is. Needs to be +dealt with tactfully. Thing will be, to cut away the ground beneath his +feet without his knowing it--by getting rid of the girl." + +"But I know Rosie Fay, father, and she's not--" + +"Now, my dear Thor, what _is_ a girl but bad when she's willing to meet +a man clandestinely night after night--?" + +"Oh, but she hasn't done it." + +"And I tell you she has done it. Ever since last summer. Night after +night." + +"Where?" Thor demanded, hoarsely. + +"In the woods above Duck Rock. Look here," the father suggested, struck +with a good idea, "the next time Claude says he has an engagement to go +out with Billy Cheever, why don't you follow him--?" + +There was both outrage and authority in Thor's abrupt cry, "Father!" + +"Oh, I know how you feel. You'd rather trust him. Well, I would myself. +It's the plan I'm going on. We mustn't be too hard on him, must we? +Sympathetic steering is what he wants. Fortunately we're both men of the +world and can accept the situation with no Puritanical hypocrisies. He's +not the first young fellow who's got into the clutches of a hussy--" + +It was to keep himself from striking his father down that Thor got out +of the room. For an instant he had seen red; and across the red the word +_parricide_ flashed in letters of fire. It might have been a vision. It +was frightening. + +Outside it was a night of dim, spirit-like radiance. The white of the +earth and the violet of the sky were both spangled with lights. Low on +the horizon the full moon was a glorious golden disk. + +The air was sweet and cold. As he struck down the avenue, of which the +snow was broken only by his own and his father's footsteps and the +wheels of Bessie's car, he bared his head to cool his forehead and the +hot masses of his hair. He breathed hard; he was aching; his distress +was like that of being roused from a weird, appalling dream. He had not +yet got control of his faculties. He scarcely knew why he had come out, +except that he couldn't stay within. + +On nearing the street the buzzing of an electric car reminded him that +Claude was probably coming home. Instinctively he turned his steps away +from meeting him, tramping up the long, white, empty stretch of County +Street. + +At Willoughby's Lane he turned up the hill, not for any particular +purpose, but because the tramping there would be a little harder. He +needed exertion. It eased the dull ache of confused inward pain. In the +Willoughby house there was no light except in the hall and in Bessie's +bedroom. Mother and daughter had doubtless taken refuge in the latter +spot to discuss the disastrous turn of their fortunes. Ah, well! There +would probably be nothing to keep him from going to their rescue now. + +_Probably!_ He clung to the faint chance offered by the word. He didn't +know the real circumstances--yet. _Probably_ his father had been +accurate in his statements, even though wrong in what he had inferred. +_Probably_ Claude and Rosie had met--night after night--secretly--in the +woods--in the dark. _Probably!_ He stopped dead in his walk; he threw +back his head and groaned to the violet sky; he pulled with both hands +at his collar as though choking. Secretly--in the woods--in the dark! It +was awful--and yet it was entrancing. If Rosie had only come to meet +_him_ like that!--in that mystery!--in that seclusion!--with that +trust!--with that surrender of herself! + +"How can I blame Claude?" + +It was his first formulated thought. He tramped on again. How could he +blame Claude? Poor Claude! He had his difficulties. No one knew that +better than Thor. And if Rosie loved the boy ... + + * * * * * + +Below the ridge of the long, wooded hill there was a road running +parallel to County Street. He turned into that. But he began to perceive +to what goal he was tending. He had taken this direction aimlessly; and +yet it was as if his feet had acted of their own accord, without the +guiding impulse of the mind. From a long, straight stem a banner of +smoke floated heavy and luminous against the softer luminosity of the +sky. He knew now where he was going and what he had to do. + +But he paused at the gate, when he got there, uncertain as to where at +this hour he should find her. There was a faint light in the mother's +room, but none elsewhere in the house. The moon was by this time high +enough to throw a band of radiance across Thorley's Pond and strike pale +gleams from the glass of the hothouse roofs. + +It required some gazing to detect in Rosie's greenhouse the blurred glow +of a lamp. He remembered that there was a desk near this spot at which +she sometimes wrote. She was writing there now--perhaps to Claude. + +But she was not writing to Claude; she was making out bills. As +bookkeeper to the establishment, as well as utility woman in general, it +was the one hour in the day when she had leisure for the task. She +raised her head to peer down the long, dim aisle of flowers on hearing +him open the door. + +"It's I, Rosie," he called to her, as he passed between banks of +carnations. "Don't be afraid." + +She was not afraid, but she was excited. As a matter of fact, she was +saying to herself, "He's found out." It was what she had been expecting. +She had long ago begun to see that his almost daily visits were not on +her mother's account. He had been coming less as a doctor than as a +detective. Very well! If his detecting had been successful, so much the +better. Since the battle had to be fought some time, it couldn't begin +too soon. + +She remained seated, her right hand holding the pen, her left lying on +the open pages of the ledger. He spoke before he had fully emerged into +the glow of the lamp. + +"Oh, Rosie! What's this about you and Claude?" + +Her little face grew hard and defiant. She was not to be deceived by +this wounded, unhappy tone. "Well--what?" she asked, guardedly, looking +up at him. + +He stooped. His face was curiously convulsed. It frightened her. "Do you +_love_ him?" + +Instinctively she took an attitude of defense, rising and pushing back +her chair, to shield herself behind it. "And what if I do?" + +"Then, Rosie, you should have told me." + +Again the heart=broken cry seemed to her a bit of trickery to get her +confidence. "Told you? How could I tell you? What should I tell you +for?" + +"How long have you loved him?" + +Her face was set. The shifting opal lights in her eyes were the fires of +her will. She would speak. She would hide nothing. Let the +responsibility be on Claude. Her avowal was like that of a calamity or a +crime. "I've loved him ever since I knew him." + +"And how long is that?" + +"It will be five months the day after to-morrow." + +"Tell me, Rosie. How did it come about?" + +She was still defiant. She put it briefly. "I was in the wood above Duck +Rock. He came by. He spoke to me." + +"And you loved him from the first?" + +She nodded, with the desperate little air he had long ago learned to +recognize. + +"Oh, Rosie, tell me this. Do you love him--much?" + +She was quite ready with her answer. It was as well the Mastermans +should know. "I'd die for him." + +"Would you, Rosie? And what about him?" + +Her lip quivered. "Oh, men are not so ready to die for love as women +are." + +He leaned toward her, supporting himself with his hands on the desk. +"And you are ready, Rosie! You really--would?" + +She thought he looked wild. He terrified her. She shrank back into the +dimness of a mass of foliage. "Oh, what do you mean? What are you asking +me for? Why do you come here? Go away." + +"I'll go presently, Rosie. You won't be sorry I've come. I only want you +to tell me all about it. There are reasons why I want to know." + +"Then why don't you ask him?" she demanded, passionately. "He's your +brother." + +"Because I want you to tell me the story first." + +There was such tenderness in his voice that she grew reassured in spite +of her alarm. "What do you want me to say?" + +"I want you to say first of all that you know I'm your friend." + +"You can't be my friend," she said, suspiciously, "unless you're +Claude's friend, too; and Claude wouldn't own to a friend who tried to +part us." + +"I don't want to part you, Rosie. I want to bring you together." + +The assertion was too much for credence. She was thrown back on the +hypothesis of trickery. "You?" + +"Yes, Rosie. Has Claude never told you that he's more to me than any one +in the world, except--" He paused; he panted; he tried to keep it back, +but it forced itself out in spite of his efforts--"except you." Once +having said it, he repeated it: "Except you, Rosie; except--you." + +Though he was still leaning toward her across the desk, his head sank. +There was silence between them. It was long before Rosie, the light in +her eyes concentrated to two brilliant, penetrating points, crept +forward from the sheltering mass of foliage. She could hardly speak +above a whisper. + +"Except--who?" + +He lifted his head. She noticed subconsciously that his face was no +longer wild, but haggard. He spoke gently: "Except you, Rosie. You're +most to me in the world." + +As she bent toward him her mouth and eyes betrayed her horror at the +irony of this discovery. She would rather never have known it than know +it now. It was all she could do to gasp the one word, "Me?" + +"I shouldn't have told you," he hurried on, apologetically, "but I +couldn't help it. Besides, I want you to understand how utterly I'm your +friend. I ask nothing more than to be allowed to help you and Claude in +every way--" + +She cried out. The thing was preposterous. "You're going to do +that--_now_?" + +"I'm your big brother, Rosie--the big brother to both of you. That's +what I shall be in future. And what I've said will be a dead secret +between us, won't it? I shouldn't have told you, but I couldn't help it. +It was stronger than me, Rosie. Those things sometimes are. But it's a +secret now, dead and buried. It's as if it hadn't been said, isn't it? +And if I should marry some one else--" + +This was too much. It was like the world slipping from her at the minute +she had it within her grasp. The horror was not only in her eyes and +mouth, but in her voice. "Are you going to marry some one else?" + +"I might have to, Rosie--for a lot of reasons. It might be my duty. And +now that I can't marry you--" + +She uttered a sort of wail. "Oh!" + +"Don't be sorry for me, Rosie dear. I can't stand it. I can stand it +better if you're not sorry--" + +"But I _am_," she cried, desperately. + +"Then I must thank you--only don't be. It will make me grieve the more +for saying what I never should have said. But that's a secret between +us, as I said before, isn't it? And if I do marry--she'll never find it +out, will she? That wouldn't do, would it, Rosie?" + +His words struck her as passing all the bounds of practical common +sense. They were so mad that she felt herself compelled to ask for more +assurance. "Are you--in love--with--with _me_?" If the last syllable had +been louder it would have been a scream. + +"Oh, Rosie, forgive me! I shouldn't have told you. It was weak. It was +wrong. I only did it to show you how you could trust me. But I should +have showed you that some other way. You'd already told me how it was +between you and Claude, and so it was treachery to him. But I never +dreamed of trying to come between you. Believe me, I didn't. I swear to +you I only want--" + +She broke in, panting. She wouldn't have spoken crudely or abruptly if +there had been any other way. But the chance was there. In another +minute it might be too late. "Yes; but when I said that about Claude--" + +She didn't know how to go on. He encouraged her. "Yes, Rosie?" + +She wrung her hands. "Oh, don't you _see_? When I said that about +Claude--I didn't--I didn't know--" + +He hastened to relieve her distress. "You didn't know I cared for you?" + +"No!" The word came out with another long wail. + +He looked at her curiously. "But what's that got to do with it?" + +Her eyes implored him piteously, while she beat the palm of one hand +against the back of the other. It was terrible that he couldn't see what +she meant--and the moments slipping away! + +"It wouldn't have made you love Claude any the less, would it?" + +She had to say something. If she didn't he would never understand. "Not +love, perhaps; but--" + +The sudden coldness in his voice terrified her again--but differently. +"But what, Rosie?" + +She cried out, as if the words rent her. "But Claude has no--_money_." + +"And I have. Is that it?" + +It was no use to deny it. She nodded dumbly. Besides, she counted on his +possession of common sense, though his use of it was slow. + +He raised himself from his attitude of leaning on the desk. It was his +turn to take shelter amid the dark foliage behind him. He couldn't bear +to let the lamplight fall too fully on his face. "Is it this, Rosie," he +asked, with an air of bewilderment, "that you'd marry me because I +have--the money?" + +It seemed to Rosie that the question gave her reasonable cause for +exasperation. She was almost sobbing as she said: "Well, I can't marry +Claude _without_ money. He can't marry me." A ray was thrown into her +little soul when she gasped in addition, "And there's father and mother +and Matt!" + +Thor's expression lost some of its bewilderment because it deepened to +sternness. "But Claude means to marry you, doesn't he?" + +She cried out again, with that strange effect of the words rending her. +"I don't--_know_." + +He had a moment of wild fear lest his father had been right, after all. +"You don't know? Then--what's your relation to each other?" + +"I don't know that, either. Claude won't tell me." She crossed her hands +on her bosom as she said, desperately, "I sometimes think he doesn't +mean anything at all." + +The terror of the instant passed. "Oh yes, he does, Rosie. I'll see to +that." + +"Do you mean that you'll make him marry me?" + +He smiled pitifully. "There'll be no making, Rosie. You leave it to me." + +He turned from her not merely because the last word had been spoken, but +through fear lest something might be breaking within himself. On +regaining the white roadway he thought he saw Jasper Fay in the shadow +of the house, but he was too deeply stricken to speak to him. He went up +the hill and farther from the village. It was not yet eight o'clock, but +time had ceased to have measurement. He went up the hill to be alone in +that solitude which was all that for the moment he could endure. He +climbed higher than the houses and the snow-covered gardens; his back +was toward the moon and the glow above the city. The prospect of +reaching the summit gave something for his strong body to strain forward +to. + +The ridge, when he got to it, was treeless, wind-swept, and moon-swept. +It was a great white altar, victimless and bare. He felt devastated, +weak. It was a relief, bodily and mental, to sink to his knees--to +fall--to lie at his length. He pressed his hot face into the cool, +consoling whiteness, as a man might let himself weep on a pillow. His +arms were outstretched beyond his head. His fingers pierced beneath the +snow till they touched the tender, nestling mosses. All round him there +was silveriness and silence, and overhead the moon. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Descending the hill, Thor saw a light in his uncle Sim's stable, and +knew that Delia was being settled for the night. Uncle Sim still lived +in the ramshackle house to which his father--old Dr. Masterman, as +elderly people in the village called him--had taken his young wife, who +had been Miss Lucy Dawes. In this house both Sim and Archie Masterman +were born. It was the plainest of dwellings, painted by wind and weather +to a dovelike silver-gray. Here lived Uncle Sim, cared for in the +domestic sense by a lady somewhat older and more eccentric than himself, +known to the younger Mastermans as Cousin Amy Dawes. + +Thor avoided the house and Cousin Amy Dawes, going directly to the +stable. By the time he had reached the door Uncle Sim was shutting it. +In the light of a lantern standing in the snow the naked elms round +about loomed weirdly. The greetings were brief. + +"Hello, Uncle Sim!" + +"Hello, Thor!" + +Thor made an effort to reduce the emotional tremor of his voice to the +required minimum. "Father's been telling me about Claude and Rosie Fay." + +Uncle Sim turned the key in the lock with a loud grating. "Father had to +do it, did he? Thought you might have caught on to that by yourself. One +of the reasons I sent you into the Fay family." + +"Did you know it then?--already?" + +"Didn't _know_ it. Couldn't help putting two and two together." + +"You see everything, Uncle Sim." + +Uncle Sim stooped to pick up the lantern. "See everything that's under +my nose. Thought you could, too." + +"This hasn't been under my nose." + +"Oh, well! There are noses and noses. A donkey has one kind and a dog +has another." + +Thor was not a finished actor, but he was doing his best to play a part. +"Well, what do you think now?" + +"What do I think now? I don't think anything--about other people's +business." + +"I think we ought to do something," Thor declared, with energy. + +"All right. Every one to his mind. Only it's great fun to let other +people settle their own affairs." + +"Settle their own affairs--and suffer." + +"Yes, and suffer. Suffering doesn't hurt any one." + +"Do you mean to say, Uncle Sim, that I should sit still and do nothing +while the people I care for most in the world are in all sorts of +trouble that I could get them out of?" + +"That little baggage, Rosie Fay, isn't one of the people you care for +most in the world, I presume?" + +Thor knew that with Uncle Sim's perspicacity this might be a leading +question, but he made the answer he considered the most diplomatic in +the circumstances. "She is if--if Claude is in love with her. But--but +why do you call her that, Uncle Sim?" + +"Because she's a little witch. Most determined little piece I know. Hard +working; lots of pluck; industrious as the devil. Whole soul set on +attaining her ends." + +Thor considered it prudent to return to the point from which he had been +diverted. "Well, if the people I care for most are in trouble that I can +get them out of--" + +"Oh, if you can get them out of it--" + +"Well, I can." + +"Then that's all right. Only the case must be rather rare. Haven't often +seen the attempt made except with one result--not that of getting people +out of trouble, but of getting oneself in. But every one to his taste, +Thor. Wouldn't stop you for the world. Only advise you not to be in a +hurry." + +"There's no question of being in a hurry when things have to be done +_now_." + +"All right, Thor. You know better than I. I'm one of those slowpokes who +look on the fancy for taking a hand in other people's affairs as I do on +the taste for committing suicide--there's always time. If you don't do +it to-day, you can to-morrow--which is a reason for putting it off, +ain't it?" + +There was more than impatience in Thor's protest as he cried, "But how +can you put it off when there's some one--some one who's--who's +unhappy?" + +"I see. Comes back to that. But I don't mind some one's being unhappy. +Don't care a tuppenny damn. Do 'em good. I've seen more people unhappy +than I could tell you about in a year; and nine out of ten were made men +and women by it who before that had been only rags." + +"I'm afraid I can't accept that cheerful doctrine, Uncle Sim--" + +"All right, Thor. Don't want you to. Wouldn't interfere with you any +more than with any one else. Free country. Got your own row to hoe. If +you make yourself miserable in the process, why, it'll do you as much +good as it does all the rest. Nothing like it. Wouldn't save you from it +for anything. But there's a verse of an old song that you might turn +over in your mind--old song written about two or three thousand years +ago: 'Oh, tarry thou the Lord's leisure--'" + +Thor tossed his head impatiently. "Oh, pshaw!" + +"But it goes on: 'And be strong.' You can be awful strong when you're +tarrying the Lord's leisure, Thor, because then you know you're not +making any damn-fool mistakes." + +Thor spoke up proudly: "I'd rather _make_ mistakes--than do nothing." + +"That's all right, Thor; splendid spirit. Don't disapprove of it a mite. +Go ahead. Make mistakes. It'll be live and learn. Not the least afraid. +I've often noticed that when young fellows of your sort prefer their own +haste to the Lord's leisure there's a Lord's haste that hurries on +before 'em, so as to be all ready to meet 'em when they come a cropper +in the ditch." + +Thor turned away sharply. "I guess I'll beat it, Uncle Sim." + +The old man, swinging his lantern, shambled along by his nephew's side, +as the latter made for the road again. "Oh, I ain't trying to hold you +back, Thor. Now, am I? On the contrary, I say, go ahead. Rush in where +angels fear to tread; and if you don't do anything else you'll carry the +angels along with you. You may make an awful fool of yourself, Thor--but +you'll be on the side of the angels and the angels'll be on yours." + + * * * * * + +Though dinner was over by the time Thor reached home, his stepmother sat +with him while he ate it. It was a new departure for her. Thor could not +remember that she had ever done anything of the sort before. She sat +with him and served him, asking no questions as to why he was late. She +seemed to divine a trouble on his part beyond her power to console, and +for which the only sympathy she dared to express was that of small +kindly acts. He understood this and was grateful. + +He found her society soothing. This, too, surprised him. He felt so +battered and sore that the mere presence of one who approached him from +an affectionate impulse had the effect on him of a gentle hand. Never +before in his life had he been conscious of woman's genius for +comforting, possibly because never before in his life had he needed +comfort to the same degree. + +No reference was made by his stepmother or himself to the scene with +Mrs. Willoughby in the afternoon, but it was not hard for him to +perceive that in some strange way it was stirring the victim of it to +newness of life. It was not that she admitted the application of +Bessie's charges to herself; they only startled her to the knowledge +that there were heights and depths in human existence such as her +imagination had never plumbed. Her nature was making a feeble effort to +expand, as the petals of a bud that has been kept hard and compact by a +backward spring may unfold to the heat of summer. + +When he had finished his hasty meal, Thor rose and kissed her, saying, +"Thank you, mumphy," using the pet name that had not been on his lips +since childhood. She drew his face downward with a sudden sob, a sob +quite inexplicable except on the ground that her poor, withered, +strangled little soul was at last trying to live. + + * * * * * + +Having gone up-stairs to his room, Thor shut the door and bolted it in +his desire for solitude. He changed his coat and kicked off his boots. +When he had lighted a pipe he threw himself on the old sofa which had +done duty as couch at the foot of his bed ever since he was a boy. It +was the attitude in which he had always been best able to "think things +out." + +Now that he had eaten a sufficient dinner, he felt physically less +bruised, though mentally there was more to torture him. He regretted +having seen Uncle Sim. He hated the alternative of letting things alone. +There was a sense in which action would have been an anodyne to +suffering, and had it not been for Uncle Sim he would have had no +scruple in making use of it. + +It was all very well to talk of letting people settle their own affairs; +but how _could_ they settle them, in these particular cases, without his +intervention? As far as power went he was like a fairy prince who had +only to wave a wand to see the whole scene transfigured. If he hadn't +asked Uncle Sim's advice he would be already waving it, instead of +lolling on his back, with his right foot poised over his left knee and +dangling a heelless slipper in the air. He felt shame at the very +attitude of idleness. + +True, there were the two distinct lines of action--that of making a +number of people happy now, and that of holding back that they might +fight their own battles. By fighting their own battles they might emerge +from the conflict the stronger--after forty or fifty years! Those who +were unlikely to live so long--Len and Bessie Willoughby, for +example--would probably go down rebelling and protesting to their +graves. But Claude and Rosie and Lois might all grow morally the +stronger. There was that possibility. It was plain. Claude and Rosie +might marry on the former's fifteen hundred dollars a year, have +children, and bring them up in poverty as model citizens; but whatever +the high triumph of their middle age, Thor shrank from the thought of +the interval for both. And Lois, too, might live down grief, +disappointment, small means, and loneliness; might become hardened and +toughened and beaten to endurance, and grow to be the best and bravest +and kindest old maid in the world. Uncle Sim would probably consider +that in these noble achievements the game would be worth the candle; but +he, Thor Masterman, didn't. The more he developed the possibilities of +this future for every one concerned, himself included, the more he +loathed it. + +It was past eleven before he reached the point of loathing at which he +was convinced that action should begin; but once he reached it, he +bounded to his feet. He felt wonderfully free and vigorous. If certain +details could be settled there and then--he couldn't wait till the +morrow--he thought that, in spite of everything, he should sleep. + +He had heard Claude go to his room, which was on the same floor as his +own, an hour earlier. Claude was probably by this time in bed and +asleep, but the elder brother couldn't hesitate for that. Within less +than a minute he had crossed the passage, entered Claude's bedroom, and +turned on the electric light. + +Claude's profile sunk into the middle of the pillow might have been +carved in ivory. His dark wavy hair fell back picturesquely from temple +and brow. Under the coverings his slim form made a light, graceful line. + +The room was at once dainty and severe. A striped paper, brightened by a +design of garlands, knots, and flowers _a la Marie Antoinette_, made a +background for white furniture in the style of Louis XVI., modern and +inexpensive, but carefully selected by Mrs. Masterman. The walls were +further lightened by colored reprints of old French scenes, discreetly +amorous, collected by Claude himself. + +Thor stood for some seconds in front of the bed before the brother +opened his eyes. More seconds passed while the younger gazed up at the +elder. "What the dev--!" Claude began, sleepily. + +But Thor broke in, promptly, "Claude, why didn't you ever tell me you +knew Rosie Fay?" + +Claude closed his eyes again. The expected had happened. Like Rosie, he +resolved to meet the moment cautiously, creating no more opposition than +he could help. "Why should I?" he parried, without hostility. + +"Because I asked you, for one thing." + +He opened his eyes. "When did you ever ask me?" + +"At the bank; one day when I found you there. It must have been two +months ago." + +Claude stirred slightly under the bedclothes. "Oh, then." + +"Yes, then. Why didn't you tell me?" + +"I didn't see how I could. What good would it have done, anyhow?" + +It was on Thor's tongue to say, "It would have done the good of not +telling lies," but he suppressed that. One of his objects was to be +conciliating. He had other objects, which he believed would be best +served by taking a small chair and sitting on it astride, close to +Claude's bed. An easy, fraternal air was maintained by the effect of the +pipe still hanging by its curved stem from the corner of his mouth. He +began to think highly of himself as a comedian. + +"I wish you had told me," he said, quietly, "because I could have helped +you." + +Claude lay still. His eyes grew brilliant. "Helped me--how?" + +"Helped you in whatever it is you're trying to do." He added, with +significance, "You are trying to do something, aren't you?" + +Claude endeavored to gain time by saying, "Trying to do what?" + +"You're--" Thor hesitated, but dashed in. "You're in love with her?" + +It was still to gain time that Claude replied, "What do you think?" + +Thor's heart bounded with a great hope. Perhaps Claude was not in love +with her. He had not been noticeably moved as yet. In that case it might +be possible--barely possible--that after Rosie had outlived her +disappointment there might be a chance that he.... But he dared not +speculate. Mustering everything that was histrionic within him, he said, +with the art that conceals art, "I think you are--decidedly." + +Claude rolled partly over in bed. "That's about it." + +The confession was as full as one brother could expect from another. +Thor's heart sank again. He managed, however, to keep on the high plane +of art as he brought out the words, "And what about her?" + +Again Claude's avowal was as ardent as the actual conditions called for. +"Oh, I guess she's all right." + +"So--what now?" + +Claude rolled back toward his brother, raising his head slightly from +the pillow. "Well--what now?" + +"You're going to be married, I suppose?" + +Claude lifted himself on his elbow. "Married on fifteen hundred a year?" +He went on, before Thor could say anything, "If there was nothing else +to consider!" + +Thor felt stirrings of hope again. "Then, if you're not going to be +married, what do you mean?" + +"What do I mean? What can I mean?" + +"Oh, come, Claude! You're not a boy any longer. You know perfectly well +that a man of honor--with your traditions--can't trifle with a girl like +that--or break her heart--or--or ruin her." + +"I'm not doing any of the three. She knows I'm not. She knows I'm only +in the same box she's in herself." + +"That is, you're both in love, without seeing how you're going to--" + +Claude lurched forward in the bed. "Look here, Thor; if you want to +know, it's this. I've tried to leave the girl alone--and I can't. I'm +worse than a damn fool; I'm every sort of a hound. I can't marry her, +and I can't give her up. When I haven't seen her for a week, I'm +frantic; and when I do see her I swear to God I'll never see her again. +So now you know." + +Claude threw himself back again on the pillows, but Thor went on, +quietly: "Why do you swear to God you'll never see her again?" + +"Because I'm killing her. That is, I should be killing her if she wasn't +the bravest little brick on earth. You don't know her, Thor. You've seen +her, and you know she's pretty; but you don't know that she's as plucky +as they make 'em--pluckier." + +Thor answered, wearily, "I've rather guessed that, which is one of the +reasons why I feel you should be true to her." + +"I am true to her--truer than I ought to be. If I was less true it would +be better for us both. She'd get over it--" + +Again Thor was aware of an up-leaping hope. "And you, too?" + +"Oh, I suppose so--in time." + +"Yes, but you'd suffer." + +Claude gave another lurch forward in the bed. "I couldn't suffer worse +than I'm suffering now, knowing I'm an infernal cad--and not seeing how +to be anything else." + +"But you wouldn't be an infernal cad if you married her." + +The young man flung himself about the bed impatiently. "Oh, what's the +use of talking?" + +"If she had money you could marry her all right." + +"Ah, go to the devil, Thor!" The tone was one of utter exasperation. + +Thor persisted. "If she had, let us say, four or five thousand dollars a +year of her own--" + +Claude stretched his person half-way out of bed. "I said--go to the +devil!" + +"Well, she has." + +"Has what?" + +"Four or five thousand dollars a year of her own. That is, she _will_ +have it, if you and she get married." + +"Say, Thor, have you got the jimjams?" + +"I'm speaking quite seriously, Claude. I've always intended to do +something to help you out when I got hold of Grandpa Thorley's money; +and, if you like, I'll do it that way." + +"Do it what way?" + +"The way I say. If you and Rosie get married, she shall have five +thousand a year of her own." + +"From you?" + +Thor nodded. + +The younger brother looked at the elder curiously. It was a long minute +before he spoke. "If it's to help me out, why don't _I_ have it? I'm +your brother. I should think I'd be the one." + +"Because I'd rather do it that way. It would be a means of evening +things up. It would make her more like your equal. You know as well as I +do that father and mother will kick like blazes; but if Rosie has +money--" + +"If Rosie has money they'll know she gets it from somewhere. They won't +think it comes down to her out of heaven." + +"They can think what they like. They needn't know that I have anything +to do with it. They know you haven't got five thousand a year, and if +she has--why, there'll be the solid cash to convince them. The whole +thing will be a pill for them; but if it's gilded--" + +Claude's knees were drawn up in the bed, his hands clasped about them. +Thor noticed the strangeness of his expression, but he was unprepared +for his words when they came out. "Say, Thor, you're _not_ in love with +her yourself, are you?" + +Owing to what he believed to be the perfection of his acting, it was the +question Thor had least expected to be called on to answer. He knew he +was turning white or green, and that his smile when he forced it was +nothing but a ghastly movement of the mouth. It was his turn to gain +time, but he could think of nothing more forcible than, "What makes you +ask me that?" + +"Because it looks so funny--so damned funny." + +"There's nothing funny in my trying to give a lift to my own brother, is +there?" + +"N-no; perhaps not. But, see here, Thor--" He leaned forward. "You're +not in love with her, are you?" + +Thor knew the supreme moment of his life had come, that he should never +reach another like it. It was within his power to seize the cup and +drain it--or thrust it aside. Of all temptations he had ever had to meet +none had been so strong as this. It was the stronger for his knowing +that if it was conquered now it would probably never return. He would +have put himself beyond reach of its returning. That in itself appalled +him. There was some joy in feeling the temptation there, as a thing to +be dallied with. He dallied with it now. He dallied with it to the +extent of saying, with a smile he tried to temper to playfulness: + +"Well, what if I was in love with her?" + +Something about Claude leaped into flame. "Then I wouldn't touch a cent +of your money. I wouldn't let her touch it. I wouldn't let her look at +it. I'd marry her on my own--I'll be hanged if I wouldn't. I'd marry her +to-morrow. I'd get out of bed and marry her to-night. I'd--" + +Thor forced his smile to a tenderer playfulness, sitting calmly astride +of his chair, his left arm along the back, his right hand holding his +pipe by the bowl. "So you wouldn't let me have her?" + +Claude lashed across the bed. "I'd see you hanged first. I'd see you +damned. I'd see you damned to hell. She's mine, I tell you. I'm not +going to give her up to any one--and to you least of all. Do you get +that? Now you know." + +"All right, Claude. Now I know." + +"Yes, but I don't know." Claude wriggled to the side of the bed, drawing +as near to his brother as he could without getting out. "I don't know. +I've asked you a question, and you haven't answered it. And, by God! +you've got to answer it. Sooner than let any one else get her, I'll +marry her and starve. Now speak." + +Thor got up heavily. He had the feeling with which the ancients +submitted when they stood soberly and affirmed that it was useless to +struggle against Fate. Fate was upon him. He saw it now. He had tried to +elude her, but she had got him where he couldn't move. She asserted +herself again when Claude, hanging half out of bed, his mouth feverish, +his eyes burning, insisted, imperiously, "Say, you--_speak_!" + +Thor spoke. He spoke from the middle of the floor, his pipe still in his +hand. He spoke without premeditation, as though but uttering the words +that Destiny had put into his mouth from all eternity. + +"It's all right, Claude. Calm down. I'm--I'm going to be married to Lois +Willoughby." + +But Claude was not yet convinced. "When?" + +"Just as soon as we can fix things up after the tenth of next +month--after I get the money." + +"How long has that been settled?" Claude demanded, with lingering +suspicion. + +"It's been settled for years, as far as I'm concerned. I can hardly +remember the time when I didn't intend--just what I'm going to do." + +Claude let himself drop back again among the pillows. + +"So now it's all right, isn't it?" Thor continued, making a move toward +the door. "It'll be Lois and I--and you and Rosie. And the money will go +to Rosie. I insist on that. It'll even things up. Five thousand a year. +Perhaps more. We'll see." + +He looked back from the door, but Claude, after his excitement, was +lying white and silent, his eyes closed, his profile upturned. Thor was +swept by compunction. It had always been part of the family tradition to +respect Claude's high-strung nerves. Nothing did him more harm than to +be thwarted or stirred up. With a murmured good-night Thor turned out +the light, opening and closing the door softly. + +But in the passage he heard the pad of bare feet behind him. Claude +stood there in his pajamas. + +"Say, Thor," he whispered, hoarsely, "you're top-hole--'pon my soul you +are." He caught his brother's hand, pulling it rather than shaking it, +like a boy tugging at a bell-rope. "You're a top-hole brother, Thor," he +repeated, nervously, "and I'm a beast. I know you don't care anything +about Rosie. Of course you don't. But I've got the jumps. I've been +through such a lot during the months I've been meeting her that I'm on +springs. But with you to back me up--" + +"I'll back you up all right, Claude. Just wade in and get married--and I +guess our team will hold its own against all comers. Lois will be with +us. She's fond of Rosie--" + +With another tug at his brother's arm, and more inarticulate thanks, +Claude darted back to his room again. + +Thor closed his own door and locked it behind him. He was too far spent +for more emotion. He had hardly the energy to throw off his clothes and +turn out the light. Within five minutes of his final assurance to Claude +he was sleeping profoundly. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Having slept soundly till after eight in the morning, Thor woke with an +odd sense of pleasure. On regaining his faculties he was able to analyze +it as the pleasure he had experienced in having Claude tugging at his +arm. It meant that Claude was happy, and, Claude being happy, Rosie +would be happy. Claude and Rosie were taken care of. + +Consequently Lois would be taken care of. Thor turned the idiom over +with a vast content. It was the tune to which he bathed and dressed. +They would all three be taken care of. Those who were taken care of were +as folded sheep. His mind could be at rest concerning them. It was +something to have the mind at rest even at the cost of heartache. + +There was, of course, one intention that before all others must be +carried out. He would have to clinch the statement he had made, for the +sake of appeasing and convincing Claude, concerning Lois Willoughby. It +was something to be signed and sealed before Claude could see her or +betray the daring assertion to his parents. Fortunately, the younger +brother's duties at the bank would deprive him of any such opportunity +earlier than nightfall, so that Thor himself was free for the regular +tasks of the day. He kept, therefore, his office hours during the +forenoon, and visited his few patients after a hasty luncheon. There was +one patient whom he omitted--whom he would leave henceforth to Dr. +Hilary. + +It was but little after four when he arrived at the house at the corner +of Willoughby's Lane and County Street. Mrs. Willoughby met him in the +hall, across which she happened to be bustling. She wore an apron, and +struck him as curiously business-like. As he had never before seen her +share in household tasks, her present aspect seemed to denote a change +of heart. + +"Oh, come in, Thor," she said, briskly. "I'm glad you've come. Go up and +see poor Len. He's so depressed. You'll cheer him." + +If there was a forced note in her bravery he did not perceive it. "I'm +glad to see you're not depressed," he observed as he took off his +overcoat. + +She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm going to die game." + +"Which means--" + +"That there's fight in me yet." + +"Fight?" His brows went up anxiously. + +"Oh, not with your father. You needn't be afraid of that. Besides, I see +well enough it would be no use. If he says we've spent our money, he's +got everything fixed to make it look so, whether we've spent it or not. +No, I'm not going to spare him because he's your father. I'm going to +say what I think, and if you don't like it you can lump it. I sha'n't go +to law. I'd get the worst of it if I did. But neither shall I be bottled +up. So there!" + +"It doesn't matter what you say to me--" Thor began, with significant +stress on the ultimate word. + +"It may not matter what I say to you, but I can tell you it will matter +what I say to other people." + +Thor took no notice of that. "And if you're not going to law, would it +be indiscreet to ask what you are going to do?" + +Bessie forced the note of bravery again, with a flash in her little +eyes. "I'm going to live on my income; that's what I'm going to do. +Thank the Lord I've some money left. I didn't let Archie Masterman get +his hands on all of it--not me. I've got some money left, and we've got +this house. I'm going to let it. I'm going to let it to-morrow if I get +the chance. I'm getting it ready now. And then we're going abroad. Oh, I +know lots of places where we can live--_petits trous pas chers_; dear +little places, too--where Len'll have a chance to--to get better." + +Thor made a big resolution. "If you're going to let the house, why not +let it to me?" + +She knew what was coming, but it made her feel faint. Backing to one of +the Regency chairs, she sank into it. It was in mere pretense that she +said, "What do you want it for?" + +"I want it because I want to marry Lois." He added, with an anxiety that +sprang of his declaration to Claude, "Do you think she'll take me?" + +Bessie spoke with conviction. "She'll take you unless she's more of a +fool than I think. Of course she'll take you. Any woman in her senses +would jump at you. I know I would." She dashed away a tear. "But look +here, Thor," she hurried on, "if you marry Lois you won't have the whole +family on your back, you know. You won't be marrying Len and me. I tell +you right now because you're the sort that'll think he ought to do it. +Well, you won't have to. I mean what I say when I tell you we're going +to live on our income--what's left of it. We can, and we will, and we're +going to." + +"Couldn't we talk about all that when--?" + +"When you're married to Lois and have more of a right to speak? No. +We'll talk about it now--and never any more. Len and I are going to have +plenty--plenty. If you think I can't manage--well, you'll see." + +"Oh, I know you've got lots of pluck, Mrs. Willoughby--" + +She sprang to her feet. With her hands thrust jauntily into the pockets +of her apron, she looked like some poor little soubrette, grown +middle-aged, stout, and rather grotesque, in a Marivaux play. She acted +her part well. "Pluck? Oh, I've got more than that. I've got some +ability. If you never knew it before, you'll see it now. I've spent a +lot; but then I've had a lot--or thought I had; and now that I'm going +to have little--well, I'll show you I can cut my coat according to my +cloth as well as the next one." + +"I don't doubt that in the least, and yet--" + +"And yet you want us to have all our money back. Oh, I know what you +meant yesterday afternoon. I didn't see it at the time--I had so many +things to think of; but I caught on to it as soon as I got home. We +should get it back, because you'd give it to us. Well, you won't. You +can marry Lois, if she'll marry you--and I hope to the Lord she won't be +such a goose as to refuse you!--and you can take the house off our +hands; but more than that you won't be able to do, not if you were Thor +Masterman ten times over." + +He smiled. "I shouldn't like to be that. Once is bad enough." + +Her little eyes shone tearily. "All the same, I like you for it. I do +believe that if you hadn't said it I should have gone to law. I +certainly meant to; but when I saw how nice _you_ were--" Dashing away +another tear, she changed her tone suddenly. "Tell me. What did your +mother say after I left yesterday?" + +Thor informed her that to the best of his knowledge she hadn't said +anything. + +Bessie chuckled. "I didn't leave her much to say, did I? Well, I'm glad +to have had the opportunity of talking it out with her." + +"You certainly talked it out--if that's the word." + +"Yes, didn't I? And now, I suppose, she's mad." + +Thor was unable to affirm as much as this. In fact, the conversation, +since Mrs. Willoughby liked to apply that term to the encounter, had +induced in his stepmother, as far as he could see, a somewhat superior +frame of mind. + +"Well, I hope it'll do her as much good as it did me," Bessie sighed, +devoutly; "and now that I've let off steam I'll go 'round and make it +up. Now go and see Len. He'll want to talk to you." + +Thor intimated that he would be glad of a minute with Lois, to which +Mrs. Willoughby replied that Lois was having one of her fits of +bird-craze. She was in the kitchen at that minute getting suet with +which to go up into the woods and feed the chickadees. Good Lord! there +had been chickadees since the world began, and they had lived through +the winter somehow. Bessie had no patience with what she called +"nature-fads," but it was as easy to talk sense into a chickadee itself +as to keep Lois from going into the woods with two or three pounds of +suet after every snow-storm. She undertook, however, to delay her +daughter's departure on this errand till warning had been given to Thor. + +Up-stairs Thor found Len sitting in his big arm-chair, clad in a +gorgeous dressing-gown. He was idle, stupefied, and woebegone. With his +bushy, snow-white hair and beard, his puffy cheeks, his sagging mouth, +and his clumsy bulk he produced an effect half spectral and half +fleshly, but quite pathetically ludicrous. His hand trembled violently +as he held it toward his visitor. + +"Not well to-day, Thor," he complained. "Ought to be back in bed. Any +other man wouldn't have got up. Always had too much energy. Awful blow, +Thor, awful blow. Never could have believed it of your father. But I'm +not downed yet. Go to work and make another fortune. That's what I'll +do." + +Thor sympathized with his friend's intentions, and, having slipped +down-stairs again, found Lois in the hall, a basket containing a varied +assortment of bird-foods on her arm. + +When she had given him permission to accompany her, they took their way +up Willoughby's Lane, whence it was possible to pass into the woodland +stretches of the hillside. The day was clear and cold, with just enough +wind to wake the aeolian harp of the forest into sound. Once in the +woods, they advanced warily. "Listen to the red-polls," Lois whispered. + +She paused, leaning forward, her face alight. There was nothing visible; +but a low, continuous warble, interspersed with a sort of liquid rattle, +struck the ear. Taking a bunch of millet stalks from her basket, she +directed Thor while he tied them to the bough of a birch that trailed +its lower branches to the snow. When they had gone forward they +perceived, on looking around, that some dozen or twenty of the +crimson-headed birds had found their food. + +So they went on, scattering seeds or crumbs in sheltered spots, and +fixing masses of suet in conspicuous places, to an approving chirrup of +_dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee_, from friendly little throats. The +basket was almost emptied by the time they reached the outskirts of the +wood and neared the top of the hill. + +Lois was fastening the last bunch of millet stalks to a branch hanging +just above her head. Thor stood behind her, holding the basket, and +noticing, as he had often noticed before, the slim shapeliness of her +hands. In spite of the cold, they were bare, the fur of the cuffs +falling back sufficiently to display the exquisitely formed wrists. + +"Lois, when can we be married?" + +She gave no sign of having heard him, unless it was that her hands +stopped for an instant in the deft rapidity of their task. Within a few +seconds they had resumed their work, though, it seemed to him, with less +sureness in the supple movement of the fingers. Beyond the upturned +collar of her coat he saw the stealing of a warm, slow flush. + +He was moved, he hardly knew how. He hardly knew how, except that it was +with an emotion different from that which Rosie Fay had always roused in +him. In that case the impulse was primarily physical. He couldn't have +said what it was primarily in this. It was perhaps mental, or spiritual, +or only sympathetic. But it was an emotion. He was sure of that, though +he was less sure that it had the nature of love. As for love, since +yesterday the word sickened him. Its association had become, for the +present, at any rate, both sacred and appalling. He couldn't have used +it, even if he had been more positive concerning the blends that made up +his present sentiment. + +It was to postpone as long as possible the moment for turning around +that Lois worked unnecessarily at the fastening of her millet stalks. +They were not yet secured to her satisfaction when, urged by a sudden +impulse, he bent forward and kissed her wrist. She allowed him to do +this without protest, while she knotted the ends of her string; but she +was obliged to turn at last. + +"I didn't know you wanted to be married," she said, with shy frankness. + +He responded as simply as she. "But now that you do know it--how soon +can it be?" + +"Why are you asking me?" Before he had time to reply she went on, "Is it +because papa has got into trouble?" + +He was ready with his answer. "It's because he's got into trouble that +I'm asking you to-day; but I've been meaning to ask you for years and +years." + +She uttered something like a little cry. "Oh, Thor, is that true?" + +The fact that he must make so many reservations impelled him to be the +more ardent in what he could affirm without putting a strain on his +conscience. "I can swear it to you, Lois, if you want me to. It began as +long ago as when I was a youngster and you were a little girl." + +She clasped her hands tightly. "Oh, Thor!" + +"Since that time there hasn't been a--" He was going to say a day, but +he made a rapid correction--"there hasn't been a year when I haven't +looked forward to your being my wife." He allowed a few seconds to pass +before adding, "I should think you'd have seen it." + +She answered as well as a joyous distress would let her. "I did see it, +Thor--or thought I did--for a while. Only latterly--" + +"You mustn't judge by--latterly," he broke in, hastily. "Latterly I've +had a good deal to go through." + +"Oh, you poor Thor! Tell me about it." + +Nothing would have eased his heart more effectively than to have poured +out to her the whole flood of his confidence. It was what he was +accustomed to doing when in her company. He could talk to her with more +open heart than he had ever been able to talk to any one. It would have +been a relief to tell her the whole story of Rosie Fay; and if he +refrained from taking this course, it was only because he reminded +himself that it wouldn't "do." It obviously wouldn't "do." He was unable +to say why it wouldn't "do" except on the general ground that there were +things a man had better keep to himself. He curbed, therefore, his +impulse toward frankness to say: + +"I can't--because there are things I shall never be able to talk about. +If I could speak of them to any one it would be to you." + +She looked at him anxiously. "It's nothing that I have to do with, is +it?" + +"Only in as far as you have to do with everything that concerns me." + +Tears in her eyes could not keep her face from growing radiant. "Oh, +Thor, how can I believe it?" + +"It's true, Lois. I can hardly go back to the time when, in my own mind, +it hasn't been true." + +"But I'm not worthy of it," she said, half tearfully. + +"I hope it isn't a question of worthiness on the one side or the other. +It's just a matter of--of our belonging together." + +It was not in doubt, but with imploring looks of happiness, that she +said, "Oh, are you sure we do?" + +He was glad she could accept his formula. It not only simplified +matters, but enabled him to be sincere. The fact that in his own way he +was quite sincere rendered him the more grateful to her for not forcing +him, or trying to force him, to express himself insincerely. It was +almost as if she divined his state of mind. + +"Words aren't of much use between _us_," he declared, in his +appreciation of this attitude on her part. "We're more or less +independent of them, don't you think?" + +She nodded her approval of this sentiment as her eyes followed the +action of her fingers in buttoning her gloves. + +"But I'll tell you what I feel as exactly as I can put it," he went on. +"It's that you're essential to me, and I'm essential to you. At least," +he subjoined, humbly, "I hope I'm essential to you." + +She nodded again, her face averted, her eyes still following the +movements of her fingers at her wrist. + +"I can't express it in language very different from that," he stammered, +"because--well, because I'm not--not very happy; and the chief thing I +feel about you is that you're a kind of--of shelter." + +He had found the word that explained his state of mind. It was as a +shelter that he was seeking her. If there were points of view from which +his object was to protect her, there were others from which he needed +protection for himself. In desiring her as his wife he was, as it were, +fleeing to a refuge. He did desire her as his wife, even though but +yesterday he had more violently desired Rosie Fay. The violence was +perhaps the secret of his reaction--not that it was reaction so much as +the turning of his footsteps toward home. He was homing to her. He was +homing to her by an instinct beyond his skill to analyze, though he knew +it to be as straight and sure as that of the pigeon to the cote. + +There was a silence following his use of the word shelter--a silence in +which she seemed to envelop him with her deep, luminous regard. The +still, remote beauty of the winter woods, the notes of friendly birds, +the sweet, wild music of the wind in the tree-tops, accompanied that +look, as mystery and incense and organ harmonies go with benedictions. + +"Oh, Thor, you're wonderful!" was all she could say, when words came to +her. "You make me feel as if I could be of some use in the world. What's +more wonderful still, you make me feel as if I had been of use all these +years when I've felt so useless." + +It was in the stress of the sensation of having wandered into far, +exotic regions in which his feet could only stray that he said, simply, +"You're home to me." + +She was so near to bursting into tears that she turned from him sharply +and walked up the hill. He followed slowly, swinging the empty basket. +Her buoyant step on the snow, over which the frost had drawn the +thinnest of shining crusts, gave a nymphlike smoothness to her motion. + +Having reached the treeless ridge, she emerged on that high altar on +which, not twenty-four hours earlier, he had sunk face downward in the +snow. The snow had drifted again over his footprints and the mark of his +form. It was drifting still, in little powdery whirls, across a surface +that caught tints of crimson and glints of fire from an angry sunset. It +was windy here. As she stood above him, facing the north, her figure +poised against a glowering sky, her garments blew backward. Even when he +reached her and was standing by her side, she continued to gaze outward +across the undulating, snow-covered country, in the folds of which an +occasional farm-house lamp shone like a pale twilight star. + +"You see, it's this way," he pursued, as though there had been no +interruption. "When I'm with you I seem to get back to my natural +conditions--the conditions in which I can live and work. That's what I +mean by your being home to me. Other places"--he ventured this much of +the confession he had at heart--"other places have their temptations; +but it's only at home that one lives." + +He took courage to go on from the way in which her gloved hand stole +into his. "I dare say you think I talk too much about work; but, after +all, we can't forget that we live in a country in the making, can we? In +a way, it's a world in the making. There's everything to do--and I want +to be doing some of it, Lois," he declared, with a little outburst. "I +can't help it. I know some people think I'm an enthusiast, and others +put me down as a prig--but I can't help it." + +"I know you can't, Thor, and I can't tell you how much I--I"--she felt +for the right word--"I admire it." + +He turned to her eagerly. "You're the only one, Lois, who knows what I +mean--who can speak my language. You want to be useful, too." + +"And I never have been." + +"Nor I. I've known that things were to be done; but I haven't known how +to set about them, or where to begin. Don't you think we may be able to +find the way together?" + +She seemed suddenly to cling to him. "Oh, Thor, if you'd only make me +half as good as you are!" + +Perhaps the ardor with which he seized her was the unspent force of the +longing roused in him by Rosie. Perhaps it blazed up in him merely +because she was a woman. For two or three days now his need of the +feminine had been acute. Did she minister to that? or did she bring him +something that could be offered by but one woman in the world? He +couldn't tell. He only knew that he had her in his arms, with his lips +on hers, and that he was content. He was content, with a sense of +fulfilment and appeasement. It was as if he had been straining for a +great prize and won the second--but at a moment when he had expected +none at all. There was happiness in it, even if it was a quieter, +staider happiness than that of which he now knew himself to be capable. + +"You're home to me, Lois," he murmured as he held her. "You're home to +me." + +He meant that though there were strange, entrancing Edens on which he +had not been allowed to enter, there was, nevertheless, a vast peace of +mind to be found at the restful, friendly fireside. + +"And you're the whole wide world to me, Thor," she whispered, clasping +her arms about his neck and drawing his face nearer. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +On leaving Lois and returning homeward, Thor met his brother at the +entrance to the avenue. They had not spoken since the preceding night. +On purpose to avoid a meeting, Claude had breakfasted early and escaped +to town before Thor had come down-stairs. In the glimpse Thor had caught +of his younger brother as the latter left the house he saw that he +looked white and worried. + +He looked white and worried still under the glare of street electricity. +As they walked up the driveway together Thor took the opportunity to put +himself right in the matter that lay most urgently on his mind. "Lois +and I are to be married on one of the last days of February," he said, +with his best attempt to speak casually. "She wants to work it in before +Lent, which begins on the first day of March. Have scruples about +marrying in Lent in their church. Quiet affair. No one but the two +families." + +Claude asked the question as to which he felt most curiosity. "Going to +tell father?" + +"To-night. No use shilly-shallying about things of that sort. Father +mayn't like it; but he can't kick." + +Claude spoke moodily: "He can't kick in your case." + +"We're grown men, Claude. We're the only judges of what's right for us. +I don't mean any disrespect to father; but we've got to be free. Best +way, as far as I see, is to be open and aboveboard and firm. Then +everybody knows where you are." + +Claude made no response till they reached the door-step, where he +lingered. "Look here, Thor," he said then, "I've got to put this thing +through in my own way, you know." + +Thor didn't need to be told what this thing was. "That's all right, +Claude. I've got nothing to do with it." + +"You've got something to do with it when you put up the money. And what +I feel," he added, complainingly, "is that my taking it makes me look as +if I was bought." + +"Oh, rot, Claude!" Thor made a great effort. "Hang it all! when a +fellow's in--in love, and going to be married himself, you don't suppose +he can ignore his own brother who's in the same sort of box, and can't +be married for the sake of a few hundred dollars? That wouldn't be +human." + +It was not difficult for Claude to take this point of view, but he +repeated, tenaciously, "I've got to do it in my own way." + +"Good Lord! old chap, I don't care how you do it," Thor declared, +airily, "so long as it's done. Just buck up and be a man, and you'll +pull it off magnificently. It's the sort of thing you've got to pull off +magnificently--or slump." + +"That's what I think," Claude agreed, "and so I'm"--he hesitated before +announcing so bold a program--"and so I'm going to take her abroad." + +"Oh!" Thor gave a little gasp. He had not expected to have Rosie pass +out of his ken. He had supposed that he should remain near her, watch +over her, know what she was doing and what was being done to her. He was +busy trying to readjust his mind while Claude stammered out suggestions +for the payment of Rosie's proposed dowry. It was clear without his +saying so that he hated doing it; but he did say so, adding that it made +him feel as if he was bought. + +Thor was irritated by the repetition. "Let's drop that, Claude, if you +don't mind. Be satisfied once for all that if you and Rosie accept the +money it will be as a favor to me. I'm so built that I can't be happy in +my own marriage without knowing that you and--and she have the chance to +be happy in yours. With all the money that's coming to me, and that I've +never done any more to deserve than you have, what I'm setting aside +will be a trifle. As to the payments, I'll do just as you say. The first +quarter will be paid to Rosie on the day you're married--when there'll +be a little check for you, for good luck. So go ahead and make your +plans. Go abroad, if you want to. Dare say it's the best thing you can +do." + +To escape his brother's shamefaced thanks Thor passed into the porch. +"I'm not going to tell any one about it till I'm ready," Claude warned +as he followed. + +Thor turned. "Of course you know that father's on to the whole +business." + +"The deuce he is!" + +"Father told me. How did you suppose I knew anything about it?" + +"So that's it! Been wondering all day who could have given me away. +That's Uncle Sim's tricks. Knew the old fool had his eye--" + +"It was bound to come out somehow, you know, in a little village like +this. Natural enough that Uncle Sim should want to put father wise to a +matter that concerns the whole family. I thought I'd tell you so that +you can take your line." + +"Take what line?" + +"How do I know? That's up to you. The line that will best protect Rosie, +I suppose. Remember that that's your first consideration now. I only +want you to understand that you can't keep father in the dark. I should +say it was more dignified, and perhaps better policy, not to try." + + * * * * * + +An hour later Mrs. Masterman was commenting at the dinner-table on the +pleasing circumstance that invitations to Miss Elsie Darling's party had +come for the entire family. There were cards not only for the two young +men, but for the father and mother also. Since both the older and the +younger members of society were included, it was clear that the function +was to pass the limitations of a dance and become a ball. + +Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Masterman was superior to this form of +entertainment. It was the one above all others that reminded them that +they belonged to society in the higher sense. They dined out with +tolerable frequency; with tolerable frequency their friends dined with +them. As for the afternoon teas to which they were bidden in the course +of a season, Mrs. Masterman could scarcely keep count of them. But balls +came only once or twice in a winter, and not always so often as that. A +ball was a community event. It was an occasion on which to display the +fact that the neighborhood could unite in a gathering more socially +significant than the mere frolicking of boys and girls. Moreover, it was +an opportunity for proving that the higher circles of the village stood +on equal terms with those of the city, with the solidarity of true +aristocracies all over the world. + +On Mrs. Masterman's murmuring something to the effect that Claude would +go to the ball, of course, the young man mumbled words that sounded +like, "Not for mine." The mother understood the response to be a +negative, and replied with a protest. + +"Oh, but you must, Claudie dear. It'll be so nice for you to meet Elsie. +She's a charming girl, they say, after her years abroad." She concluded, +with a wrinkling of her pretty brow, "It seems to me you don't know many +really nice girls." + +She had been moved by no more than a mother's solicitude, but Claude +kept his eyes on his plate. He knew that his father was probably looking +at him, and that Thor was saying, "Now's your chance to speak up and +declare that you know the nicest girl in the world." Poor Claude was +sensible of the opportunity, and yet felt himself paralyzed with regard +to making use of it. In reply he could only say, vaguely, that if he had +to go he would have to go, and not long afterward Mrs. Masterman rose. + +The sons followed their parents into the library, pausing to light their +cigarettes on the way. By the time they had crossed the hall the head of +the house had settled himself with the evening paper in his favorite +arm-chair before the slumbering wood fire. Mrs. Masterman stooped over +the long table strewn with periodicals, turning the pages of a new +magazine. Thor advanced to a discreet distance behind his father's +chair, where he paused and said, quietly: + +"Father, I want to tell you and mother that I'm engaged to Lois +Willoughby. We're to be married almost at once--toward the end of next +month." + +There was dead silence. As far as could be observed, Masterman continued +to study his paper, while his wife still stooped over the pages of her +magazine. It was long before the father said, with the seeming +indifference meant to be more bitter than gall: + +"That, I presume, is your answer to my move with regard to the father. +Very well, Thor. You're your own master. I've nothing to say." + +Before Thor could explain that it was only the carrying out of a +long-planned intention, his stepmother looked up and spoke. "I _have_ +something to say, Thor dear. I hope you're going to be very happy. I'm +sure you will be. She's a noble girl." + +Her newly germinating vitality having asserted itself to this extent, +she stood aghast till Thor strode up and kissed her, saying: "Thank you, +mumphy. She is a noble girl--one of the best." + +The example had its effect on Claude, who had stood hesitating in the +doorway, and now came toward his father's chair, though timidly. +"Father, I'm going to be married, too." + +His mother uttered a smothered cry. Masterman turned sharply. + +"Who? You?" + +The implied scorn in the tone put Claude on his mettle. "Yes, father," +he tried to say with dignity. It was in search of further support for +this dignity that he added, in a manner that he tried to make formal, +but which became only faltering, "To--to--to Miss Rosanna Fay." + +Masterman shrugged his shoulders and returned to his newspaper. There +were full three minutes in which each of the spectators waited for +another word. "Have you nothing to say to me, father?" Claude pleaded, +in a tone curiously piteous. + +The father barely glanced around over his shoulder. "What do you expect +me to say?--to call you a damn fool? The words would be wasted." + +"I'm a grown man, father--" Claude began to protest. + +"Are you? It's the first intimation I've had of it. But I'm +willing to take your word. If so, you must assume a grown man's +responsibilities--from now on." + +Claude's throat was dry and husky. "What do you mean by--from now on?" + +"I mean from the minute when you've irrevocably chosen between this +woman and us. You haven't irrevocably chosen as yet. You've still +time--to reconsider." + +"But if I don't reconsider, father?--if I can't?" + +"The choice is between her and--us." + +He returned to his paper; but again his wife's nascent will to live +asserted itself, to no one's astonishment more than to her own. "It's +not between her and me, Claude," she cried, casting as she did so a +frightened glance at the back of her husband's head. "I'm your mother. I +shall stand by you, whoever fails." Her words terrified her so utterly +that before she dared to cross the floor to her son she looked again +beseechingly at the iron-gray top of her husband's head as it appeared +above the back of the arm-chair. Nevertheless, she stole swiftly to her +boy and put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm your mother, dear," she +sobbed, tremblingly; "and if she's a good girl, and loves you, +I'll--I'll accept her." + +Masterman turned his newspaper inside out, as though pretending not to +hear. + +Thor waited till Claude and his mother, clinging to each other, had +crept out of the room, before saying, "I'm responsible for this, +father." + +There was no change in the father's attitude. "So I supposed." + +"The girl is a good girl, and I couldn't let Claude break her heart." + +"You found it easier to break mine." + +"I don't mean that, father--" + +"Then I can only say that you're as successful in what you don't mean as +in what you do." + +"I don't understand." + +"No, perhaps not. But it would be futile for me to try to explain to +you. Good night." + +Thor remained where he was. "It isn't futile for me to try to explain to +you, father. I know Rosie Fay, and you don't. She's a beautiful girl, +with that strong character which Claude needs to give him backbone. He +is in love with her, and he's made her fall in love with him. It +wouldn't be decent on his part or honorable on ours--" + +The father interrupted wearily. "You'll spare me the sentimentalities. +The facts are bad enough. When I want instructions in decency and honor +I'll come to you and get them. In the mean time I've said--good night." + +"But, father, we _must_ talk about it--" + +Masterman raised himself in his chair and turned. "Thor," he said, +sternly, his words getting increased effect from his childlike lisp, "if +you knew how painful your presence is to me--you'd go." + +Thor flushed. There was nothing left for him but to turn. And yet he had +not gone many steps beyond the library door before he heard his father +fling the paper to the floor, uttering a low groan. + +The young man stood still, shifting between two minds. Should he go away +and leave his father to the mortifying sense that his sons were setting +him at defiance? or should he return and insist on full explanations? He +would have done the latter had it not been for the words, "If you knew +how painful your presence is to me!" He still heard them. They cut him +across the face--across the heart. He went on up-stairs. + +As he passed the open door of Mrs. Masterman's room he heard Claude +saying: "Oh, mother darling, if you knew her, you'd feel about her just +as I do. When she's dressed up as a lady she'll put every other girl in +the shade. You'll see she will. After she's had a year or two in +Paris--" + +Thor entered the room while the mother was crying out: "Paris! Why, +Claudie dear, what are you talking about? How are you going to +_live_?--let alone Paris!" + +"That's all right, mother. Don't fret. I can get money. I'm not a fool. +Look here," he added, in a confidential tone, winking at Thor over her +shoulder, "I'll tell you something. It's a secret, mind you. Not a word +to father! I'm all right for money _now_." + +She could only repeat, in a tone of mystification, "All right for money +now?" + +Claude made an inarticulate sound of assent. "Got it all fixed." + +"Oh, but how?" + +"I said it was a secret." He winked at his brother again. "I shouldn't +tell even you, only you've been such a spanking good mother to back me +up that I want to ease your mind." + +She threw an imploring look at her stepson, though she addressed her +son. "Oh, Claude, you haven't done anything wrong, have +you?--forged?--or embezzled?--or whatever it is they do in banks." + +"No, mother; it's all on the square." Because of Thor's presence he +added: "If it will make you any the more cheerful I'll tell you this, +too. It's not going to be my money; it' be Rosie's. Strictly speaking, I +sha'n't have anything to do with it. She'll have--about _five thousand +dollars a year_! When it's all over--and we're married--you can put +father wise to that; but not before, mind you." + +"But, Claudie darling, I don't understand a bit. How can she have five +thousand dollars a year, when they're as poor as poor? And she hasn't a +relation who could possibly--" + +He, too, threw a glance at Thor. "She may not have a relation, but she +might have a--a friend. Now, mother, this is just between you and me. If +you hadn't been such a spanking good mother I shouldn't have told you a +word of it." + +"Yes, but, Claude! Think! What sort of a friend could it possibly be +who'd give a girl all that money? Why, it's ridiculous!" + +"It isn't ridiculous. Is it, Thor? You leave it to me, mumphy." + +"But it is ridiculous, Claudie dear. You'll see if it isn't. No man in +the world would settle five thousand dollars a year on a girl like +that--without a penny--unless he had a reason, and a very good reason, +too. Would he, Thor?" she demanded of her stepson, whom she had not +hitherto included. She continued to address him: "I don't care who he is +or what he is. Don't you agree with me? Wouldn't anybody agree with me +who had his senses?" + +Thor's heart jumped. This was a view of his intentions that he had not +foreseen. Fortunately he could disarm his stepmother by revealing +himself as the god from the machine, for she would consider it no more +than just that he should use part of his inheritance for Claude's +benefit. He might have made the attempt there and then had not Claude +done it for himself. + +"Now you leave it to me, mumphy dear. I know exactly what I'm about. I +can't explain. But I'll tell you this much more--it'll make your mind +quite easy--that it's all on my account that Rosie's to have the money." +He gave his brother another look. "If she didn't marry me she wouldn't +get it. At least," he added, more doubtfully, "I don't think she would. +See?" + +Mrs. Masterman confessed that she didn't see--quite; but her tone made +it clear that she was influenced by Claude's assurances, while Thor felt +it prudent to go on his way up the second stairway. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +There were both amazement and terror in Rosie's face when, at dusk next +day, Claude strolled down the flowery path of the hothouse. Since Thor +had turned from her, on almost the same spot, forty-eight hours +previously, no hint from either of the brothers had come her way. +Through the intervening time she had lived in an anguish of wonder. What +was happening? What was to happen still? Would anything happen at all? +Had Claude discovered the astounding fact that the elder brother was in +love with her? If he had, what would he do? Would he go wild with +jealousy? Or would he never have anything to do with her again? Either +case was possible, and the latter more than possible if he had received +a hint of the degree in which she had betrayed herself to Thor. + +As to that, she didn't know whether she was glad or sorry. She knew how +crude had been her self-revelation, and how shocking; but the memory of +it gave her a measure of relief. It was like a general confession, like +the open declaration of what had been too long kept buried in the heart. +It had been a shameful thing to own that, loving one man, she would have +married another man for money; but a worse shame lay in being driven to +that pass. For this she felt herself but partly responsible, if +responsible at all. What did she, Rosie Fay, care for money in itself? +Put succinctly, her first need was of bread, of bread for herself and +for those who were virtually dependent on her. After bread she wanted +love and pleasure and action and admiration and whatever else made up +life--but only after it. She was craving for them, she was stifling for +lack of them, but they were all secondary. The very best of them was +secondary. Only one thing stood first--and that was bread. + +Undoubtedly her frankness had revolted Thor Masterman. But what did he +know of an existence which left the barest possible margin for absolute +necessity? What would life have meant to him had he never had a day +since he first began to think when he had been entirely free from +anxiety as to the prime essentials? Rosie couldn't remember a time when +the mere getting of their pinched daily food hadn't been a matter of +contrivance, with some doubt as to its success. She couldn't remember a +time when she had ever been able to have a new dress or a pair of boots +without long calculation beforehand. On the other hand, she remembered +many a time when the pinched food couldn't be paid for, and the new +dress or the pair of boots had come almost within reach only to be +whisked aside that the money might be used for something still more +needful. In a world of freedom and light and flowers and abundance her +little soul had been kept in a prison where the very dole of bread and +water was stinted. + +She had never been young. Even in childhood she had known that. She had +known it, and been patient with the fact, hoping for a chance to be +young when she was older. If money came in then, money for boots and +bread, for warm clothes in winter and thin clothes in summer, for fuel +and rent and taxes and light, and the pay of the men, and the +innumerable details which, owing to her father's dreaminess, she was +obliged to keep on her mind--if money were ever to come in for these +things, she could be young with the best. She could be young with the +intenser happiness that would come from spirits long thwarted. It might +never now be a light-hearted happiness, but it would be happiness for +all that. It would be the deeper, and the more satisfying, and the more +aware of itself for its years of suppression. + +To her long experience in denial Rosie could only oppose a heart more +imperiously exacting in its demands. Her tense little spirit didn't know +how to do otherwise. From lines of ancestry that had never done anything +but toil with patient relentlessness to wring from the soil whatever it +was capable of yielding, she had inherited no habit of compromise. In +them it had been called grit; but a softer generation having let that +word fall into disuse, Rosie could only account for herself by saying +she "wasn't a quitter." She meant that she could neither forego what she +asked for, nor be content with anything short of what she conceived to +be the best. Could she have done that, she might have enjoyed the meager +"good time" of other girls in the village; she might have listened to +the advances of young Breen the gardener, or of Matt's colleague in the +grocery-store. But she had never presented such possibilities for her +own consideration. She was like an ant, that sees but one object to the +errand on which it has set out, disdaining diversion. + +And if it had all summed itself up into what looked like a hard, +unlovely avariciousness, it was because poor Rosie had nothing to tell +her the values and co-relations of the different ingredients in life. +For the element that suffuses good-fortune and ill-fortune alike with +corrective significance she had imbibed from her mother one kind of +scorn, and from her father another. She knew no more of it than did Thor +Masterman. Like him, she could only work for a material blessing with +material hands, though without his advantages for molding things to his +will. He had his advantages through money. Since all things material are +measured by that, by that Rosie measured them. The matter and the +measure were all she knew. They meant safety for herself and for her +parents, and protection for Matt when he came out of jail. How could she +do other than spend her heart upon them? What choice had she when the +alternative lay between Claude and love on the one side and on the other +Thor, with his hands full of daily bread for them all? With Claude and +his love there went nothing besides, while with Thor and his daily bread +there would be peace and security for life. She asked it of herself; she +asked it, in imagination, of him. What else could she do but sell +herself when the price on her poor little body had been set so high? + +She had spent two burning, rebellious days. All the while she was +cooking meals, or setting tables, or washing dishes, or making beds, or +selling flowers, or pruning, or watering, or addressing envelopes for +the monthly bills, her soul had been raging against the unjust code by +which she would have to be judged. Thor would judge her; Claude would +judge her, if he knew; any one who knew would judge her, and women most +fiercely of all. But what did they know about it? What did they know of +twenty-odd years of going around in a cage? What did they know of the +terror of seeing the cage itself demolished, and being without a +protection? Did they suppose she wouldn't suffer in giving up her love? +Of course she would suffer! The very extremity of her suffering would +prove the extremity of her need. Passionately Rosie defended herself +against her imaginary accusers, because unconsciously she accused +herself. + +Nevertheless, Claude's sudden appearance startled her, though the set of +his shoulders towering through the dusk transported her to the enchanted +land. Here were mountains, and lakes, and palaces, and plashed marble +steps, and the music of lutes, and banquets of ambrosial things to which +daily bread was as nothing. Claude brought them with him. They were the +conditions of that glorious life in which he had his being. They were +the conditions in which she had her being, too, the minute she came +within his sphere. + +She passed through some poignant seconds as he approached. For the first +time since her idyl had begun to give a new meaning to existence she +perceived that if he renounced her it would be the one thing she +couldn't bear. She might have the strength to give him up; for him to +give her up would be beyond all the limits of endurance. She put it to +herself tersely in saying it would break her heart. + +But he dispelled her fears by smiling. He smiled from what was really a +long way off. Even she could see that he smiled from pleasure, though +she couldn't trace his pleasure to his delicious feeling of surprise. If +she had ceased to be a dryad in a wood, it was to become the Armida of +an enchanted garden. She could have no idea of the figure she presented +to a connoisseur in girls as from a background of palms, fern-trees, and +banked masses of bloom she stared at him with lips half parted and wide, +frightened eyes. + +Submitting to this new witchery in the same way as he was yielding to +the heavy, languorous perfumes of the place, Claude smiled continuously. +"The fat's all in the fire, Rosie," he said, in a loud whisper, as he +drew nearer; "so we've nothing to be afraid of any longer." + +It was some minutes before she could give concrete significance to these +words. In the mean time she occupied herself with assuring him that +there was no one in the hothouse but herself, and that in this gloaming +they could not be seen from outside. She even found a spot--a kind of +low staging from which foliage plants had recently been moved away--on +which they could sit down. They did so, clinging to each other, +though--conscious of her coarse working-dress--she was swept by a +shameful sense of incongruity in being on such terms with this +faultlessly attired man. She did her best to shrink from sight, to blot +herself out in his embrace, unaware that to Claude the very roughness, +and the scent of growing things, gave her a savage, earthy charm. + +He explained the situation to her, word by word. When he told her that +their meetings were known to his father, she hid her face on his breast. +When he went on to describe how resolute he had been in taking the bull +by the horns, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his +face with the devotion of a dog. On hearing what a good mother Mrs. +Masterman had been, her utterances, which welled up out of her heart as +if she had been crying, were like broken phrases of blessing. As a +matter of fact, she was only half listening. She was telling herself how +mad she had been in fancying for an instant that she could ever have +married Thor--that she could ever have married any one, no matter how +great the need or how immense the compensation. Having confronted the +peril, she knew now, as she had not known it hitherto, that her heart +belonged to this man who held her in his arms for him to do with it as +he pleased. He might treasure it, or he might play with it, or he might +break it. It was all one. It was his. It was his and she was his--to +shatter on the wheel or to trample in the mire, just as he was inclined. +It was so clear to her now that she wondered she hadn't seen it with +equal force in those days when she was so resolute in declaring that she +"knew what she was doing." + +And yet within a few minutes she saw how difficult it was to surrender +herself, even mentally, without reserves. She was still listening but +partially. She recognized plainly enough that the things he was saying +were precisely those which a month ago would have filled her soul with +satisfaction. He loved her, loved her, loved her. Moreover, he had found +the means of sweeping all obstacles aside. They were to be married as +soon as possible--just as soon as he could "arrange things." Thor and +his mother were with them, and his father's conversion would be only a +matter of time. These assurances, by which all the calculations of her +youth were crowned, found her oddly apathetic. It was not because she +had lost the knowledge of their value, but only that they had become +subsidiary to the great central fact that she was his--without money or +price on his side, and no matter at what cost on hers. + +It was only when he began to murmur semi-coherent plans for the future, +in which she detected the word Paris, that she was frightened. + +"Oh, but, Claude darling, how could I go to Paris when there's so much +for me to do here?" + +It could not be said that he took offense, but he hinted at reproval. +"Here, dearest? Where?" + +"Here where we are. I don't see how I could go away." + +"But you'd _have_ to go away--if we were married." + +"Would it be necessary to go so far?" + +"Wouldn't it be the farther the better?" + +"For some things. But, oh, Claude, I have so many things to consider!" + +"But I thought that when a woman married she left--" + +"Her father and mother and everything. Yes, I know. But how can I leave +mine--when I'm the only one who has any head? Mother's getting better, +but father's not much good except for mooning over books. And then"--she +hesitated, but whipped herself on--"then there's Matt. He'll be out +before long. Some one must be here to tell them what to do." + +He withdrew his arms from about her. "Of course, if you're going to +raise so many difficulties--" + +"I'm not raising difficulties, Claude darling. I'm only telling you what +difficulties there are. God knows I wish there weren't any; but what can +I do? If it were just going to Paris and back--" + +"Well, why not go--and come back when we're obliged to?" + +In the end they compromised on that, each considering it enough for the +present. Rosie was unwilling to dampen his ardor when for the first time +he seemed able to enter into her needs as a human being with cares and +ties. He discussed them all, displaying a wonderful disposition to +shoulder and share them. He went so far as to develop a philanthropic +interest in Matt. Rosie had never known anything so amazing. She clasped +him to her with a kind of fear lest the man should disappear in the god. + +"I'll talk to Thor about him," Claude said, confidently. "Got a bee in +his bonnet, Thor has, about helping chaps who come out of jail, and all +that." + +Rosie shuddered. It was curiously distasteful for her to apply to Thor. +She felt guilty toward him. If she could do as she chose, she would +never see him again. She said nothing, however, while Claude went on: +"Thor's a top-hole brother, you know. You'll find that out one of these +days. Lots of things I shall have to explain to you." He added, without +leading up to it. "He's engaged to Lois Willoughby." + +Rosie sprang from his arms. "What? Already?" + +She was standing. He looked up at her curiously. "Already? Already--how? +What do you mean by that?" + +She tried to recapture her position. + +"Why, already--right after us." + +She reseated herself, getting possession of one of his hands. To this +tenderness he made no response. He seemed to ruminate. "Say, Rosie--" he +began at last, but apparently thought better of what he had meant to +say. "All right," he broke in, carelessly, going on to speak of the +wisdom of leaving the public out of their confidence until their plans +were more fully matured. "Thor's to be married about the twentieth of +next month," he continued, while Rosie was on her guard against further +self-betrayal. "After that we'll have Lois on our side, and she'll do a +lot for us." + +By the time Claude emerged from the hothouse it was dark. Glad of the +opportunity of slipping away unobserved, he was hurrying toward the road +when he found himself confronted by Jasper Fay. In the latter's voice +there was a sternness that got its force from the fact that it was so +mild. + +"You been in the hothouse, Mr. Claude?" + +Claude laughed. In his present mood of happiness he could easily have +announced himself as Fay's future son-in-law. Nothing but motives of +prudence held him back. He answered, jestingly, "Been in to see if you +had any American beauties." + +"No, Mr. Claude; we don't grow them; no _kind_ of American beauties." + +Claude laughed again. "Oh, I don't know about that. Good night, Mr. Fay. +Glad to have seen you." + +He passed on with spirits slightly dashed because his condescension met +with no response. He was so quick to feel that Fay's silence struck him +as hostile. It struck him as hostile with a touch of uncanniness. On +glancing back over his shoulder he saw that Fay was following him +watchfully, like a dog that sneaks after an intruder till he has left +the premises. Being sensitive to the creepy and the sinister, Claude was +glad when he had reached the road. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +The provision that for the moment he was to lead his customary life and +Rosie hers made it possible for Claude to attend the ball by which Mrs. +Darling drew the notice of the world to her daughter. He did so with +hesitations, compunctions, reluctances, and repugnances which in no wise +diminished his desire to be present at the event. + +It took place in the great circular ball-room of the city's newest and +most splendid hotel. The ball-room itself was white-and-gold and Louis +Quinze. Against this background a tasteful decorator had constructed a +colonnade that reproduced in flowers the exquisite marble circle of the +Bosquet at Versailles. An imitation of Girardon's fountain splashed in +the center of the room and cooled the air. + +Claude arrived late. He did so partly to compromise with his +compunctions and partly to accentuate his value. In gatherings at which +young men were sometimes at a premium none knew better than he the +heightened worth of one who sauntered in when no more were to be looked +for, and who carried himself with distinction. Handsome at any time, +Claude rose above his own levels when he was in evening dress. His +figure was made for a white waistcoat, his feet for dancing-pumps. +Moreover, he knew how to enter a room with that modesty which prompts a +hostess to be encouraging. As he stood rather timidly in the doorway, +long after the little receiving group had broken up, Mrs. Darling said +to herself that she had never seen a more attractive young man--whoever +he was! + +She was glad afterward that she had made this reservation, for without +it she might have been prejudiced against him on learning that he was +Archie Masterman's son. As it was, she could feel that the sins of the +fathers were not to be visited on the children, especially in the case +of so delightful a lad. Mrs. Darling had an eye for masculine good +looks, particularly when they were accompanied by a suggestion of the +thoroughbred. Claude's very shyness--the gentlemanly hesitation which on +the threshold of a ball-room has no dandified airs of seeming too much +at ease--had this suggestion of the thoroughbred. Mrs. Darling, dragging +a long, pink train and waving slowly a bespangled pink fan, moved toward +him at once. + +"How d'w do? So glad to see you! I'm afraid my daughter is dancing." + +There was something in her manner that told him she had no idea who he +was--something that could be combined with polite welcome only by one +born to be a hostess. + +Claude had that ready perception of his role which makes for social +success. He bowed with the right inclination, and spoke with a gravity +dictated by respect. "I'm afraid I must introduce myself, Mrs. Darling. +I'm so late. I'm Claude Masterman. My father is--" + +"Oh, they're here! So lovely your mother looks! Really there's not a +young girl in the room can touch her. Won't you find some one and dance? +I'm sorry my daughter--But later on I'll find her and intro--Why, +Maidie, there you are! I thought you'd never come. How d'w do, dear?" + +A more important guest than himself being greeted, Claude felt at +liberty to move on a pace or two and look over the scene. It was easy to +do this, for the outer rim of the circle, that which came beneath the +colonnade, was raised by two steps above the space reserved for dancing. +The _coup d'[oe]il_ was therefore extensive. + +A mass of color, pleasing and confused, revolved languorously to those +strains of the Viennese operetta in which the waltz might be said to +have finished the autocracy of its long reign. The rhythm of the dancers +was as regular and gentle as the breathing of a child. In glide and +turn, in balance and smoothness, in that lift which was scarcely motion, +there was the suggestion of frenzy restrained, of passion lulled, which +emanates from the barely perceptible heave of a slumbering summer sea. +It was dreamy to a charm; it was graceful to the point at which the eye +begins to sicken of gracefulness; it was monotonous with the force of a +necromantic spell. It was soothing; it also threw a hint of melancholy +into a gathering intended to be gay. It was as though all that was most +sentimentally lovely in the essence of the nineteenth century had +concentrated its strength to subdue the daring spirit of the twentieth, +winning a decade of success. Now, however, that the decade was past, +there were indications of revolt. On the arc of the circle most remote +from the eye of the hostess audacious couples were giving way to bizarre +little dips and kicks and attitudes, named by outlandish names, +inaugurating a new freedom. + +Claude stood alone beneath one of the wide, delicate floral arches--a +spectator who was not afraid of being observed. In reality he was noting +to himself the degree to which he had passed beyond the merely +pleasure-seeking impulse. In Rosie and Rosie's cares he had come to +realities. He was rather proud of it. With regard to the young men and +young women swirling in this variegated whirlpool, as well as to those +who, wearied with the dance, were sitting or reclining on the steps, +where rugs and cushions had been thrown for their convenience, he felt a +distinct superiority. They were still in the childish stage, while he +was grown to be a man. To the pretty girls, with their Parisian frocks +and their relatively idle lives, Rosie, with her power of tackling +actualities, was as a human being to a race of marionettes. It would be +necessary for him, in deference to his hosts, to step down among them in +a minute or two and twirl in their company; but he would do it with a +certain pity for those to whom this sort of thing was really a pastime; +he would do it as one for whom pastimes had lost their meaning and who +would be in some sense taking a farewell. + +The music breathed out its last drowsy cadence, and the whirlpool +resolved itself into a series of shimmering, subsidiary eddies. There +was a decentralizing movement toward the rugs and cushions on the steps, +or to the seclusion of seats skilfully embowered amid groups of palms. +Dowagers sought the rose-colored settees against the walls. Gentlemen, +clasping their white-gloved hands at the base of their spinal columns, +bent in graceful conversational postures. A few pairs of attractive +young people continued to pace the floor. Claude remained where he was. +He remained where he was partly because he hadn't decided what else to +do, and partly because his quick eye had singled out the one girl in the +room who embodied something that was not embodied by every other girl. + +When first he saw her she was standing beside the Girardon fountain in +conversation with a young man. The fact that the young man was his +friend Cheever brought her directly within Claude's circle and stirred +that spirit of emulation which five minutes earlier he thought he had +outlived. The girl was adjusting something in her corsage, her glance +flying upward from the action of her fingers toward Cheever's face, not +shyly or coquettishly, but with a perfectly straightforward nonchalance +which might have meant anything from indifference to defiance. + +Claude knew the precise moment at which she noticed him by the fact that +she glanced toward him twice in rapid succession, after which Cheever +glanced toward him, too. He understood then that she had been +sufficiently struck by him to ask his name, and judged that Billy would +treat him to some such pardonable epithet as "awful ass," in order to +keep her attention on himself. In this apparently he didn't succeed, for +presently they began to saunter in Claude's direction. The latter stood +his ground. + +In the knowledge that he could endure scrutiny, he stood his ground with +an ease that plainly roused the young lady's interest. With her hand on +the arm of her cavalier she sauntered forward, and, swerving slightly, +sauntered by. She sauntered by with a lingering look of curiosity that +seemed to throw him a challenge. Never in his life had Claude received +such a look. It was perhaps the characteristic look of the girl of the +twentieth century. It was neither bold nor rude nor self-assertive, but +it was unconscious, inquiring, and unabashed. For Claude it was a new +experience, calling out in him a new response. + +It was a rule with Claude never to take the initiative with girls of his +own class, or with those who--because they lived in the city while he +lived in the village--felt themselves geographically his superiors. He +found it wise policy to wait to be sought, and therefore fell back +toward his hostess with compliments for her scheme of decoration. He got +the reward he hoped for when Mrs. Darling called to her daughter, +saying: + +"Elsie dear, come here. I want to introduce Mr. Claude Masterman." + +So it happened that when the nineteenth century was putting forth a +further effort with the swooning phrases of the barcarolle from the +"Contes d'Hoffmann," adapted to the Boston, Claude found himself swaying +with the twentieth. + +They had not much to say. Whatever interest they felt in each other was +guarded, taciturn. When they talked it was in disjointed sentences on +fragmentary subjects. + +"You've been abroad, haven't you?" + +"Yes; for the last five years." + +"Do you like being back?" + +The answer was doubtful. "Rather. For some things." Then, as though to +explain this lack of enthusiasm, "Everybody looks alike." She qualified +this by adding, "You don't." + +"Neither do you," he stated, in the matter-of-fact tone which he felt to +be suited to the piquantly matter-of-fact in her style. + +It was a minute or two before either of them spoke again. "You've got a +brother, haven't you? My father's his guardian or something." + +Assenting to these statements, Claude said further, "He couldn't come +to-night because he's going to be married on Thursday." + +"To that Miss Willoughby, isn't it?" A jerky pause was followed by a +jerky addition: "I think she's nice." + +"Yes, she is; top-hole. So's my brother." + +She threw back her head to fling him up a smile that struck him as +adorably straightforward. "I like to hear one brother speak of another +like that. You don't often." + +"Oh, well, every brother couldn't, you know." + +They had circled and reversed more than once before she sighed: "I wish +I had a brother--or a sister. It's an awful bore being the only one." + +"Better to be the only one than one of too many." + +More minutes had gone by in the suave swinging of their steps to +Offenbach's somnolent measures when she asked, abruptly, "Do you skate?" + +"Sometimes. Do you?" + +"I go to the Coliseum." + +Claude's next question slipped out with the daring simplicity he knew +how to employ. "Do you go on particular days?" + +"I generally go on Tuesdays." If she was moved by an afterthought it was +without flurry or apparent sense of having committed an indiscretion. +"Not every Tuesday," she said, quietly, and dropped the subject there. + +When, a few minutes later, she was resting on a rug thrown down on the +steps, with Claude posed gracefully by her side, Archie Masterman found +the opportunity to stroll near enough to his wife to say in an +undertone, "Do you see Claude?" + +Ena's answer was no more than a flutter of the eyelids, but a flutter of +the eyelids quite sufficient to take in the summing up of significant, +unutterable things in her husband's face. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +By the time Thor and Lois had returned from their honeymoon in early May +the line of battle in Claude's soul had been extended. The Claude who +might be was fighting hard to get the better of the Claude who was. It +was, nevertheless, the Claude who was that spoke in response to the +elder brother's timid inquiry concerning the situation as it affected +Rosie Fay. Hardly knowing how to frame his question, Thor had put it +awkwardly. + +"Done anything yet?" + +"No." + +In the little smoking-room that had been Len's and was now Thor's--Mr. +and Mrs. Willoughby having retired already to their _petit trou pas +cher_--they puffed at their cigars in silence. It had been the wish of +both bride and bridegroom that Claude should dine with them on their +second evening at home. Thor had man[oe]uvered for these few minutes +alone with his brother in order to get the information he was now +seeking. For his own assurance there were things he needed to know. He +wanted to feel convinced that he hadn't acted hastily, that in marrying +he had made no mistake. There would be proof of that when he saw that +Claude and Rosie had found their happiness in each other, and that in +what he himself had done--there had been no other way! He wished that +Uncle Sim's pietistic refrain wouldn't hum so persistently in his +memory: "Oh, tarry thou the Lord's leisure!" He didn't believe in a +Lord's leisure; but neither did he want to be afraid of his own haste. +He had grown so self-conscious on the subject that it took courage for +him to say: + +"Isn't it getting to be about time?" + +Claude drew the cigar from his lips and stared obliquely. "Look here, +old chap; I thought I was to put this thing through in my own way?" + +"Oh, quite so; quite so." + +Claude's thrust went home when he said, "I don't see why _you_ should be +in such a hurry about it." He followed this by a question that Thor +found equally pertinent: "Why the devil are you?" + +"Because I thought you were." + +"Well, even if I am, I don't see any reason for rushing things." + +"Oh, would you call it--rushing?" He threw off, carelessly, "I hear you +go a good deal to the Darlings'!" + +"Not any oftener than they ask me." + +"Well, then, they ask you pretty often, don't they?" + +"I suppose they do it when they feel inclined. I haven't counted the +number of occasions." + +"No; but I dare say Rosie has." + +"I'm not a fool, Thor. I don't talk to Rosie about the Darlings." + +"Nor to the Darlings about her. That's the point. At least, it's one of +the two points; and both are important. It's no more unjust for Rosie +Fay to know nothing of Elsie Darling than it is for Elsie Darling to +know nothing of Rosie Fay." + +"Oh, rot, Thor!" Claude sprang to his feet, knocking off the ash of his +cigar into the fireplace. "What do you think I'm up to?" + +"I don't know. And what I'm afraid of is that _you_ don't know." + +"If you think I mean to leave Rosie in the lurch--" + +"I don't think you _mean_ it--no!" + +"Then, if you think I'd do it--" + +"The surest way not to do it is to--do the other thing." + +"I'll do the other thing when I'm ready--not before." + +"Humph! That's just what I thought would happen." + +"And this is just what _I_ thought would happen--that because you'd put +up that confounded money you'd try to make me feel I was bought. Well, +I'm not bought. See? Rather than be bribed into doing what I mean to do +anyhow I'll not do it at all." + +"Oh, if you mean to do it _anyhow_--" + +Claude rounded on his brother indignantly. "Say, Thor, do you think I'm +going to be a damn scoundrel?" + +"Do you think you'd be a damn scoundrel if you didn't put it through?" + +"I should be worse. Even a damn scoundrel can be called a man, and I +should have forfeited the name. There! Does that satisfy you?" + +"Up to a point--yes." + +Claude sniffed. "You're such a queer chap, Thor, that if I've satisfied +you up to a point I ought to be content." + +"Oh, I'm all right, Claude. I only hoped that you'd be able to go on +with it for some better reason than just--just not to be a scoundrel." + +"Good Lord, old chap! I'm crazy about it. If Rosie wouldn't hum and haw +I'd be the happiest man alive." + +"Oh? So Rosie hums and haws, does she? What about?" + +"About that confounded family of hers. Must do this for the father, and +that for the mother, and something else for the beastly cub that's in +jail. You can see the position that puts me in." + +"But if you're really in love with her--" + +"I'm really in love with _her_, I'm not with them. I never pretended to +be. But if I have to marry the bunch, the cub and all--" + +Thor couldn't help thinking of the opening he would have had here for +his own favorite kinds of activity. "Then that'll give you a chance to +help them." + +"Not so stuck on helping people as you, old chap. Want help myself." + +"But you've got help, whereas they've got no one. You'll be a godsend to +them." + +"That's just what I'm afraid of. Who wants to be a godsend to people?" + +"I should think any one would." + +"If I'm a godsend to them, it shows what _they_ must be." + +"Mustn't undervalue yourself. Besides, you knew what they were when you +began--" + +"Oh, hang it all, Thor! I didn't begin. It--it happened." + +Thor's eyes followed his brother as the latter began moving restlessly +about the room. "Well, you're glad it happened, aren't you?" + +Claude stopped abruptly. "Of course I am. But what stumps me is why you +should be. See here; would you be as keen on it if I were going to marry +some one else?" + +Before so leading a question Thor had to choose his words. "I'd be just +as keen on it; only if you were going to marry some one else, some one +in circumstances more like your own, you wouldn't require so much of +my--of my sympathy." + +"Well, it beats me," Claude admitted, starting for the door. "I know +you're a good chap at heart--top-hole, of course!--but I shouldn't have +supposed you were as good as all that. I'll be darned if I should!" + +Thor thought it best not to inquire too precisely into the suggestions +implied by "all that," contenting himself with asking, "When may I tell +Lois?" + +Claude answered over his shoulder as he passed into the hall. "Tell her +myself--perhaps now." + +He joined his sister-in-law in the drawing-room, though he didn't tell +her. He was on the point of doing so once or twice, but sheered off to +something else. + +"Awful queer fellow, Thor. Can _you_ make him out?" + +Lois was doing something with white silk or thread which she hooked in +and out with a crocheting implement. The action, as she held the work +up, showed the beauty of her hands. On her lips there was a dim, happy +smile. "Making Thor out is a good deal like reading in a language you're +just beginning to learn; you only see some of the beauties yet--but you +know you'll find plenty more when you get on a bit. In the mean while +the idioms may bother you." + +Claude, who was leaning forward limply, his elbows on his knees, made a +circular, protesting movement of his neck and head, as though his collar +fitted him uncomfortably. "Well, he's all Greek to me." + +"But they say Greek richly repays those who study it." + +"Humph! 'Fraid I'm not built that way. Do you know why he's got such a +bee in his bonnet about--?" + +He was going to say, in order to lead up to his announcement, "about +Fay, the gardener"; but he couldn't. The words wouldn't come out. The +prospect of telling any one that he was going to marry little Rosie Fay +terrified him. He hardly understood now how he could have told his +father and mother. He would never have done it if Thor hadn't been +behind him. As it was, both his parents were so discreet concerning his +confidence that neither had mentioned it since that night--which made +his situation endurable. So he changed the form of his question to--"bee +in his bonnet about--helping people?" + +"Oh, it isn't a bee in his bonnet. It's just--himself. He can't do +anything else." + +He said, moodily, "Perhaps he doesn't help them as much as he thinks." + +"He doesn't--as much as he wants to. I know that." + +"Well, why not?" + +She dropped her work to her lap and looked vaguely toward the dying +fire. Her air was that of a person who had already considered the +question, though to little purpose. "I don't know. Sometimes I think he +doesn't go the right way to work. And yet it can hardly be that. +Certainly no one could go to work with a better heart." + +Claude was referring inwardly to Rosie's five thousand a year, and +perceiving that it created as many difficulties as it did away with, +when he said, "Thinks everything a matter of dollars and cents." + +She received this pensively. "Perhaps." + + * * * * * + +And yet Thor's warning sent Claude to see Rosie on the following +afternoon. It was not his regular day for coming, so that his appearance +was a matter of happy terror tempered only by the fact that he caught +her in her working-dress. His regular days were those on which Jasper +Fay took his garden-truck to town. Fay rarely returned then before six +or seven, so that with the early twilights there was time for an +enchanted hour in the gloaming. The gloaming and the blossoms and the +languorous heat and the heavy scents continued to act on Claude's senses +as a love-philter might in his veins. + +It was the kind of meeting to be clandestine. Secrecy was a necessary +ingredient in its deliciousness. The charm of the whole relation was in +its being kept _sub rosa_. _Sub rosa_ was the term. It should remain +under the rose where it had had its origin. It should be a stolen bliss +in a man's life and not a daily staple. That was something Thor would +never understand, that a man's life needed a stolen bliss to give it +piquancy. There was a kind of bliss which when it ceased to be hidden +ceased to be exquisite. Mysteries were seductive because they were +mysteries, not because they were proclaimed and expounded in the +market-place. Rosie in her working-dress among the fern-trees and the +great white Easter lilies was Rosie as a mystery, as a bliss. It was the +pity of pities that she couldn't be left so, where she belonged--in the +state in which she met so beautifully all the requirements of taste. To +drag her out, and put her into spheres she wasn't meant for, and endow +her with five thousand dollars a year, was like exposing a mermaid, the +glory of her own element, by pulling her from the water. + +He grew conscious of this, as he always did the minute they touched on +the practical. In general he avoided the practical in order to keep +within the range of topics of which his love was not afraid. But at +times it was necessary to speak of the future, and when they did the +poor mermaid showed her fins and tail. She could neither walk nor dance +nor fly; she could only flounder. There was no denying the fact that +poor little Rosie floundered. She floundered because she was obliged to +deal with life on a scale of which she had no experience, but as to +which Claude had keenly developed social sensibilities. Not that she was +pretentious; she was only what he called pathetic, with a pathos that +would have made him grieve for her if he hadn't been grieving for +himself. + +He had asked her idea of their married life, since she had again +expressed her inability to fall in with his. "Oh, Rosie, let us go and +live in Paris!" he had exclaimed, to which she had replied, as she had +replied so many times already: "Claude, darling, how _can_ I? How can I +leave them, when they've no one else?" + +"Then if we get married, what do you propose that we should do?" + +He had never come to anything so bluntly definite before. With that +common sense of hers which was always looking for openings that would +lead to common-sense results, Rosie took it as an opportunity. She +showed that she had given some attention to the matter, though she +expressed herself with hesitation. They were sitting in the most +embowered recess the hothouse could afford--in a little shrine she kept +free, yet secret, for the purpose of their meetings. She let him hold +both her hands, though her face and most of her person were averted from +him as she spoke. She spoke with an anxiety to let him see that in +marrying her he wouldn't be letting himself down too low. + +"There's that little house in Schoolhouse Lane," she faltered. "The +Lippitts used to live in it." + +"Well?" + +"If we lived there, I could manage--with a girl." She brought out the +subordinate clause with some confusion, for the keeping of "a girl" was +an ambition to which it was not quite easy to aspire. She thought it +best, however, to be bold, and stammered on, "We could get one for about +four a week." + +He let her go on. + +"And if we lived in the Lippitt house I could slip across our own yard, +and across Mrs. Willert's yard--she wouldn't mind!--and keep an eye on +things here. Mother's ever so much better. She's taking hold again--" + +"Then why couldn't we go and settle in Paris?" + +"Because--don't you see, Claude?--that's not the only thing. There's +father and Matt and the business. I must be on hand to--to prop them up. +If I were to go, everything would come down with a crash--even if your +father didn't make any more trouble about the lease. I suppose if we +were married he wouldn't do _that_?" + +Though he kept silence, his nervous, fastidious, super-fine soul was +screaming. Why couldn't he have been allowed to keep the poignant joy of +touching her, of breathing her acrid, earthy atmosphere, of kissing her +lips and her eyelids, to himself? It was an intoxication--but no one +wanted intoxication all the time. It was curious that a life in this +delirious state should be forced on him by the brother who wished him +well. It was still more curious that he should feel obliged to force it +on himself in order not to be a cad. + +He didn't despise Rosie for the poverty of her ideals. On the contrary, +her ideals were exactly suited to the little rustic thing she was. If he +could have been Strephon to her Chloe it would have been perfect. But he +couldn't be Strephon; he could be nothing but a neurotic +twentieth-century youth, sensitive to such amenities and refinements as +he had, and eager to get more. He was the type to go sporting with +Amaryllis in the shade--but the shade was what made the exercise +enchanting. + +His obscure rebellion against the power that forced him to drag his love +out into the light impelled him to say, without quite knowing why, "Did +Thor ever speak of you and me being married?" + +Because he was pressing her to him so closely he felt the shudder that +ran through her frame. It seemed to run through his own as he waited for +her reply. + +"No." + +Rosie never told a lie unless she thought she was obliged to. She +thought it now because of Claude's jealousy. She had seen flashes of it +more than once, and always at some mention of his brother. She was +terror-stricken as she felt his arm relax its embrace--terror-stricken +lest Thor should have already given the information that would prove she +was lying. She asked, trembling, "Did he ever say he had?" + +"Do you think he'd say it, if he hadn't?" + +"N-no; I don't suppose so." + +"Then why should you ask me that?" + +She surprised him by bursting into tears. "Oh, Claude, don't be cross +with me. Don't say what you said the last time you were cross--that +you'd go away and never come back again. If you did that I should die. I +couldn't live. I should kill myself." + +There followed one of the scenes of soothing in which Claude was +specially adept, and which he specially enjoyed. The pleasure was so +exquisite that he prolonged it, so that by the time he emerged from the +hothouse Jasper Fay was standing in the yard. + +As the old man's back was turned, Claude endeavored to slip by, +unobserved and silent. He succeeded in the silence, but not in being +unobserved. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the dim figure dogging +him as it had dogged him on a former occasion, with the bizarre, +sinister suggestion of a beast about to spring. + +Claude could afford to smile at so absurd an idea in connection with +poor old Fay, but his nerves were shaken by certain passionate, +desperate utterances he had just heard from Rosie. She was in general so +prudent, so self-controlled, that he had hardly expected to see her give +way either in weeping or in words. She had broken down in both respects, +while his nature was so responsive that he felt as if he had broken down +himself. In the way of emotions it had been delicious, wonderful. It was +a revelation of the degree to which the little creature loved him. It +was a sensation in itself to be loved like that. It struck him as a +strange, new discovery that in such a love there was a value not to be +reckoned by money or measured by social refinements. New, strange +harmonies swept through the aeolian harp of his being--harmonies both +tragic and exultant by which he felt himself subdued. It came to him +conclusively that if in marrying Rosie there would be many things to +forego, there would at least be compensation. + +And yet he shivered at the stealthy creeping behind him of the shadowy +old man, by whom he felt instinctively that he was hated. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +Claude found it a vivid and curious contrast to dine that evening with +the Darlings and their sophisticated friends. The friends were even more +sophisticated than Claude himself, since they had more money, had +traveled more, and in general lived in a broader world. But Claude knew +that it was in him to reach their standards and go beyond them. All he +needed was the opportunity; and opportunity to a handsome young American +of good antecedents like himself is rarely wanting. He never took in +that fact so clearly as on this night. + +He was glad that he had not been placed next to Elsie at table, for the +reason that he felt some treachery to Rosie in his being there at all. +Conversely, in the light of Thor's judgment, he felt some treachery to +Elsie that he should come to her with Rosie's kisses on his lips. Not +that he owed her any explanations--from one point of view. Considering +the broad latitude of approach and withdrawal allowed to American young +people, and the possibility of playing fast and loose with some amount +of mutual comprehension, he owed her no explanations whatever; but the +fact remained that she was expressing a measure of willingness to be +Juliet to his Romeo in braving the mute antagonism that existed between +their respective families. As far as that went, he knew he was unwelcome +to the Darlings; but he knew, too, that Elsie's favor carried over her +parents' heads the point of his coming and going. It was conceivable +that she might carry over their heads a point more important still if he +were to urge her. + +To the Claude who was it seemed lamentable that he couldn't urge her; +but to the Claude who might be there were higher things than the +gratification of fastidious social tastes, and for the moment that +Claude had some hope of the ascendant. It was that Claude who spoke +when, after dinner, the men had rejoined the ladies. + +"Your mother doesn't like my coming here." + +Elsie threw him one of her frank, flying glances. "Well, she's asked +you, hasn't she?" + +He smiled. "She only asked me at the last minute. I can see some other +fellow must have dropped out." + +"You can see it because it's a dinner-party of elderly people to which +you naturally wouldn't be invited unless there had been the place to +fill. That constantly happens when people entertain as much as we do. +But it isn't a slight to be asked to come to the rescue. It's a +compliment. You never ask people to do that unless you count them as +real friends." + +He insisted on his point. "I don't suppose it was her idea." + +"You mean it was mine; but even if it was, it comes to the same thing. +She asked you. She needn't have done it." + +He still insisted. "She did it, but she didn't want to." He added, +lowering his voice significantly, "And she was right." + +He forced himself to return her gaze, which rested on him with unabashed +inquiry. Everything about her was unabashed. She was free from the +conventional manners of maidendom, not as one who has been emancipated +from them, but as one who has never had them. She might have belonged to +a generation that had outgrown the need for them, as perhaps she did. +Shyness, coyness, and emphasized reserve formed no part of her +equipment; but, on the other hand, she was clear--clear with a kind of +crystalline clearness, in eyes, in complexion, and in the staccato +quality of her voice. + +"She's right--how?" + +"Right--because I oughtn't to come. I'm--I'm not free to come." + +"Do you mean--?" She paused, not because she was embarrassed, but only +to find the right words. She kept her eyes on his with a candor he could +do nothing but reciprocate. "Do you mean that you're bound--elsewhere?" + +He nodded. "That's it." + +"Oh!" She withdrew her eyes at last, letting her gaze wander vaguely +over the music-room, about which the other guests were seated. They were +lined on gilded settees against the white French-paneled walls, while a +young man played Chopin's Ballade in A flat on a grand piano in the far +corner. Not being in the music-room itself, but in the large, square +hall outside, the two young people could talk in low tones without +disturbing the company. If she betrayed emotion it was only in the +nervousness with which she tapped her closed fan against the palm of her +left hand. Her eyes came back to his face. "I'm glad you've told me." + +He took a virtuous tone. "I think those things ought to be--to be open +and aboveboard." + +"Oh, of course. The wonder is that I shouldn't have heard it. One +generally does." + +"Oh, well, you wouldn't in this case." + +"Isn't it anybody--about here?" + +"It's some one about here, but not any one you would have heard of. She +lives in our village. She's the daughter of a--well, of a +market-gardener." + +"How interesting! And you're in love with her?" But because of what she +saw in his face she went on quickly: "No; I won't ask you that. Don't +answer. Of course you're in love with her. _I_ think it's splendid--a +man with your"--chances was the word that suggested itself, but she made +it future--"a man with your future to fall in love with a girl like +that." + +There was a bright glow in her face to which he tried to respond. He +said that which, owing to its implications, he could not have said to +any other girl in the world, but could say to her because of her +twentieth-century freedom from the artificial. "Now you see why I +shouldn't come." + +She gave a little assenting nod. "Yes; perhaps you'd better not--for a +while--not quite so often, at any rate. By and by, I dare say, we shall +get everything on another--another basis--and then--" + +She rose, so that he followed her example; but he shook his head. "No, +we sha'n't. There won't be any other basis." + +She took this with her usual sincerity. "Well, perhaps not. I don't +suppose we can really tell yet. We must just--see. When he stops," she +added, with scarcely a change of tone, as she moved away from him, "do +go over and talk to Mrs. Boyce. She likes attentions from young men." + +What Claude chiefly retained of his brief conversation was the approval +in the words, "_I_ think it's splendid." He thought it splendid himself. +He felt positive now that if he had pressed his suit--if he had been +free to press it--he might one day have been treading this polished +floor not as guest, but as master. There were no difficulties in the way +that couldn't easily be overcome, if he and Elsie had been of a mind to +do it--and she would have a good fifty thousand a year! Yes, it was +splendid; there was no other word for it. He was giving up this +brilliant future for the sake of little Rosie Fay--and counting the +world well lost. + + * * * * * + +The sense of self-approval was so strong in him that as he traveled +homeward he felt the great moment to have come. He must keep his word; +he must be a gentleman. He was flattered by the glimpse he had got of +Elsie Darling's heart; and yet the fact that she might have come to love +him acted on him as an incentive, rather than the contrary, to carrying +out his plans. She would see him in a finer, nobler light. As long as +she lived, and even when she had married some one else, she would keep +her dream of him as the magnificently romantic chap who could love a +village maid and be true to her. + +And he did love a village maid! He knew that now by certain infallible +signs. He knew it by the very meagerness of his regret in giving up +Elsie Darling and all that the winning of her would have implied. He +knew it by the way he thrilled when he thought of Rosie's body trembling +against his, as it had trembled that afternoon. He knew it by the wild +tingle of his nerves when she shuddered at the name of Thor. That is, he +thought she had shuddered; but of course she hadn't! What had she to +shudder at? He was brought up against that question every time the +unreasoning fear of Thor possessed him. He knew the fear to be +unreasoning. However possible it might be to suspect Rosie--and a man +was always ready to suspect the woman he loved!--to suspect Thor was +absurd. If in the matter of Rosie's dowry Thor was "acting queerly," +there was an explanation of that queerness which would do him credit. Of +that no one who knew Thor could have any question and at the same time +keep his common sense. Claude couldn't deny that he was jealous; but +when he came to analyze his passion in that respect he found it nothing +but a dread lest his own supineness might allow Rosie to be snatched +away from him. He had been dilly-dallying over what he should have +clinched. He had been afraid of the sacrifice he would be compelled to +make, without realizing, as he realized to-night, that Rosie would be +worth it. No later than to-morrow he would buy a license and a +wedding-ring, and, if possible, marry her in the evening. Before the +fact accomplished difficulties--and God knew there were a lot of +them!--would smooth themselves away. + +As he left the tram-car at the village terminus he was too excited to go +home at once, so he passed his own gate and went on toward Thor's. It +was not yet late. He could hear Thor's voice reading aloud as the maid +admitted him, and could follow the words while he took off his overcoat +and silk hat and laid them carefully on one of the tapestried chairs. He +still followed them as he straightened his cravat before the glass, +pulled down his white waistcoat, and smoothed his hair. + +"'Christ's mission, therefore,'" Thor read on, "'was not to relieve +poverty, but to do away with it. It was to do away with it not by +abolition, but by evolution. It is clear that to Christ poverty was not +a disease, but a symptom--a symptom of a sick body politic. To suppress +the symptom without undertaking the cure of the whole body would have +been false to the thoroughness of His methods.'" + +Claude appeared on the threshold. Lois smiled. Thor looked up. + +"Hello, Claude! Come in. Just wait a minute. Reading Vibart's _Christ +and Poverty_. Only a few lines more to the end of the chapter. 'To the +teaching of Christ,'" Thor continued, "'belongs the discovery that the +causes of poverty are economic only in the second place, and moral in +the first. Economic conditions are shifting, changing vitally within the +space of a generation. Nothing is permanent but the moral, as nothing is +effectual. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with +all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself; on +these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. On these two +commandments hangs also the solution of the problems of poverty, seeing +that a race that obeys them finds no such problems confronting it. In +proportion to the spread of moral obedience these problems tend to +disappear. They were never so near to disappearing as now, when the +moral sense has become alive to them.'" + +Claude smoked a cigar while they sat and talked. It was talk in which he +personally took little share, but from which he sought to learn whether +or not Thor was satisfied with what he had done. If there was any +_arriere pensee_, he thought he might detect it by looking on. It was a +pleasant scene, Lois with her sewing, Thor with his book. The library +had the characteristic of American libraries in general, of being the +most cheerful room in the house. + +"What I complain of in all this," Thor said, tossing the book on the +table, "is the intermediary suffering. It does no good to the starving +of to-day to know that in another thousand years men will have so +grasped the principles of Christ that want will be abolished." + +Lois smiled over her sewing. "You might as well say that it does no good +to the people who have to walk to-day, or travel by trains and motors, +to know that in a hundred years the common method of getting about will +probably be by flying. This writer lays it down as a principle that +there's a rate for human progress, and that it's no use expecting man to +get on faster than he has the power to go." + +"I don't expect him to get on faster than he has the power to go. I only +want him to go faster than he's going." + +"Haven't you seen others, who wanted the same thing, dragging people off +their feet, with the result that legs or necks were broken?" + +"That's absurd, of course; but between that and quickening the stride +there's a difference." + +"Exactly; which is what Vibart says. His whole argument is that if you +want to do away with poverty you must begin at the beginning, and +neither in the middle nor at the end. People used to begin at the end +when they imagined the difficulty to be met by temporarily supplying +wants. Now they're beginning in the middle by looking for social and +economic readjustments which won't be effective for more than a few +years at a time. To begin at the beginning, as I understand him to say, +they must get at themselves with a new point of view, and a new line of +action toward one another. They must try the Christian method which they +never _have_ tried, or put up with poverty and other inequalities. It's +futile to expect to do away with them by the means they're using now; +and that," she added, in defense of the author she was endeavoring to +sum up, "seems to me perfectly true." + +Without following the line of argument, in which he took no interest, +Claude spoke out of his knowledge of his brother. "Trouble with Thor is +that he's in too much of a hurry. Won't let anything take its own pace." + +This was so like a paraphrase in Claude's language of Uncle Sim's +pietistic ditty that Thor winced. "Take its own pace--and stop still," +he said, scornfully. + +"And then," Lois resumed, tranquilly, "you've got to remember that +Vibart has a spiritual as well as a historical line of argument. The +evolution of the human race isn't merely a matter of following out +certain principles; it depends on the degree of its conscious +association with divine energy. Isn't that what he says? The closer the +association the faster the progress. Where there's no such association +progress is clogged or stopped. You remember, Thor. It's in the chapter, +'Fellow-workers with God.'" + +"I couldn't make it out," Thor said, with some impatience. +"'Fellow-workers with God!' I don't see what that means." + +"Then, until you do see--" + +Apparently she thought better of what she was about to say, and +suppressed it. The conversation drifted to cognate subjects, while +Claude became merely an observer. He wanted to be perfectly convinced +that Thor was happy. That Lois was happy he could see. Happiness was +apparent in every look and line of her features and every movement of +her person. She was like another woman. All that used to seem wistful in +her and unfulfilled had resolved itself into radiant contentment. +According to Claude, you could see it with half an eye. She had gained +in authority and looks, while she had developed a power of holding her +own against her husband that would probably do him good. + +As to Thor he was less sure. He looked older than one might have +expected him to look. There was an expression in his face that was +hardly to be explained by marriage and a two months' visit to Europe. +Claude was not analytical, but he found himself saying, "Looks like a +chap who'd been through something. What?" Being "through something" +meant more than the experience incidental to a wedding and a honeymoon. +With that thought torture began to gnaw at Claude's soul again, so that +when his brother was called to the telephone to answer a lady who was +asking what her little boy should take for a certain pain, he sprang the +question on Lois: + +"What do you really think of Thor? You don't suppose he has anything on +his mind, do you?" + +Lois was startled. "Do you?" + +"I asked first." + +"Well, what made you?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Two or three things. I just wondered if you'd noticed +it." + +Her face clouded. "I haven't noticed that he had anything on his mind. I +knew already--he told me before we were married--that there was +something about which he wasn't--wasn't quite happy. I dare say you know +what it is--" + +He shook his head. + +"Don't you? Well, neither do I. He may tell me some day; and till +then--But I've thought he was better lately--more cheerful." + +"Hasn't he been cheerful?" + +"Oh yes--quite--as a rule. But of course I've seen--" + +They were interrupted by Thor's return, after which Claude took his +departure. + +He woke in the morning with a frenzy that astonished himself to put into +execution what he had resolved. With his nervous volatility he had half +expected to feel less intensely on the subject after having slept on it; +but everything that could be called desire in his nature had focused +itself now into the passion to make Rosie his own. That first!--and all +else afterward. That first!--but he could neither see beyond it nor did +he want to see. + +The excitement he had been tempted to ascribe on the previous evening to +his talk with Elsie Darling, and perhaps in some degree to a glass or +two of champagne, having become intensified, it was a proof of its being +"the real thing." He was sure now that it was not only the real thing, +but that it would be lasting. This was no spasmodic breeze through his +aeolian harp, but the breath and life of his being. He came to this +conclusion as he packed a bag that he could send for toward evening, and +made a few other preparations for a temporary absence from his father's +house. Putting one thing with another, he had reason to feel sure that +he and Rosie would be back there together before long, forgiven and +received, so that he was relieved of the necessity of taking a farewell. + +"_I_ think it's splendid," rang in his heart like a cheer. Any one would +think it splendid who knew what he was going to do--and what he was +renouncing! + +It was annoying that on reaching the spot where he took the electric car +to go to town old Jasper Fay should be waiting there. It was still more +annoying that among the other intending passengers there should be no +one whom Claude knew. To drop into conversation with a friend would have +kept Fay at a distance. Just now his appearance--neat, shabby, pathetic, +the superior workingman in his long-preserved, threadbare Sunday +clothes--introduced disturbing notes into the swelling hymeneal chant to +which Claude felt himself to be marching. There were practical reasons, +too, why he should have preferred to hold no intercourse with Fay till +after he had crossed his Rubicon. He nodded absently, therefore, and, +passing to the far end of the little straggling line, prayed that the +car would quicken its speed in coming. + +Through the tail of his eye he could see Fay detach himself from the +patient group of watchers and shamble in his direction. "What's it to be +now?" Claude said to himself, but he stood his ground. He stood his +ground without turning, or recognizing Fay's approach. He leaned +nonchalantly on his stick, looking wearily up the line for rescue, till +he heard a nervous cough. The nervous cough was followed by the words, +huskily spoken: + +"Mr. Claude!" + +He was obliged to look around. There was something about Fay that was at +once mild and hostile, truculent and apologetic. He spoke respectfully, +and yet with a kind of anger in the gleam of his starry eyes. + +"Mr. Claude, I wish you wouldn't hang round my place any more. It don't +do any one any good." Claude was weighing the advantages of avowing +himself plainly on the spot, when Fay went on, "One experience of that +kind has been about enough--in _one_ year." + +Claude's heart seemed to stop beating. "One experience of what kind?" + +"You're all Mastermans together," Fay declared, bitterly. "I don't trust +any of you. You're both your father's sons." + +"By God! I've got at it!" Claude cried to himself. Aloud he said, with +no display of emotion. "I don't understand you. I don't know what you +mean." + +Fay merely repeated, hoarsely, "I don't want either of you coming any +more." + +Claude took a tone he considered crafty. "Oh, come now, Mr. Fay. Even if +you don't want me, I shouldn't think you'd object to my brother Thor." + +"Your brother Thor! You've a nice brother Thor!" + +"Why, what's he done?" + +"Ask my little girl. No, you needn't ask her. She wouldn't tell you. She +won't tell me. All I know is what I've seen." + +If it hadn't been for the decencies and the people standing by, Claude +could have sprung on the old man and clutched his throat. All he could +do, however, was to say, peacefully, "And what _have_ you seen?" + +Fay looked around to assure himself that no one was within earshot. The +car was bearing down on them with a crashing buzz, so that he was +obliged to speak rapidly. "I've seen him creep into my hothouse where my +little girl was at work, under cover of the night, and I've seen him +steal away. And when I've looked in after he was gone she was crying fit +to kill herself." + +"What made you wait till he went away?" Claude asked, fiercely. "Why +didn't you go in after him and see what they were up to?" + +The old man's face expressed the helplessness of the average American +parent in conflict with a child. "Oh, she wouldn't let me. She won't +have none of my interference. She says she knows what she's about. But I +don't know what _you're_ about, Mr. Claude; and so I'm beggin' you to +keep away. No good'll come of your actions. I don't trust any Masterman +that lives." + +The car had stopped and emptied itself. The people were getting in. Fay +climbed the high steps laboriously, dropping a five-cent piece into a +slot as he rounded a little barrier. Claude sprang up after him, +dropping in a similar piece of money. Its tinkle as it fell shivered +through his nerves with the excruciating sharpness of a knife-thrust. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +Claude went on to the office as a matter of routine, but when his father +appeared he begged to be allowed to go home again. "I'm not well, +father," he complained, his pallor bearing out his statement. + +Masterman's expression was compassionate. He was very gentle with his +son since the latter had been going so often to the Darlings'. "All +right, my boy. Do go home. Better drop in on Thor. Give you something to +put you to rights." + +But Claude didn't drop in on Thor. He climbed the hill north of the +pond, taking the direction with which he was more familiar in the +gloaming. In the morning sunlight he hardly recognized his surroundings, +nor did he know where to look for Rosie at this unusual time of day. He +was about to turn into the conservatory in which he was accustomed to +find her, when an Italian with beady eyes and a knowing grin, who was +raking a bed that had been prepared for early planting, pointed to the +last hothouse in the row. Claude loathed the man for divining what he +wanted, but obeyed him. + +It was a cucumber-house. That is, where two or three months earlier +there had been lettuce there were now cucumber-vines running on lines of +twine, and already six feet high. It was like going into a vineyard, but +a vineyard closer, denser, and more regular than any that ever grew in +France. Except for one long, straight aisle no wider than the shoulders +of a man it was like a solid mass of greenery, thicker than a jungle, +and oppressive from the evenness of its altitude. Claude felt smothered, +not only by the heat, but by this compact luxuriance that dwarfed him, +and which was climbing, climbing still. It was prodigious. In its way it +was grotesque. It was like something grown by magic. But a few weeks +previous there had been nothing here but the smooth green pavement of +cheerful little plants that at a distance looked like jade or malachite. +Now, all of a sudden, as it were, there was this forest of rank verdure, +sprung with a kind of hideous rapidity, stifling, overpowering, +productive with a teeming, incredible fecundity. Low down near the earth +the full-grown fruit, green with the faintest tip of gold, hung heavy, +indolent, luscious, derisively cool to touch and taste in this +semi-tropical heat. The gherkin a few inches above it defied the eye to +detect the swelling and lengthening that were taking place as a man +looked on. Tendrils crept and curled and twisted and interlocked from +vine to vine like queer, blind, living things feeling after one another. +Pale blossoms of the very color of the sunlight made the sunlight +sunnier, while bees boomed from flower to flower, bearing the pollen +from the males, shallow, cuplike, richly stamened, to the females +growing daintily from the end of the embryo cucumber as from a pinched, +wizened stem. + +Advancing a few paces into this gigantic vinery, Claude found the one +main aisle intersected by numerous cross-aisles in any of which Rosie +might be working. He pushed his way slowly, partly because the warm air +heavy with pollen made him faint, and partly because this close pressure +of facile, triumphant nature had on his nerves a suggestion of the +menacing. On the pathway of soft, dark loam his steps fell noiselessly. + +When he came upon Rosie she was buried in the depths of an almost +imperceptible cross-aisle and at the end remote from the center. As her +back was toward him and she had not heard his approach, he watched her +for a minute in silence. His quick eye noticed that she wore a +blue-green cotton stuff, with leaf-green belt and collar, that made her +the living element of her background, and that her movements and +attitudes were of the kind to display the exquisite lines of her body. +She was picking delicately the pale little blossoms and letting them +flutter to the ground. Her way was strewn with the frail yellow things +already beginning to wither and shrivel, adding their portion of earth +unto earth, to be transmuted to life unto life with the next rotation in +planting. + +"Rosie, what are you doing?" + +He expected her to be startled, but he was not prepared for the look of +terror with which she turned. He couldn't know the degree to which all +her thoughts were concentrated on him, nor the fears by which each of +her waking minutes was accompanied. She would have been startled if he +had come at one of his customary hours toward night; but it was as death +in her heart to see him like this in the middle of the forenoon. The +emotion was the greater on both sides because the long, narrow +perspective focused the eyes of each on the face of the other, with no +possibility of misreading. Claude remained where he was. Rosie clung for +support to the feeble aid of the nearest vine. + +She began to speak rapidly, not because she thought he wanted his +question answered, but because it gave her something to say. It was like +the effort to keep up by splashing about before going down. She was +picking off the superfluous female flowers, she said, in order that the +strength of the plant might go into the remaining ones. One had to do +that, otherwise-- + +He broke in abruptly. "Rosie, why did you tell me Thor never said +anything about you and me being married?" + +"Oh, what's he been saying?" She clasped her hands on her breast, with a +sudden beseeching alarm. + +"It's not a matter of what he's been saying. It's only a matter of what +you say. And I want you to tell me why he's paying me for marrying you." + +He spoke brutally not only because his suffering nerves made him +brutally inclined, but in the hope of wringing from her some cry of +indignation. But she only said: + +"I didn't know he was doing that." + +"But you knew he was going to do something." + +It seemed useless to poor Rosie to keep anything back now; she could +only injure her cause by hedging. "I knew he was going to do something, +but he didn't tell me what it would be." + +"And why should he do anything at all? What had it to do with him?" + +She wrung her hands. "Oh, Claude, I don't know. He came to me. He took +me--he took me by surprise. I never thought of anything like that. I +never dreamt it." + +Claude drew a bow at a venture. "You mean that you never thought of +anything like that when he said"--he was obliged to wet his lips with +his tongue before he could get the words out--"when he said he was in +love with you." + +She nodded. "And, oh, Claude, I didn't mean it. I swear to you I didn't +mean it. I knew he'd tell you. I was always afraid of him. But I just +thought it _then_--just for a minute. I couldn't have done it--" + +He had but the dimmest suspicion of what she meant, but he felt it well +to say: "You could have done it, Rosie, and you would. You're that +kind." + +She took one timid step toward him, clasping her hands more +passionately. "Oh, Claude, have mercy on me. If you knew what it is to +be me! Even if I had done it, it wouldn't have been because I loved +_you_ any the less. It would have been for father and mother and +Matt--and--and everything." + +The way in which the words rent her made him the more cruel. They made +him the more cruel because they rent him, too. "That doesn't make any +difference, Rosie. You would have done it just the same. As it is, you +were false to me--" + +"Only that once, Claude!" + +"And if you want me to have mercy on you, you'll have to tell me +everything that happened--the very worst." + +"The worst that happened was then." + +"Then? When? There were so many times." + +"But the other times he didn't say anything at all. He just came. I +never dreamt--" + +"But if you had dreamt, you would have played another sort of hand. Now, +wouldn't you?" + +"Claude, if you only knew! If you could only imagine what it is to have +nothing at all!--to have to live and fight and scrimp and save!--and no +one to help you!--and your brother in jail!--and coming out!--coming +out, Claude!--and no one to help _him_!--and everything on you--!" + +"That's got nothing to do with it, Rosie--" + +"It _has_ got something to do with it. It's got everything to do with +it. If it hadn't, do you think that I'd have said that I'd marry him?" + +Claude felt like a man who knows he's been shot, but as yet is +unconscious of the wound. He spoke quietly: "I think I wouldn't have +said that I'd marry two men at the same time, and play one off against +the other." + +There was exasperation in her voice as she cried: "But how could I help +it, Claude? Can't you _see_? It wasn't _him_." + +"Oh, I can see that well enough. But do you think it makes it any +better?" + +"It makes it better if I never would have done it unless I'd been +obliged to." + +"But you'd have _done_ it--" + +"No, Claude, I wouldn't--not when it came to the point." + +"But why didn't it come to the point? Since you told him you were +willing to marry him, why--?" + +She implored him. "Oh, what's the use of asking me that, if he's told +you already?" + +"It's this use, Rosie, that I want to hear it from yourself. You've told +me one lie--" + +"Oh, Claude!" + +"And I want to see if you'll tell me any more." + +"I didn't mean it to be a lie, Claude; but what could I say?" + +"When we don't mean a thing to be a lie, Rosie, we tell the truth." + +"But how _could_ I!" + +"Well, perhaps you couldn't; but you can now. You can tell me just what +happened--and why more didn't happen, since you were willing that it +should." + +She began with difficulty, wringing her hands. "It was last January--I +think it was January--yes, it was--one evening--I was in the other +hothouse making out bills--and he came all of a sudden--and he asked +me--he asked me--" + +"Yes, yes; go on." + +"He asked me if I loved you, and I said I did. And he asked me how much +I loved you, and I said--I said I'd die for you--and so I would, Claude. +I'd do it gladly. You can believe me or not--" + +"That's all right. What I want to know is what happened after that." + +"And then he said he'd help us. I didn't understand how he meant to help +us--and I didn't quite believe him. You see, Claude, even if he is your +brother, I never really liked him--or trusted him--not really. There was +always something about him I couldn't make out--and now I see what it +is. I knew he'd tell. And he made me promise I wouldn't." + +"He made you promise you wouldn't tell--what?" + +"What he said to me. He said he might go and marry some one else--and +then he wouldn't want what he said to me to be known, because it would +make trouble." + +"But what did he say?" + +"Don't you _know_ what he said?" + +"It doesn't matter whether I know or not, Rosie. It's for you to tell +me." + +She wrestled with herself. "Oh, Claude, I don't want to. I wish you +wouldn't make me." + +"Go on, Rosie; go on." + +"He said he was in love with me himself--and that if I hadn't been in +love with you--" + +He was able to help her out. "That he'd have married you." + +She nodded, piteously. + +"And you said--?" + +"Oh, Claude, what's the use?" She gathered her forces together. "I +didn't say anything--not then." + +"But you told him afterward that you were willing to marry _him_ whether +you were in love with me or not." + +"No; not like that. I--I really didn't say anything at all." + +"You just let him see it." + +Again she nodded. "He said it himself. He could see--he could see how I +felt--that it was like a temptation to me--that it was like bread and +water held out to a starving man." + +"That is, that the money was?" + +She beat one hand against the other as she pressed them against her +breast. "Don't you see? It had to be that way. I couldn't see all that +money come right--come right into sight--and not wish--just for that +minute--that I could have it. Could I, now?" + +"No; I don't suppose you could, Rosie--being what you are. But, you see, +I thought you were something else." + +"Oh no, Claude, you didn't. You've known all along--" + +"You mean, I thought I knew all along! But I find I didn't. I find that +you're only willing to marry me because Thor wouldn't take you." + +"He couldn't take me after I said I'd die for you. How could he?" + +"And how can I--after you've said you were willing--!" He threw out his +arms with a gesture. "Oh, Rosie, what do you think I feel?" + +She crept a little nearer. "I should think you'd feel pity, Claude." + +"So I do--for myself. One's always sorry for a fool. But you haven't +told me everything yet. You haven't told me what he said about me." + +She tried to recollect herself. "About you, Claude? Oh yes. He asked me +what our relation was to each other, and I said I didn't know. And then +he asked me if you were going to marry me, and I said I didn't know +that, either. And then he said not to be afraid, because--because--" + +"Because he'd make--" + +"No, he didn't say that. I asked him if he'd make you, and he said he +wouldn't have to, because you'd do it whether or no, or something like +that--I don't just remember what." + +"He didn't say I'd do it because he'd give me five thousand dollars a +year for the job, did he?" + +She shook her head. She began to look dazed. "No, Claude, he didn't say +anything like that at all." + +"Well, he said it to me. And he was going to do it. He thinks he's going +to do it still." + +"And isn't he?" + +"No, Rosie. I've got better fish to fry than that. If I'm for sale I +shall go high." + +"Oh, Claude, what do you mean? What are you going to do?" + +"I'll tell you, Rosie. It'll give you an idea of the chap I am--of what +I was willing to renounce for you. I was talking to a girl last night +who let me see that she was all ready to marry me. She didn't say it in +so many words, of course; but that's what it amounted to. She lives in a +big house, with ten or twelve servants, and is the only child of one of +the richest men in the city. She's what you'd call an heiress--and she's +a pretty girl, too." + +"And what did you say to her, Claude?" + +"I told her I couldn't. I told her about you." + +"About me? Oh, Claude! And what did she say?" + +"She said it was splendid for a chap with my future to fall in love with +a girl like you and be true to her. But, you see, Rosie, I thought you +were true to me." + +"Oh, but I am, Claude!" + +He laughed. "True? Why, Rosie, you don't know the meaning of the word! +When Thor whistles for you--as he will--you'll go after him like that." +He snapped his fingers. "He'll only have to name your price." + +She paid no attention to these words, nor to the insult they contained. +Her arms were crossed on her breast, her face was turned to him +earnestly. "Yes; but what about this other girl, Claude?" + +He spoke with apparent carelessness. "Oh, about her?" He nodded in the +direction of the door at the end of the hothouse and of the world that +lay beyond it. "I'm going to marry her." + +She looked puzzled. Her air was that of a person who had never heard +similar words before. "You're going to--what?" + +"I'm going to marry her, Rosie." + +For a few seconds there was no change in her attitude. She seemed to be +taking his statement in. When the meaning came to her she withdrew her +eyes from his face, and dropped her arms heavily. More seconds passed +while she stood like that, meek, crushed, sentenced, her head partially +averted, her eyes downcast. Presently she moved, but it was only to +begin again, absently, mechanically, to pick the superfluous female +blossoms from the nearest vine, letting the delicate, pale-gold things +flutter to the ground. It was long before she spoke in a childish, +unresentful voice: + +"Are you, Claude?" + +He answered, firmly, "Yes, Rosie; I am." + +She sighed. "Oh, very well." + +He could see that for the moment she had no spirit to say more. Her very +movements betrayed lassitude, dejection. Though his heart smote him, he +felt constrained to speak on his own behalf. + +"You'll remember that it wasn't my fault." + +She went on with her picking silently, but with a weary motion of the +hands. The resumption of the task compelled her to turn her back to him, +in the position in which he had found her when he arrived. + +"I'm simply doing what you would have done yourself--only Thor wouldn't +let you." + +She made no response. The picking of the blossoms took her away from +him, step by step. He made another effort to let her see things from his +point of view. + +"It wouldn't be honorable for me now, Rosie, to be paid for doing a +thing like that. It _would_ be payment to me, though he was going to +settle the money on you." + +Even this last piece of information had no effect on her; she probably +didn't understand its terms. Her fingers picked and dropped the blossoms +slowly till she reached the end of her row. + +He thought that now she would have to turn. If she turned he could +probably wring from her the word of dismissal or absolution that alone +would satisfy his conscience. He didn't know that she could slip around +the dense mass of foliage and be out of sight. When she did so, +amazement came to him slowly. + +Expecting her to reappear, he stood irresolute. He could go after her +and clasp her in his arms again--or he could steal down the narrow aisle +of greenery and pass out of her life for ever. Out of her life, she +would be out of his life--and there was much to be said in favor of +achieving that condition. There was outraged love in Claude's heart, and +also some calculation. It was not all calculation, neither was it all +outraged love. If Rosie had flung him one piteous backward look, or held +out her hands, or sobbed, he might have melted. But she did nothing. She +only disappeared. She was lying like a stricken animal behind the thick +screen of leaves, but he didn't know it. In any case, he gave her the +option of coming back. + +He gave her the option and waited. He waited in the overpowering heat, +amid the low humming of bees. The minutes passed; there was neither +sound among the vines nor footstep beside him; and so, with head bent +and eyes streaming and head aching and nerves unstrung and conscience +clamoring reproachfully, he turned and went his way. + +He surprised his father by going back to the bank. "Look here, father," +he confessed, "I'm not ill. I'm only terribly upset about--about +something. Can't you send me to New York? Isn't there any business--?" + +Masterman looked at him gravely and kindly. He divined what was +happening. "There's nothing in New York," he said, after a minute's +thinking, "but there's the Routh matter in Chicago. Why shouldn't you go +there? Mr. Wright was taking it up himself. Was leaving by the +four-o'clock train this afternoon. Go and tell him I want you to take +his place. He'll explain the thing to you and supply you with funds. +And," he added, after another minute's thought, "since you're going that +far, why shouldn't you run on to the Pacific coast? Do you good. I've +thought for some time past that you needed a little change. Take your +own time--and all the money you want." + +Claude was trying to articulate his thanks when his father cut him +short. "All right, my boy. I know how you feel. If you're going to take +the four-o'clock you've no time to lose. Good-by," he continued, holding +out his hand heartily. "Good luck. God bless you!" + +The young man got himself out of his father's room in order to keep from +bursting into tears. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +As Thor and Lois breakfasted on the following Sunday the former was too +busy with the paper to notice that his wife seemed preoccupied. He was +made to understand it by her manner of saying, "Thor." + +Dropping the paper, he gave her his attention. "Yes?" + +Her head was inclined to one side as she trifled with her toast. "You +know, Thor, that it's an old custom for newly married people to go to +church together on the first Sunday they're at home." + +"Oh, Lord!" + +She had expected the exclamation. She also expected the half-humorous, +half-repentant compliance which ensued. + +"All right, I'll go." + +It was the sort of yielding that followed on all his bits of resistance +to her wishes--a yielding on second thought--a yielding through +compunction--as though he were trying to make up to her for something he +wasn't giving her. She laughed to herself at that, seeing that he gave +her everything; but she meant that if she were not so favored she might +have harbored the suspicion that on account of something lacking in +their life he fell back on a form of reparation. As it was, she could +only ascribe his peculiarity in this respect to the kindness of a nature +that never seemed to think it could be kind enough. + +It was her turn to feel compunction. "Don't go if you'd rather not. It's +only a country custom, almost gone out of fashion nowadays." + +But he persisted. "Oh, I'll go. Must put on another suit. Top-hat, of +course." + +With a good woman's satisfaction in getting her husband to church, if +only for once, she said no more in the way of dissuasion. Besides, she +hoped that, should he go, he might "hear something" that would comfort +this hidden grief of which she no longer had a doubt, since Claude too, +was aware of it. It was curious how it betrayed itself--neither by act +nor word nor manner, nor so much as a sigh, and yet by a something +indefinable beyond all his watchfulness to conceal from her. She +couldn't guess at his trouble, even when she tried; but she tried only +from inadvertence. When she caught herself doing so she refrained, +respecting his secret till he thought it well to tell her. + +She said no more till he again dropped the paper to give his attention +to his coffee. "Have you been to see the Fays yet?" + +He put the cup down without tasting it. He sat quite upright and looked +at her strangely. He even flushed. + +"Why, no." + +The tone appealed to her ear and remained in her memory, though for the +moment she had no reason to consider it significant. She merely +answered, "I thought I might walk up the hill and see Rosie this +afternoon," leaving the subject there. + +Thor found the service novel, and impressive from its novelty. Except +for the few weddings and funerals he had attended, and the service on +the day he married Lois, he could hardly remember when he had been +present as a formal participant at a religious ceremony. He had, +therefore, no preconceived ideas concerning Christian worship, and not +much in the way of prejudice. He had dropped in occasionally on the +services of foreign cathedrals, but purely as a tourist who made no +attempt to understand what was taking place. On this particular morning, +however, the pressure of needs and emotions within his soul induced an +inquiring frame of mind. + +On reaching the pew to which Lois led him he sat down awkwardly, looking +for a place in which to bestow his top-hat without ruffling its gloss. +Lois herself fell on her knees in prayer. The act took him by surprise. +It was new to him. He was aware that she said prayers in private, and +had a vague idea of the import of the rite; but this public, unabashed +devotion gave him a little shock till he saw that others came in and +engaged in it. They entered and knelt, not in obedience to any +pre-concerted ceremony, but each on his own impulse, and rose, looking, +so it seemed to Thor, reassured and stilled. + +That was his next impression--reassurance, stillness. There was a +serenity here that he had never before had occasion to recognize as part +of life. People whom he knew in a commonplace way as this or that in the +village sat hushed, tranquil, dignified above their ordinary state, +raised to a level higher than any that could be reached by their own +attainments or personalities. It seemed to him that he had come into a +world of new standards, new values. Lois herself, as she rose from her +knees and sat beside him, gained in a quality which he had no capacity +to gauge. + +He belonged to the new scientific school which studies and co-relates, +but is chary of affirmations, and charier still of denials. "Never deny +anything--_ne niez jamais rien_"--had been one of the standing bits of +advice on the part of old Hervieu, under whom he had worked at the +Institut Pasteur. He kept himself, therefore, in a non-hostile attitude +toward all theories and systems. He had but a hazy idea as to Christian +beliefs, but he knew in a general way that they were preposterous. +Preposterous as they might be, it was his place, however, to observe +phenomena, and, now that he had an opportunity to do so, he observed +them. + +"How did you like it?" Lois ventured, timidly, as after service they +walked along County Street. + +"I liked it." + +"Why?" + +The answer astonished her. "It was big." + +"Big? How?" + +"The sweep--the ideas. So high--so universal! Makes a tremendous appeal +to--the imagination." + +She smiled toward him shyly. "It's something, isn't it, to appeal to the +imagination?" + +"Oh, lots--since imagination rules the world." + + * * * * * + +They were on their way to lunch with Thor's father and stepmother. Now +that there were two households in the family, the father insisted on a +domestic reunion once a week. It was his way of expressing paternal +forbearance under the blow Thor had dealt him in marrying Lois +Willoughby. + +"Where's Claude?" + +Thor asked the question on sitting down to table. His father looked at +his mother, who replied, with some self-consciousness: + +"He's--he's gone West." + +"West? Where?" + +"To Chicago first, isn't it, Archie?" + +Masterman admitted that it was to Chicago first, and to the Pacific +coast afterward. Thor's dismay was such that Lois looked at him in +surprise. "Why, Thor? What difference can it make to you? Claude's able +to travel alone, isn't he?" + +The efforts made by both his parents to carry off the matter lightly +convinced Thor that there was more in Claude's departure than either +business or pleasure would explain. Before Lois, who was not yet in the +family secret, he could ask no questions; but it seemed to him that both +his father and his mother had uneasiness written in their faces. He +could hardly eat. He bolted his food only to put Lois off the scent. The +old tumult in his soul which he was seeking every means to still was +beginning to break out again. If it should prove that he had given up +Rosie Fay to Claude, and that, with his parents' connivance, Claude was +trying to abandon her, then, by God.... + +But he caught Lois's eye. She was watching him, not so much in +disquietude as with faint amusement. It seemed odd to her that Claude's +going away for a holiday should vex him so. Poor Lois! He was already +afraid on her account--afraid that if Rosie Fay were left +deserted--free!--and a temptation he couldn't resist were to come to +him!--Lois would be the one to suffer most. + +By the middle of the afternoon, when his father had gone off in one +direction and Lois in another, he found an opportunity for the word with +his stepmother which he had hung about the house to get. + +"There's nothing behind this, is there?" + +She averted her head. "How do I know, Thor? _I_ had nothing to do with +it. All I know is just what happened. Claude came rushing home last +Wednesday, and said he had to go right off to Chicago on business. I +helped him pack--and he went." + +"Why didn't any one tell me?" + +"Well, you haven't been at the house. And it didn't seem important +enough--" + +"But it is important, isn't it? Doesn't father think so?" + +She tried to look at him frankly. "Your father doesn't know any more +about it than I know--and that's nothing at all. Claude came to him and +said--but I really oughtn't to tell you, Thor. Your father would be +annoyed with me." + +"Then it's something that's got to be kept from me." + +"N-no; not exactly. It's only poor Claude's secret. We didn't try to +wring it from him because--Oh, Thor, I wish you would let things take +their course. I'm sure it would be best." + +"Best to let Claude be a scoundrel?" + +"Oh, he couldn't be that. I want to be just to that girl, but we both +know that there are queer things about her. There's that man who's +giving her money--and dear knows what there may be besides. And so if +they _have_ quarreled--" + +But Thor rushed away. Having learned all he needed to know on that side, +he must hear what was to be said on the other. He had hoped never again +to be brought face to face with Rosie till she was his brother's wife. +That condition would have dug such a gulf between them that even nature +would be changed. But if she was not to be Claude's wife--if Claude was +becoming a brute to her--then she must see that at least she had a +friend. + +His heart was so hot within him as he climbed the hill that he forgot +that Lois would probably be there before him. As a matter of fact, she +was talking to Fay in a corner of the yard, standing in the shade of a +great magnolia that was a pyramid of bloom. All around it the ground was +strewn in a circle with its dead-white petals, each with its flush of +red. Near the house there were yellow clumps of forsythia, while the +hedge of bridal-veil to the south of the grass-plot seemed to have just +received a fall of snow. + +Fay confronted him as, slackening his pace, he went toward them; but +Lois turned only at his approach. Her expression was troubled. + +"Thor, I wish you'd explain to me what Mr. Fay is saying. He doesn't +want me to see Rosie." + +"Why, what's up?" + +Fay's expression told him that something serious was up, for it was +ashen. It had grown old and sunken, and the eyes had changed their +starry vagueness to a dulled animosity. + +"There's this much up, Dr. Thor," Fay said, in that tone of his which +was at once mild and hostile, "that I don't want any Masterman to have +anything to do with me or mine." + +Thor tried to control the sharpness of his cry. "Why not?" + +"You ought to know why not, Dr. Thor. And if you don't, you've only to +look at my little girl. Oh, why couldn't you leave her alone?" + +Lois spoke anxiously. "Is anything the matter with her?" + +"Only that you've killed her between you." + +Thor allowed Lois to question him. "Why, what _can_ you mean?" + +"Just what I say, ma'am--that she's done for." + +Lois grew impatient. "But I don't understand. Done for--how?" She turned +to her husband. "Oh, Thor, do see her and find out what's the matter." + +"No, ma'am," Fay said, firmly. "He's seen her once too often as it is." + +Lois repeated the words. "'Once too often as it is'! What does that +mean?" + +"Better ask _him_, ma'am." + +"It's no use asking me," Thor declared, "for I've not the slightest idea +of what you're driving at." + +"Oh, I know you can play the innocent, Dr. Thor; but it's no use keeping +up the game. You took me in at first; you took me in right along. You +were going to be a friend to me!--and buy the place!--and keep me in it +to work it!--and every sort of palaver like that!--when you was only +after my little girl." + +Thor was dumb. It was Lois who protested. "Oh, Mr. Fay, how can you say +such things? It's wicked." + +"It may be wicked, all right, ma'am; but ask _him_ how I can say them. +All I know is what I've seen. If you was going to marry this lady," he +went on, turning again to Thor, "why couldn't you have kept away from my +little girl? You didn't do yourself any good, and you did her a lot of +harm." + +It was to come to Thor's aid as he stood speechless that Lois said, +soothingly: "But I had nothing to do with that, Mr. Fay. I never wanted +anything of Rosie but to be her friend." + +"You, ma'am? You're all of a piece. You're all Mastermans together. What +had you to do with being a friend to her?--getting her to call!--and +have tea!--and putting notions into her head! The rich and the poor +can't be friends any longer. If the poor think they can, the more fool +they! We've _been_ fools in my family, thinking because we were +Americans we had rights. There's no rights any more, except the right of +the strong to trample on the weak--till some one tramples on _them_. And +some one always does. There's that. We're down to-day, but you'll be +down to-morrow. Don't forget it, ma'am. America has that kind of justice +when it hasn't any other--that it makes everybody take their turn. It's +ours now; but you'll get yours as sure as life is life." + +Lois looked at Thor. "Can you make out what he means?" + +"I can make out that he's very much mistaken--" + +"Mistaken, Dr. Thor? I don't see how you can say that. I wasn't mistaken +the night I saw you creeping into that hothouse over there, where you +knew my little girl was at work. I wasn't mistaken when I saw you creep +away. Still less was I mistaken when I stole in after you had gone, and +found her with her arms on the desk, and her head bowed down on them, +and she crying fit to kill herself. That was just a few days before she +heard you was going to marry this lady--and she's never been the same +child since. Always troubled--always something on her mind. Not once +since that night have you darkened these doors, though you'd had a +patient here. Have you, now?" + +"I didn't come," Thor stammered, "because Dr. Hilary had done all that +was necessary for Mrs. Fay, and--and I've been away." + +"But if you didn't come," Fay went on, with the mildness that was more +forcible than wrath, "some one else did. You'd left a good substitute. +He's finished the work that you began. He was here with her an hour last +Wednesday morning--just after I'd warned him off for good and all." + +Thor started. "Let me go to her." + +But Fay stood in his way. "No, sir. To see you would be the finishing +touch. She can't hear your name without a shiver going through her from +head to foot. We've tried it on her. Between the two of you--your +brother and you--it's you she's most afraid of." There was silence for a +second, while he turned his gray face first to the one and then to the +other of his two listeners. "Why couldn't you all have let her be? What +were you after? What have you got out of it? _I_ can't see." + +"Fay, I swear to you that we never wanted anything but her good," Thor +cried, with a passion that made Lois turn her troubled eyes on him +searchingly. "If my brother hasn't told you what he meant, I'll do it +now. He wanted to marry Rosie. He _was_ to have married her. If there's +trouble between them, it's all a mistake. Just let me see her--" + +But Fay dismissed this as idle talk. "No, Dr Thor. Stories of that kind +don't do any good. Your brother never wanted to marry her, or meant to, +either--not any more than you. What you did want and what you did mean +God only knows. It's mystery to me. But what isn't mystery to me is that +we're all done for. Now that she's gone, we're all gone--the lot of us. +I've kept up till now--" + +"If money will do any good, Fay--" Thor began, with a catch in his +voice. + +"No, Dr. Thor; not now. Money might have helped us once, but I ain't +going to take a price for my little girl's unhappiness." + +"But what _would_ do good, Mr. Fay?" Lois asked. "If you'd only tell +us--" + +"Then, ma'am, I will. It's to let us be. Don't come near me nor mine any +more--none o' you." + +She turned to Thor. "Thor, is it true that Claude wanted to marry Rosie? +I've never heard of it." + +"Oh yes, ma'am, you have," Fay broke in, with irony. "We've all heard of +that kind o' marriage. It's as old as men and women on the earth. But it +don't go down with me; and if I find that my little girl has been taken +in by it, then I sha'n't be to blame if--if some one gets what he +deserves." + +The words were uttered in tones so mild that, as he shuffled away, +leaving them staring at each other, they scarcely knew that there had +been a threat in them. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +It was an incoherent tale that Thor stammered out to Lois as he and she +walked homeward. By trying to tell Claude's story without including his +own he was, for the first time since the days of school-boy escapades, +making a deliberate attempt at prevarication. He suppressed certain +facts, and over-emphasized others. He did it with a sense of humiliation +which became acute when he began to suspect that he was not deceiving +her. She walked on, saying nothing at all. Now and then, when he +ventured to glance at her in profile, she turned to give him a sick, sad +smile that seemed to draw its sweetness from the futility of his +efforts. "My God, she knows!" were the words actually in his mind while +he went floundering on with the explanation of why he couldn't allow +Claude to be a cad. + +And yet, except for those smiles of an elusiveness beyond him, she +betrayed no hint of being stricken in the way he was afraid of. On the +contrary, she seemed, when she spoke, to be giving her mind entirely to +the course of Claude's romance. "He won't marry her. He'll marry Elsie +Darling." + +An hour ago the assertion would have angered him. Now he was relieved +that she had the spirit to make it at all. He endeavored to imitate her +tone. "What makes you think so?" + +"I know Claude. She's the sort of girl for him to marry. There's good in +him, and she'll bring it out." + +"Unfortunately, it's too late to think of Claude's good when he's +pledged to some one else." + +"Would you make him marry her?" + +"I'd make him do his duty." + +She gave him another of those faint smiles of which the real meaning +baffled him. "I wouldn't lay too much stress on that, if I were you. To +marry for the sake of doing one's duty is"--she faltered an instant, but +recovered herself--"is as likely as not to defeat its own ends." + +He was afraid to pursue the topic lest she should speak more plainly. On +arriving home he was glad to see her go to her room and shut the door. +It grieved him to think that she might be brooding in silence, but even +that was better than speech. As Uncle Sim and Cousin Amy Dawes were +coming to Sunday-night supper, the evening would be safe; and to avoid +being face to face with her in the meanwhile he went out again. + + * * * * * + +Having passed an hour in his office, he strolled up into the wood above +the village, his refuge from boyhood onward in any hour of trouble. +There was space here, and air, and solitude. It was a diversion that was +almost a form of consolation to be in touch with the wood's teeming +life. Moreover, the trees, with their stately aloofness from mortal +cares, their strifelessness and strength, shed on him a kind of +benediction. From long association, from days of bird's-nesting in +spring, and camping in summer, and nutting in autumn, and snow-shoeing +in winter, he knew them almost as individual personalities--the great +white oaks, the paper birches, the white pines with knots that were +masses of dry resin, the Canada balsams with odorous boughs, the +sugar-maples, the silver maples, the beeches, the junipers, the +hemlocks, the hackmatacks, with the low-growing hickories, witch-hazels, +and slippery-elms. Their green was the green of early May--yellow-green, +red-green, bronze-green, brown-green, but nowhere as yet the full, rich +hue of summer. Here and there a choke-cherry in full bloom swayed and +shivered like a wraith. In shady places the ferns were unfolding in +company with Solomon's-seal, wake-robin, the lady's-slipper, and the +painted trillium. There was an abundance of yellow--cinquefoil, +crowfoot, ragwort, bellwort, and shy patches of gold-colored violets. + +In the sloping outskirts of the wood he stood still and breathed deeply, +a portion of his cares and difficulties slipping from his shoulders. +Somewhere within him was the sense of kinship with the wilderness that +has become atavistic in Americans of six or eight generations on the +soil. It was like skipping two centuries and getting back where life was +primitive from necessity. There were few if any complications here, nor +were there subtleties to consider. As far back as he knew anything of +his Thorley ancestors, they had hewed and hacked and delved and tilled +on and about this hillside, getting their changes from its seasons, +their food from its products, their science from its bird-life and +beast-life, their arts and their simples, their dyes and their drinks +from its roots and juices. To the extent that men and the primeval could +be one, they had been one with the forest of which nothing but this +upland sweep remained, treating it as both friend and enemy. As enemy +they had felled it; as friend they had lived its life and loved it, +transmitting their love to this son, who was now bringing his +heartaches, as he was accustomed also to bring his joys, where they had +brought their own. + +The advantage of the wood to Thor was that once within its shadows he +could, to some degree, stop thinking of the life outside. He could give +his first attention to the sounds and phenomena about him. As he stood +now, listening to the resonant tapping of a hairy woodpecker on a dead +tree-trunk he could forget that the world held a Lois, a Rosie, and a +Claude, each a storm-center of emotions. It was a respite from +emotions--in a measure, a respite from himself. He stepped craftily, +following the sound of the woodpecker's tap till he had the satisfaction +of seeing a black-and-white back, with a red band across the busily +bobbing head. He stopped again to watch a chipmunk who was more sharply +watching him. The little fellow, red-brown and striped, sat cocked on a +stone, his fore paws crossed on his white breast like the hands of a +meek saint at prayer. Strolling on again, he paused from time to +time--to listen to a robin singing right overhead, or to catch the +liquid, spiritual chant of a hermit-thrush in some stiller thicket of +the wood, or to watch a bluebird fly directly into its nest, probably an +abandoned woodpecker's hole, in a decaying Norway pine. These small +happenings soothed him. Sauntering and pausing, he came up to the high, +treeless ridge he had last visited on the day he asked Lois to marry +him. + +The ridge broke sharply downward to a stretch of undulating farms. +Patches of green meadowland were interspersed with the broad, red fields +in which as yet nothing had begun to grow. Had it not been Sunday the +farmers would have been at work, plowing, sowing, harrowing. As it was, +the landscape enjoyed a rich Sabbath peace, broken only by the swooping +of birds, out of the invisible, across the line of sight, and on into +the invisible again. It was all beauty and promise of beauty, wealth and +promise of wealth. The cherry-trees were in bloom; the pear and the +apple and the quince would follow soon. Above the farm-houses tall elms +rose, fan-shaped and garlanded. + +The very charm of the prospect called up those questions he had been +trying for a minute to shelve. How was it that in a land of milk and +honey men were finding it so hard to live? How was it that with +conditions in which every man might have enough and to spare, making it +his aim to see that his fellow had the same, there could be greed and +ingenious oppression and social crime, with the menace of things graver +still? What's the matter with us? he asked, helplessly. Was it something +wrong with the American people? or was it something wrong with the whole +human race? or was it a condition of permanent strife that the human +race could never escape from? Was man a being capable of high spiritual +attainment, as he had heard in the church that morning? or was he no +better than the ruthless creatures of the woodland, where the weasel +preyed on the chipmunk, and the owl on the mouse, and the fox on the +rabbit, and the shrike on the ph[oe]be, and the ph[oe]be on the insect, +in an endless round of ferocity? Had man emerged above this estate? or +was it as foolish to expect him to spare his brother-man as to ask a +hawk to spare a hen? + +These questions bore on Thor's immediate thoughts and conduct. They bore +on his relations with his father and Claude and Lois. Through the social +web in which he found himself involved they bore on Rosie Fay; and from +the social web they worked out to the great national ideals in which he +longed to see his native land a sanctuary for mankind. But could man +build a sanctuary? Would he know how to make use of one? Or was he, Thor +Masterman, but repeating the error of that great-grandfather who had +turned to America for the salvation of the race, and died broken-hearted +because its people were only looking out for number one? + +Because he couldn't find answers to these questions for himself, he +tried, during supper, to sound Uncle Sim, leading up to the subject by +an adroit indirectness. "Been to church," he said, after serving Cousin +Amy Dawes with lobster a la Newburg. + +"Saw you," came from Uncle Sim. + +"Did you? What were you doing there? Thought you were a disciple of old +Hilary." + +"That was the reason. Hilary's idea. Can't go 'round to the different +churches himself, so he sends me. Look in on 'em all." + +"There's too much sherry in this lobster a la Newburg," Cousin Amy Dawes +said, sternly. "I bet she's put in two tablespoonfuls instead of one." + +Being stone-deaf, Cousin Amy Dawes took no part in conversation except +what she herself could contribute. She was a dignified woman who had the +air of being hewn in granite. There was nothing soft about her but three +detachable corkscrew curls on each side of an immobile face and a heart +that every one knew to be as maternal as milk. Dressed in stiff black +silk, a heavy gold chain around her neck, and a huge gold brooch at her +throat, and wearing fingerless black-silk mittens, she might have walked +out of an old daguerreotype. + +"I should think," Thor observed, dryly, "that you'd find your religion +growing rather composite." + +"No. T'other way 'round. Grows simpler. Get their co-ordinating +principle--the common denominator that goes into 'em all." + +"That is," Lois said, in the endeavor to be free to think her own +thoughts by keeping him on a hobby, "you look for their points of +contact rather than their differences." + +"Oh, you get beyond the differences. 'Beyond these voices there is +peace.' Doesn't some one say that? Well, you get there. If you can stand +the clamor of the voices for a while you emerge into a kind of still +place where they blend into one. Then you find that they're all trying +to say the same thing, which is also the thing you're trying to say +yourself." + +As he sat back in his chair twisting his wiry mustache with a handsome, +sun-burnt hand, Thor felt that he had him where he had been hoping to +get him. "But what _do_ we want to say, Uncle Sim? What do you want to +say? And what do I?" + +The old man held his sharp-pointed beard by the tip, eying his nephew +obliquely. "That's the great secret, Thor. We're all like little babies, +who from the time they begin to hear language are bursting with the +desire to say something; only they don't know what it is till they learn +to speak. Then it comes to 'em." + +"Yes, but what comes to them?" + +"Isn't it what comes to all babies--the instinct to say, +_Abba--Father_?" + +"Say, Lois," Cousin Amy Dawes requested, in her loud, commanding voice, +"just save me a mite of this cold duck for old Sally Gibbs. It'll be +tasty for the poor soul. I'll take it to her as we go up the hill. What +do you pay your cook?" Without waiting for an answer she continued like +an oracle, "I don't believe she's worth it." + +Thor leaned across the table. "What I want to know is this: suppose the +instinct to say _Abba--Father_ does come to us, is there anything there +to respond that will show us a better way--personally and nationally, I +mean, than the rather poor one we're finding for ourselves?" + +"Can't give you any guarantees, Thor, if that's what you're after. Just +got to say _Abba--Father_, and see for yourself. Nothing but seeing for +oneself is any good when it comes to the personal. And as for the +national--well, there was a man once who went stalking through the land +crying, 'O Israel, turn thee to the Lord thy God,' and I guess he knew +what he was about. It was, 'Turn ye, turn ye! Why will ye die?' They +didn't turn and so they died. Inevitable consequence. Same with this +people or any other people. In proportion as it turns to the Lord its +God it'll live; and in proportion as it doesn't it'll go to pot." He +veered around to Lois as to one who would agree with him: "Ain't that +it?" + +She responded with a sweet, absent smile which showed to Thor at least +that her thoughts were elsewhere. As a matter of fact, Thor's questions +and Uncle Sim's replies, which continued in more or less the same +strain, lay in a realm with regard to which she had few misgivings or +anxieties. Her heart-searchings being of another nature, she was doing +in thought what she had done when in the afternoon she had gone to her +room and shut the door. She was standing before her mirror, contrasting +the image reflected there with Rosie Fay's worn, touching prettiness. + +How awesome, how incredible, that Thor, her great, noble Thor, should +have let his heart go--perhaps the very best of his heart--to anything +so insignificant, so unformed, so unequal to himself! It was this +awesomeness, this incredibility, that overwhelmed her. Her mind fixed +itself on it, for the time being, to the exclusion of other +considerations. Thor was like meaner men! He could be caught by a pretty +face! He was so big in body and soul that she had thought him free from +petty failing--and yet here it was! There was a kind of shame in it. It +weakened him, it lowered him. + +She had seen it from the minute when he began to tell his halting tale +about Claude. It was pitiful the way in which he had betrayed himself. +From Fay she had got no more than a hint--a hint she had been quick to +collate with her knowledge of some secret grief on Thor's part; but she +hadn't been really sure of the truth till she saw he was trying to hide +it. That Thor should be trying to hide anything made her burn inwardly +with something more poignant than humiliation. + +She had smiled when he looked so imploringly toward her, but she hardly +knew why. Perhaps it was to encourage him, to give him heart. For the +first time in her life she felt the stronger, the superior. She was +sorry for him, even though there was something about this new and +unexpected phase in him that she despised. + +She had got no further than that when the guests came and she had to +give them her attention. When they left, and Thor was seeing them to the +door, she took the opportunity to slip up to her room again. She locked +the door behind her, and locked the door that communicated with his +dressing-room. Once more she took her stand before the pier-glass. + +Something had come to her; she was sure of it. It had come almost since +that afternoon. If it was not beauty, it rendered beauty of no +importance. It was a spirit, a fire, that made her a woman who could be +proud, a woman a man might be proud of. She had come to her own at last. +She could see for herself that there was a subdued splendor about her +which raised her in the scale of personality. She had little vanity; +hitherto she had had little pride; but she knew now, with an assurance +which it would have been hypocritical to disguise, that she was the true +mate of the man she had taken Thor to be. She had known it +before--diffidently and apologetically. She knew it now calmly, and as a +matter of course, in a manner that did away with any necessity for +shrinking or self-depreciation. + +She moved away from the mirror, taking off the string of small pearls +she wore and throwing them on the dressing-table. In the middle of the +room she stood with a feeling of helplessness. It was so difficult to +see what she ought to do. What was one's duty toward a husband who had +practically told her that he had married her only because he couldn't +marry a woman he loved better? Other questions began to rise within her, +questions and protests and flashes of indignation, but she beat them +back, standing in an attitude of reflection, and trying to discern the +first steps of her way. She knew that the emotions she was keeping under +would assert themselves in time, but just now she wanted only to see +what she ought to do during the next half-hour. + +There came into her mind what Uncle Sim had said at supper--"Just got to +say _Abba--Father_, and see." She shook her head. She couldn't say +_Abba--Father_ at present. She didn't know why--but she couldn't. +Whatever the passion within her, it was nothing she could bring before a +Throne of Grace. It crossed her mind that if she prayed at all that +night she would pass this whole matter over. And in that case, why pray +at all? + +And yet the thought of omitting her prayers disturbed her. If she did it +to-night, why not to-morrow night? And if to-morrow night, where would +it end? It was not a convincing argument, but it drew her toward her +bedside. + +Even then she didn't kneel down, but clung to one of the tall, fluted +posts that supported a canopy. She couldn't pray. She didn't know what +to pray for. Conventional petitions would have had no meaning, and for +the moment she had no others to offer up. It was but half consciously +that she found herself stammering: "_Abba--Father! Abba--Father!_" her +lips moving dumbly to the syllables. + +It brought her no relief. It gave her neither immediate light on her way +nor any new sense of power. She was as dazed as ever, and as indignant. +And yet when she raised herself from the weary clinging to the fluted +post she went to both the doors she had locked and unlocked them. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +The consciousness of something to be suppressed was with Lois when she +woke. "Not yet! Not yet!" was the warning of her subliminal self +whenever resentments and indignations endeavored to escape control. + +With Thor she kept to subjects that had no personal bearing, clearly to +his relief. At breakfast they talked of the Mexican rising under Madero, +which was discussed in the papers of that morning. She knew that the +question in his mind was, "Does she really know?" but she betrayed +nothing that would help him to an answer. + +When, after having kissed her with a timid, apologetic affection which +partly touched and partly angered her, he left for the office, she put +on a hat and, taking a parasol, went to see Dr. Hilary. + +The First Parish Church, the oldest in the village, stands in a grassy +delta where two of the rambling village lanes enter the Square. The +white, barn-like nave, with its upper and lower rows of small, oblong +windows, retires discreetly within a grove of elms, while a tall, slim +spire grows slimmer through diminishing tiers of arches, balconies, and +lancet lights till it dwindles away into a high, graceful pinnacle. + +Behind the church, in the widest section of the delta, the parsonage, a +white wooden box dating from the fifties supporting a smaller box by way +of cupola, looks across garden, shrubbery, and lawn to Schoolhouse Lane, +from which nothing but the simplest form of wooden rail protects the +inclosure. + +It was the time for bulbs to be in flower, and the spring perennials. +Tulips in a wide, dense mass bordered the brick pavement that led from +the gate to the front door. Elsewhere could be seen daffodils, irises, +peonies just bursting into bloom, and long, drooping curves of +bleeding-heart hung with rose-and-white pendents. By a corner of the +house the ground was indigo-dark with a thick little patch of squills. + +It was a relief to Lois to find the old man himself, bareheaded and in +an alpaca house-jacket, rooting out weeds on the lawn, his thin, gray +locks tossed in the breeze. On seeing her pause and look over the clump +of wiegelia, which at this point smothered the rail, he raised himself, +dusted the earth from his hands, and went forward. They talked at first +just as they stood, with the budding shrubs between them. + +"Oh, Dr. Hilary, I'm so anxious about Rosie Fay." + +"Are you now?" As neither age nor gravity could subdue the twinkle in +his eyes, so sympathy couldn't quench it. "Well, I am meself." + +"I think if I could see her I might be able to help her. Or, rather," +she went on, nervously, "I think I ought to see her, whether I can help +her or not. Have you seen her?" + +"I have not," he declared, with Irish emphasis. "The puss takes very +good care that I sha'n't, so she does. She's only got to see me coming +in the gate to fly off to Duck Rock; and that, so her mother tells me, +is all they see of her till nightfall. It's three days now that she's +been struck with a fit of melancholy, or maybe four." + +"Do you know what the trouble is?" + +He evaded the question. "Do you?" + +"I do--partly." + +"Then you'll be the one to tackle her. As yet I haven't asked. I prefer +to know no more about people than what they tell me themselves." + +She found it possible to secure his aid on the unexplained ground that +there had been a misunderstanding between her husband and herself, on +the one side, and Jasper Fay on the other. "I don't _know_ that I can +help her. I dare say I can't. But if I could only see her--" + +"Well, then, you shall see her. Just wait a minute while I change me +coat and I'll go along with you." + +On the way up the hill Lois questioned him about the Fays. "Did you know +much of the boy?" + +"Enough to see that he wasn't a thief--not by nature, that is. He's what +might have been expected from his parents--the stuff out of which they +make revolutionists and anarchists. He came into the world with desires +thwarted, as you might say, and a detairmination to get even. He didn't +steal; he took money. He took money because they needed it at home, and +other people had it. He took it more in protest than in greed, if that's +any excuse for him." + +"The mother is better, isn't she?" + +"She's clothed and in her right mind, if she'll only stay that way. She +gets into one of her old tantrums every now and then; but I'm in hopes +that the daughter's trouble will end them." + +This hope seemed to be partially fulfilled in the welcoming way in which +the door was opened to their knock. "I've brought you me friend, Mrs. +Thor Masterman," was the old gentleman's form of introduction. "She +wants to see Rosie. If Fay makes any trouble, tell him it's my wish." + +"I've really only come to see Rosie, Mrs. Fay," Lois explained, not +without nervousness, when the two women were alone on the door-step. +"No, I won't go in, thank you, not if she's anywhere about the place. +I'm really very anxious to have a talk with her." + +Having feared a hostile reception, she was relieved to be answered with +a certain fierce cordiality. "I'm sure I hope you'll get it. It's more'n +her father and I can do." + +"Perhaps she'd talk to me. Girls often will talk to a--to a stranger, +when they won't to one of their own." + +"Well, you can try." In spite of the coldness of the handsome features, +something in the nature of a new life, a new softening humanity, was +struggling to assert itself. "_We_ can't get a word out of her. She'll +neither speak, nor sleep, nor eat, nor do a hand's turn. It's the work +that bothers me most--not so much that it needs to be done as because +it'd be a relief to her." She added, with a shy wistfulness that +contrasted oddly with the hard glint in her eyes, "I've found that out +myself." + +"Have you any idea where she is?" + +She pointed toward Duck Rock. "Oh, I suppose she's over there. She was +to have picked the cucumbers this morning, but I see she hasn't done +it." + +"Has Mr. Fay told you what the trouble is?" + +"Well, he has. But then he's so romantic. Always was. Land's sake! I +don't pay any attention to young people's goings-on. Seen too much of it +in my own day. I don't say that the young fellow hasn't been +foolish--and I don't say--you'll excuse me!--that Rosie ain't just as +good as he is, even if he _is_ Archie Masterman's son--" + +"Oh no, nor I," Lois hastened to interpose. + +"But there's nothing wrong. I've asked her--and I _know_. I'm sure of +it." + +Lois spoke eagerly. "Oh yes; so am I." + +"So that there's that." She went on with a touch of her old haughtiness +of spirit: "And she's every mite as good as he is. It's all nonsense, +Fay's talking as if it was some young lord who'd jilted a girl beneath +him. Young lord, indeed! I'll young lord him, if he ever comes my way. I +tell Rosie not to demean herself to grieve for them that are no better +than herself. It's nothing but romantics," she explained further. "I've +no patience with Fay--talking as if some one ought to shoot some one or +commit murder. That's the way Matt began. Fay ought to know better at +his time of life. I declare he has no more sense than Rosie." + +Lois had not expected to be called upon to defend Fay, but she said, "I +suppose he naturally feels indignant when he sees--" + +"There's a desperate streak in Fay," the woman broke in, uneasily, "and +Rosie takes after him. For the matter of that, she takes after us +both--for I'm sure I've been gloomy enough. There's been something +lacking in us all, like cooking without salt. I see that now as plain as +plain, though I can't get Fay to believe me. You might as well talk to a +stone wall as talk to Fay when he's got his nose stuck into a book. I +hate the very name of that Carlyle; and that Darwin, he's another. +They're his Bible, I tell him, and he don't half understand what they +mean. It's Duck Rock," she went on, with a quiver of her fine lips, +while her hands worked nervously at the corner of her apron--"it's Duck +Rock that I'm most afraid of. It kind o' haunted me all the time I was +sick; and it kind o' haunts Rosie." + +"Then I'll go and see if she's there," Lois said, as she turned away, +leaving the austere figure to stare after her with eyes that might have +been those of the woman delivered from the seven devils. + +It was an easy matter for Lois to find her way among the old +apple-trees--of which one was showing an early blossom or two on the +sunny side--to the boulevard below, and thence to the wood running up +the bluff. Though she had not been here since the berry-picking days of +childhood, she knew the spot in which Rosie was likely to be found. As a +matter of fact, having climbed the path that ran beneath oaks and +through patches of brakes, spleenwort, and lady-ferns, she was +astonished to hear a faint, plaintive singing, and stopped to listen. +The voice was poignantly thin and sweet, with the frail, melancholy +sound she had heard from distant shepherds' pipes in Switzerland. Had +she not, after a few seconds, recognized the air, she would have been +unable to detect the words: + + "Ah, dinna ye mind, Lord Gregory, + By bonnie Irvinside, + Where first I owned the virgin love + I long, long had denied?" + +Though the singer was invisible, Lois knew she could not be far away, +since the voice was too weak to carry. She was about to go forward when +the faint melody began again: + + "An exile from my father's ha' + And a' for loving thee; + At least be pity to me shown, + If love it may na' be." + +Placing the voice now as near the great oak-tree circled by a seat, just +below the point where the ascending bluff broke fifty feet to the pond +beneath, Lois went rapidly up the last few yards of the ascent. + +Rosie was seated with her back to the gnarled trunk, while she looked +out over the half-mile of dancing blue wavelets to where, on the other +side, the brown, wooden houses of the Thorley estate swept down to the +shore. She rose on seeing the visitor approach, showing a startled +disposition to run away. This she might have done had not Lois caught +her by the hand and detained her. + +"I know all about everything, Rosie--about everything." + +She meant that she understood the situation not only as regarding one +brother, but as regarding both. Rosie's response was without interest or +curiosity. "Do you?" + +"Yes, Rosie; and I want to talk to you about it. Let us sit down." + +Still holding the girl's hands in a manner that compelled her to reseat +herself, she examined the little face for the charm that had thrown such +a spell on Thor. With a pang she owned to herself that she found it. No +one could look at Thor with that expression of entreaty without reaching +all that was most tender in his soul. + +For the moment, however, that point must be allowed to pass. "Not yet! +Not yet!" something cried to the passion that was trying to get control +of her. She went on earnestly, almost beseechingly: "I know just what +happened, Rosie dear, and how hard it's been for you; and I want you to +let me help you." + +There was no light in Rosie's chrysoprase-colored eyes. Her voice was +listless. "What can you do?" + +Put to her in that point-blank way, Lois found the question difficult. +She could only answer: "I can be with you, Rosie. We can be side by +side." + +"There wouldn't be any good in that. I'd rather be left alone." + +"Oh, but there would be good. We should strengthen each other. I--I need +help, too. I should find it partly, if I could do anything for you." + +Rosie surveyed her friend, not coldly, but with dull detachment. "Do you +think Claude will come back to me?" + +"What do you think, yourself?" + +"I don't think he will." She added, with a catch in her breath like that +produced by a sudden, darting pain, "I know he won't." + +"Would you be happy with him if he did?" + +"I shouldn't care whether I was happy or not--if he'd come." + +Lois thought it the part of wisdom to hold out no hope. "Then, since we +believe he won't come, isn't it better to face it with--" + +"I don't see any use in facing it. You might as well ask a plant to face +it when it's pulled up by the roots and thrown out into the sun. There's +nothing left to face." + +"But you're not pulled up by the roots, Rosie. Your roots are still in +the soil. You've people who need you--" + +Rosie made a little gesture, with palms outward. "I've given them all I +had. I'm--I'm--empty." + +"Yes, you feel so now. That's natural. We do feel empty of anything more +to give when there's been a great drain on us. But somehow it's the +people who've given most who always have the power to go on +giving--after a little while. With time--" + +The girl interrupted, not impatiently, but with vacant indifference. +"What's the good of time--when it's going to be always the same?" + +"The good of time is that it brings comfort--" + +"I don't want comfort. I'd rather be as I am." + +"That's perfectly natural--for now. But time passes whether we will or +no; and whether we will or no, it softens--" + +"Time can't pass if you won't let it." + +"Why--why, what do you mean?" + +"I mean--just that." + +Lois clasped the girl's hands desperately. "But, Rosie, you must _live_. +Life has a great deal in store for you still--perhaps a great deal of +happiness. They say that life never takes anything from us for which it +isn't prepared to give us compensation, if we'll only accept it in the +right way." + +Rosie shook her head. "I don't want it." + +Lois tried to reach the dulled spirit by another channel. "But we all +have disappointments and sorrows, Rosie. I have mine. I've great ones." + +The aloofness in Rosie's gaze seemed to put miles between them. "That +doesn't make any difference to me. If you want me to be sorry for +them--I'm not. I can't be sorry for any one." + +In her desire to touch the frozen springs of the girl's emotions, Lois +said what she would have supposed herself incapable of saying. "Not when +you know what they are?--when you know what one of them is, at any +rate!--when you know what one of them _must_ be! You're the only person +in the world except myself who can know." + +Rosie's voice was as lifeless as before. "I can't be sorry. I don't know +why--but I can't be." + +"Do you mean that you're glad I have to suffer?" + +"N-no. I'm not glad--especially. I just--don't care." + +Lois was baffled. The impenetrable iciness was more difficult to deal +with than active grief. She made her supreme appeal. "And then, Rosie, +then there's--there's God." + +Rosie looked vaguely over the lake and said nothing. If she fixed her +eyes on anything, it was on the quivering balance of a kingfisher in the +air. When with a flash of silver and blue he swooped, and, without +seeming to have touched the water, went skimming away with a fish in his +bill, her eyes wandered slowly back in her companion's direction. + +Lois made another attempt. "You believe in God, don't you?" + +There was a second's hesitation. "I don't know as I do." + +The older woman spoke with the pleading of distress. "But there _is_ a +God, Rosie." + +There was the same brief hesitation. "I don't care whether there is or +not." + +Though Lois could get no further, it hurt her to see the look of relief +in the little creature's face when she rose and said: "You'd rather I'd +go away, wouldn't you? Then I will go; but it won't be for long. I'm not +going to leave you to yourself. I'm coming back soon. I shall come back +again to-day. If you're not at home, I'll follow you up here." + +She waited for some sign of protest, but Rosie sat silent and impassive. +Though courtesy kept her dumb, it couldn't conceal the air of resigned +impatience with which she awaited her visitor's departure. + +Lois looked down at her helplessly. In sheer incapacity to affect the +larger issues, she took refuge in the smaller. "Isn't it near your +dinner-time? I'm going your way. We could go along together." + +"I don't want any dinner. I'll go home--by and by." + +Lois felt herself dismissed. "Very well, Rosie. I'll say good-by for +now. But it will only be for a little while. You understand that, don't +you? I'm not going to let you throw me off. I'm going to cling to you. +I've got the right to do it, because--because the very thing that makes +you unhappy--makes me." + +In the eyes that Rosie lifted obliquely Lois read such unutterable +things that she turned away. She carried that look with her as she went +down the hill beneath the oaks and between the sunlit patches of brakes, +spleenwort, and lady-ferns. What scenes, what memories, had called it +up? What part in those scenes and memories had been played by Thor? What +had been the actual experience between this girl and him? Would she ever +know? Had she better know? What should she do if she were to know? Once +more the questions she had been trying to repress urged themselves for +answer; but once more she controlled herself through the counsel of the +inner voice: "Not yet! Not yet!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +But after Lois had gone Rosie came to life again. That is, she entered +once more the conditions in which her mind was free to tread its round +of grief. Lois kept her out of them. Her father and mother did the same. +Household duties and the tasks of the hothouse and the necessity for +eating and sleeping and speaking did the same. She turned from them all +with a weariness as consuming as a sickness unto death. + +She had done so from the instant when, crouching behind the vines of the +cucumber-house, with all her senses strained, she perceived by the mere +rustling of the leaves that Claude was making his way down the long, +green aisle. She knew then that it was the end. If there had been no +other cause of rupture between them, the girl who kept ten or twelve +servants would have created it. Rosie knew enough of Claude to be aware +that love could not bear down the scale against this princeliness of +living. There would be so such repentance and reaction on his part as +she had experienced with Thor. Once he was gone, he was gone. It was the +end. + +The soft opening and closing of the hothouse door as he went out reached +her like a sigh, a last sigh, a dying sigh, after which--nothing! Rosie +expected nothing--but she waited. She waited as watchers wait round a +death-bed for the possibility of one more breath; but none came. She +stirred then and rose. She rose mechanically, brushing the earth from +her clothing, and began again the interrupted task of picking the +superfluous female flowers and letting them flutter downward. + +It was when she had come to the end of her third row and was about to +turn into the fourth that the sense of the impossibility of going on +swept over her. "Oh, I can't!" She dropped her arms to her side. "I +can't. I can't." She meant only that she couldn't go on just then; but +in the back of her mind there was the conviction that she would never go +on again. + +She continued to stand with arms hanging and head drooped to one side, +closed in by vines, with flowers of the hue of light around her like a +halo, and bees murmuring among them. It was not merely that she was +listless and incapable; the world seemed to have dropped away. She was +marooned on a rock, with an ocean of nothingness about her. Everything +she wanted had gone--sunk, vanished. It had come within sight, like +mirage to the shipwrecked, only to torture her with what she couldn't +have. It was worse than if it had never shown itself at all. Love had +appeared with one man, money with the other. Love and money were two of +the three things she cared for; the poor, shiftless family was the +third. Since the first two had gone, the last must follow them. Quite +consciously and deliberately Rosie lifted her hands with a little +lamentable effort, letting them drop again, and so renounced her burden. + +She crept back to the spot whence she had risen, and lay down. There was +a kind of ritual in the act. It was not now a mere stricken, physical +crouching as when she had turned away from Claude. It was something more +significant. It was withdrawal from work, from life, from all the +demands she had put forth so fiercely. + +Renouncing these, Rosie also renounced Claude. It was a proof of the +degree to which she had dismissed him that when, a half-hour later, she +heard a rustling in the vines behind her it never occurred to her that +he might have come back. She knew already that he would never come back. +The fatalism of her little soul left her none of those uncertainties +which are safeguards against despair. She raised her head and looked; +but she saw exactly the person she knew she would see. + +Antonio grinned, and announced dinner. The sight of his young mistress +half sitting, half lying on the ground struck him as droll. + +Rosie got up and brushed herself again. She knew it must be dinner-time. +The fact had been at the back of her mind all through these minutes of +comforting negation. She should have been in the house laying the table +while her mother cooked the meal. It was the first time in years that +she had rebelled against a duty. It was not exactly rebellion now. It +was something more serious than that. She realized it as she stood where +she was, with hands hanging limply, and said to herself, "I've quit." + +Nevertheless, she emerged slowly from the jungle of vines and followed +Antonio down the long, rustling aisle. There was a compulsion in the +day's routine to which she felt the necessity of yielding. She had +traversed half the length of the greenhouse before it came to her that +it was precisely to the day's routine that she couldn't return. Anything +was better than that. Any fate was preferable to the round of cooking +and cleaning and seed-time and harvest of which every detail was +impregnated with the ambitions she had given up. She had lived through +these tasks and beyond them out into something else--into a great +emptiness in which her spirit found a kind of ease. She could no more go +back to them than a released soul could go back to earth. + +In the yard she stood looking at the poor, battered old house. Inside, +her father, who had probably by this time returned from town, would be +sitting down to table. Antonio--to save the serving of two sets of +meals--would be sitting down with him. Her mother would be bringing +something from the kitchen, holding a hot platter with the corner of her +apron. If she went in her mother would sit down, too, while she herself +would do the running to and fro between the table and the pantry or the +stove. She would snatch a bite for herself in the intervals of +attendance. + +Rosie revolted. She revolted not against the drudgery, which was part of +the matter-of-course of living unless one "kept a girl"; she revolted +against the living itself. It was all over for her. In proof that it was +she turned her back on it. + +Her moving away was at first without purpose. If her feet strayed into +the familiar path that ran down the hill between the hothouses and the +apple-trees it was because there was no other direction to take. She +hadn't meant to go up through the wood to Duck Rock before she found +herself doing it. The newly leafing oaks were a shimmer of bronze-green +above her, while she trod on young ferns that formed a carpet such as +was never woven by hands. Into it were worked white star-flowers without +number, with an occasional nodding trillium. The faint, bitter scent of +green things too tender as yet to be pungent rose from everything she +crushed. She was not soothed by nature, like Thor Masterman. She had too +much to do with the raising of plants for sale to take much interest in +what the earth produced without money and without price. If it had not +been that her mind was as nearly as possible empty of thought, she +wouldn't have paused to watch an indigo-bunting, whose little brown mate +was probably near by, hop upward from branch to branch of a solitary +juniper, his body like a blue flower in the dark boughs, while he poured +forth a song that waxed louder as he mounted. She observed him idly and +passed onward because there was nothing but that to do. + +Her heart was too dead to feel much emotion when she emerged on the spot +where she had been accustomed to keep her trysts with Claude. Her trysts +with Claude had been at night; she had other sorts of association with +this summit in the daytime. All her life she had been used to come here +berrying. Here she came, too, with Polly Wilson and other +girl-friends--when she had any--for strolls and gossiping. Here, too, +Jim Breen had made love to her, and Matt's companion of the grocery. The +spot being therefore not wholly dedicated to memories of Claude, she +could approach it calmly. + +She sat down on the familiar seat that circled the oak-tree and gave the +best view over the pond. The oak-tree was the last and highest of the +wood. Beyond it there was only an upward-climbing fringe of grass, +starred with cinquefoil and wild strawberry--and then the precipice. It +was but a miniature precipice that broke to a miniature sea, but it gave +an impression of grandeur. Sitting on the bench, with one's head against +the oak, one could, if one chose, see nothing but sky and water. There +was nothing but sky and water and air. In the noon stillness there was +not even a boat on the lake nor a bird on the wing. The only sounds were +those of a hammering far over on the Thorley estate, the humming of an +electric car, which at this distance was no more disturbing than the +murmur of a bee, and the song of the indigo-bunting, fluted now from the +tree-top. To Rosie it was peace, peace without pleasure, but without +pain--as nearly as might be that absorption into nothingness for which +she yearned as the Buddhist seeks absorption into God. + +She rested, not suffering--at least not suffering anything she could +feel. She was beyond grief. The only thing she was not beyond was the +horror of returning to the interests that had hitherto made up life. + +As for Claude, she could think of him, when she began doing so, with +singular detachment. The whole episode with him might have been ended +years before. It was like something which no longer perturbs, though the +memory of it is vivid. She could go back and reconstruct the experience +from the first. Up to the present she had never found any opportunity of +doing that, since each meeting with him was so soul-filling in itself. +Now that she had the leisure, she found herself using it as the +afternoon wore on. + +Being on the spot where she had first met him, she could re-enact the +scene. She knew the very raspberry-bine at which she had been at work. +She went to it and lifted it up. It was a spiny, red-brown, sprawling +thing just beginning to clothe itself with leaves. It had been +breast-high when she had picked the fruit from it, and Claude had stood +over there, in that patch of common brakes which then rose above his +knees, but was now a bed of delicate, elongated sprays leaning backward +with incomparable grace. She found the heart to sing--her voice, which +used to be strong enough, yielding her but the ghost of song, as the +notes of an old spinnet give back the ghost of music long ago dead: + + "Oh, mirk, mirk is the midnight hour, + And loud the tempest's roar; + A waeful wanderer seeks thy tower, + Lord Gregory ope thy door." + +She could not remember having so much as hummed this air since the day +Claude had interrupted it; but she went on, unfalteringly, to the lines +at which he had broken in: + + "At least be pity to me shown, + If love it may na' be--" + +She didn't falter even here; she only allowed her voice to trail away in +the awed pianissimo into which he had frightened her. She stopped then +and went through the conversation that ensued on the memorable day, and +of which the very words were imprinted on her heart: "Isn't it Rosie? +I'm Claude." She hadn't smiled on that occasion, but she smiled to +herself now--a ghost of a smile to match her ghost of a voice--because +his tone had been so sweet. She had never heard anything like it +before--and since, only in his moments of endearment. + + * * * * * + +But she went home at last. She went home because the May afternoon grew +chilly, and in the gathering of shadows beneath the oaks there was +something eery. Expecting a scene or a scolding, she was surprised to +find both father and mother calm. They had evidently exchanged views +concerning her, deciding that she had better indulge her whims. When she +refused to eat they made little or no protest, and only once during the +night did her mother cross the passage to ask fretfully why she didn't +go to bed. On the following day there was the same silent acknowledgment +of her right to refuse to work and of her freedom to absent herself. +Rosie was quite clear as to what had taken place. Antonio had betrayed +the fact of Claude's visit, and her parents had scented a hopeless +love-affair. Rosie was indifferent. Her love-affairs were her own +business; she owed neither explanation nor apology to any one. So long +as her parents conceded her liberty to come and go, to nibble rather +than to eat, and not to speak when spoken to, she was content. + +They conceded this all through that week. In her presence they bore +themselves with timid constraint, and followed her with stealthy eyes +that watched for every shadow that crossed her face; but they let her +alone. She was as free as wind all Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, +Saturday, and Sunday. + +During those days she continued to live in the exultation of the void. +There was nothing to fear any more. The worst had happened to her that +could happen, and so, in a manner of speaking, she was safe. Never since +she had begun to think had she been so free from misgiving and +foreboding as to what each new day would bring forth. No day could bring +forth anything now that could hurt her. + +By Saturday the nerves of sensation began to show signs of recovering +themselves and returning to activity. In thinking of Claude, and living +through again her meetings with him, there were moments like pangs, of +longing, of passion, of despair, as the case might be, that went as +quickly as they came. But they didn't frighten her. If they were +premonitions of a state of anguish--why, there had been so much anguish +in her episode with Claude that there couldn't be much more now. If +anything, she welcomed it. It would be more as if he was back with her. +The void was peaceful. But the void filled with suffering on his account +would be better still. Anything!--anything but to be forced to go back! + +But on Monday it was the urgency of going back that confronted her. She +had come down in the morning to find her breakfast laid in just the way +she liked it--tea, a soft-boiled egg, buttered toast, and, as a special +temptation to a capricious appetite, a dab of marmalade. She sat down to +the table unwillingly, sipping at the tea and nibbling at the toast, but +leaving the egg and the marmalade untouched. In her mother's bustling to +and fro she felt the long-delayed protest in the atmosphere. It came +while her mother was crossing the room to replace some dishes on the +dresser. + +"Now, my girl, buck up. Just eat your breakfast and set to work and stop +your foolish fancies. If you don't look out you'll get yourself where I +was, and I guess it'll take more than Dr. Hilary to pull _you_ out." She +added, as she returned to the kitchen: "Your father told me to tell you +to get busy on the cucumbers. There's a lot to be picked. He's been +spannin' them and finds them ready." + +Rosie made use of her privilege of not answering. When she had eaten all +she could she took a basket and made her way toward the cucumber-house +she had not entered since she had left it with the words, "I've quit." +It was like going to the scaffold to drag her feet across the yard; it +was like mounting it to lift the latch of the paintless door and feel +the stifling, pollen-laden air in her face. Nevertheless, habit took her +in. Habit sent her eyes searching among the lowest stretches of the +vines, where the cool, green things were hanging. Habit caused her to +stoop and span them with her rough little hand. When her father's thumb +and fingers met around them they were ready to be picked; they were +ready when her own came within an inch of doing so. + +But she raised herself with a rebellious impulse of her whole person +before she had picked one. She had picked hundreds in her time; she had +picked thousands. She couldn't begin again. With the first one she +gathered the yoke of the past would be around her neck once more. She +couldn't bear it. "I can't. I can't." With the words on her lips she +slipped out by the door at the far end of the hothouse and sped toward +her refuge on Duck Rock. + +She had never felt it as so truly a refuge before. Neither had she ever +before needed a refuge so acutely. She needed it to-day because the +memory of Claude had at last become a living thing, and every sentient +part of her that could be filled with grief was filled with it. Grief +had come suddenly; it was creating a new world for her. It was no longer +a peaceful void; it was a world of wild passions, wild projects, wild +things she would do, wild words she would speak if ever she had the +chance to speak them. She would go in search of him! She would find his +father and mother! She would appeal to Thor! She would discover the girl +with ten or twelve servants who had come between them! She would implore +them all to send him back! She would drag him back! She would hang about +his neck till he swore never again to leave her! If he refused, she +would kill him! If she couldn't kill him, she would kill herself! +Perhaps if she killed herself she would inflict on him the worst +suffering of all! + +She thought about that. After all, it was the thing most practical. The +other impulses were not practical. She knew that, of course. She could +humiliate herself to the dust without affecting him. Up to to-day she +had not wanted him to suffer; but now she did. If she killed herself, he +_would_ suffer. However long he lived, or however many servants the +woman he married would be able to keep, his life would be poisoned by +the memory of what he had done to her. + +Her imagination reveled in the scenes it was now able to depict. Leaning +back with her head resting against the trunk of the old oak, she closed +her eyes and viewed the dramatic procession of events that might follow +on that morning and haunt Claude Masterman to his grave. She saw herself +leaping from the rock; she saw her body washed ashore, her head and +hands hanging limp, her long, wet hair streaming; she saw her parents +mourning, and Thor remorseful, and Claude absolutely stricken. Her +efforts rested there. Everything was subordinate to the one great fact +that by doing this she could make the sword go through his heart. She +went to the edge of the cliff and peered over. Though it was a sheer +fifty feet, it didn't seem so very far down. The water was blue and +lapping and inviting. It looked as if it would be easy. + +She returned to her seat. She knew she was only playing. It relieved the +tumult within her to pretend that she could do as desperately as she +felt. It quieted her. Once she saw that she had it in her power to make +Claude unhappy, something in her spirit was appeased. + +She began the little comedy all over again, from the minute when she +started forth from home on the momentous day to fill her pan with +raspberries. She traced her steps down the hill and up through the +glades of the bluff wherever the ripe raspberries were hanging. She came +to the minute when her stage directions called for "Lord Gregory," and +she sang it with the same thin, silvery piping which was all she could +contribute now to the demand of drama. It was both an annoyance and a +surprise to hear a footfall and the swish of robes and to turn and see +Lois Willoughby. + +Beyond the fact that she couldn't help it, she didn't know why she +became at once so taciturn and repellent. "Oh, she'll come again," she +said in self-excuse, and with vague ideas of atonement, after Lois had +gone away. Besides, the things that Lois had said in the way of +solicitude, sympathy, and God made no appeal to her. If she felt regret +it was from obscure motives of compassion, since this woman, too, had +missed what was best in love. + +She would have returned to her dream had her dream returned to her; but +Lois had broken the spell. Rosie could no longer get the ecstasies of +re-enactment. Re-enactment itself became a foolish thing, the husk of +what had once been fruit. It was a new phase of loss. Everything went +but her misery and her desire to strike at Claude--that and the sense +that whatever she did, and no matter how elusive she made herself, she +would have to go back to the old life at last. She struggled against the +conviction, but it settled on her like a mist. She played again with the +raspberry-bine, she sang "Lord Gregory," she peered over the brink of +the toy precipice--but she evoked nothing. She stood as close to the +edge of the cliff as she dared, whipping and lashing and taunting her +imagination by the rashness of the act. Nothing came but the commonplace +suggestion that even if she fell in, the boat which had appeared on the +lake, and from which two men were fishing, would rescue her. The worst +she would get would be a wetting and perhaps a cold. She wouldn't drown. + +Common sense took possession of her. The thing for her to do, it told +her cruelly, was to go back and pick the cucumbers. After that there +would be some other job. In the market-garden business jobs were +endless, especially in spring. She could set about them with a better +heart since, after all that had happened, Archie Masterman couldn't +refuse now to renew the lease. He wouldn't have the face to refuse +it--so common sense expressed itself--when his son had done her such a +wrong. If she had scored no other victory, her suffering would at least +have secured that. + +It was an argument of which she couldn't but feel the weight. There +would be three more years of just managing to live--three more years of +sowing and planting and watering and watching, at the end of which they +would not quite have starved, while Matt would have had a hole in which +to hide himself on coming out of jail. Decidedly it was an argument. She +had already shown her willingness to sell herself; and this would +apparently prove to be her price. + +Wearily, when noon had passed and afternoon set in, she got herself to +her feet. Wearily she began to descend the hill. She would go back again +to the cucumbers. She would take up again the burden she had thrown +down. She would bring her wild heart into harness and tame it to +hopelessness. Common sense could suggest nothing else. + +She went now by the path, because it was tortuous and less direct than +the bee-line over fern. She paused at every excuse--now to watch a robin +hopping, now to look at a pink lady's-slipper abloom in a bed of +spleenwort, now for no reason at all. Each step cost her a separate act +of renunciation; each act of renunciation was harder than the other. But +successive steps and successive acts brought her down the hill at last. + +"I can't. I can't." + +She dragged herself a few paces farther still. + +"I can't! I can't!" + +She was in sight of the boulevard, where a gang of Finns were working, +and beyond which lay the ragged, uncultivated outskirts of her father's +land. Up through a tangle of nettles and yarrow she could see the zigzag +path which had been the rainbow bridge of her happiness. She came to a +dead stop, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth fearfully. "If +I go up there," she said to herself, "I shall never come down again." +She meant that she would never come down again in the same spirit. That +spirit would be captured and slain. She herself would be captured and +slain. Nothing would live of her but a body to drudge in the hothouse to +earn a few cents a day. + +Suddenly, without forming a resolution or directing an intention, she +turned and sped up the hill. At first she only walked rapidly; but the +walk broke into a run, and the run into a swift skimming along through +the trees like that of a roused partridge. + +And yet she didn't know what she was running from. Something within her, +a power of guardedness or that capacity for common sense which had made +its last desperate effort to get the upper hand, had broken down. All +she could yield to was the terror that paralyzed thought; all she could +respond to was the force that drew her up the hill with its awful +fascination. "I must do it, I must," were the words with which she met +her own impulse to resist. If her confused thought could have become +explanatory it would have said: "I must get away from the life I've +known, from the care, from the hope, from the love. I must do something +that will make Claude suffer; I must frighten him; I must wound him; I +must strike at the girl who has won him away with her ten or twelve +servants. And there's no way but this." + +Even so the way was obscure to her. She was taking it without seeing +whither it was to lead. If one impulse warned her to stop, another +whipped her onward. "I can't stop! I can't stop!" she cried out, when +warning became alarm. + +For flight gave impetus to itself. It was like release; it was a kind of +wild glee. She was as a bird whose wings have been bound, and who has +worked them free again. There was a frenzy in sheer speed. + +The path was steep, but she was hardly aware of so much as touching it. +Fear behind and anguish within her carried her along. She scarcely knew +that she was running breathlessly, that she panted, that once or twice +she stumbled and fell. Something was beckoning to her from the great, +safe, empty void--something that was nothing, unless it was peace and +sleep--something that had its abode in the free spaces of the wind and +the blue caverns of the sky and the kindly lapping water--something +infinite and eternal and restful, in whose embrace she was due. + +At the edge of the wood she had a last terrifying moment. The +raspberry-bine was there, and the great oak with the seat around it, and +the carpet of cinquefoil and wild strawberry. She gave them a quick, +frightened look, like an appeal to impede her. If she was to stop she +must stop now. "But I can't stop," she seemed to fling to them, over her +shoulder, as she kept on to where, beyond the highest tip of greensward, +the blue level of the lake appeared. + +The boat with the two fishermen was nearer the shore than when she had +observed it last. "They'll save me! Oh, they'll save me!" she had time +to whisper to herself, at the supreme moment when she left everything +behind. + +There followed a space which in Rosie's consciousness was long. She felt +that she was leaping, flying, out into the welcoming void, and that the +promise of rest and peace had not deceived her. + +But it was in the shock of falling that sanity returned; and all that +the tense little creature had been, and tried to be, and couldn't be, +and longed to be, and feared to be, and failed to be broke into a cry at +which the fishermen dropped their rods. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +"Thor, would you mind if I went away for a little while?" + +He looked at her across the luncheon-table, but her eyes were downcast. +Though she endeavored to maintain the non-committal attitude she had +taken up at breakfast, she couldn't meet his gaze. + +"If you went away!" he echoed, blankly. "Why should you do that?" + +"I've been to see--" She found a difficulty in pronouncing the +name--"I've been to see Rosie. She's rather--upset." + +Under the swift lifting of her lids he betrayed his self-consciousness. +"I suppose so." He kept to the most laconic form of speech in order to +leave no opening to her penetration. + +"And I thought if I could take her away--" + +"Where should you go?" + +"Oh, anywhere. That wouldn't matter. To New York, perhaps. That might +interest her. But anywhere, so long as--" + +He got out his consent while making an excuse for rising from the table. +The conversation was too difficult to sustain. It was without looking at +him that she said, as he was leaving the room: + +"Then I'll go and ask her at once. I dare say she won't come--but I can +try. It will give me an excuse for going back. I feel worried at having +left her at all." + + * * * * * + +Between three and four that afternoon she entered her husband's office +hurriedly. It was Mrs. Dearlove who received her. "Do you know where Dr. +Masterman is? Do you know where he expected to call this afternoon?" + +Brightstone consulted a card hanging on the wall. "He was to 'ave seen +Mrs. Gibbs, 'm--Number 10 Susan Street--some time through the day." + +Lois made no secret of her agitation. "Have they a telephone?" + +"Oh, no, 'm; 'ardly. Only a poor charwoman." + +"Was he going anywhere at all where they _could_ have a telephone?" + +Mrs. Dearlove having mentioned the possibilities, Lois rang up house +after house. She left the same message everywhere: Thor was to be asked +to come directly to his office, where she was awaiting him. It was after +four when he appeared. + +She met him in the little entry and, taking him by the arm, drew him +into the waiting-room. "Come in, Thor dear, come in." She knew by his +eyes that he suspected something of what she had to tell. + +"Caught me at the Longyears'," he tried to say in a natural voice, but +he could hardly force the words beyond his lips. + +"It's Rosie, Thor," she said, instantly. "She's _all_ right." + +He dropped into a chair, supporting himself on the round table strewn +with illustrated papers and magazines for the entertainment of waiting +patients. His lips moved, but no sound passed them. Long, dark shadows +streaked the pallor of his face. + +She sat down beside him, covering his hands with her own. "She's all +right, Thor dear ... now ... and I don't think she'll be any the worse +for it in the end.... She may be the better.... We can't tell yet.... +But--but you haven't heard it in the village, have you?" + +He shook his head, perhaps because he was dazed, perhaps because he +didn't trust himself to speak. + +"That's good." She spoke breathlessly. "I was so afraid you might ... I +wanted to tell you myself ... so that you wouldn't--you wouldn't get a +shock.... There's no reason for a shock--not now, Thor.... It's +only--it's only ... just what I was afraid of--what I spoke of at +lunch.... She--she--she did it." + +He found strength to speak. "She did--what?" + +Lois continued the same breathless way. "She threw herself into the +pond.... But she's all right.... Jim Breen and Robbie Willert were out +in a boat--fishing.... They saw her.... They got to her just as she went +down the second time.... Jim Breen dived after her and brought her +up.... She wasn't unconscious very long ... and fortunately Dr. Hill was +close by--at old Mrs. Jukes's in Schoolhouse Lane.... So she's home now +and all right, or nearly.... I arrived just as they were bringing her +ashore.... She was breathing then.... I went on before them to the +house.... I told Mrs. Fay ... and Mr. Fay.... I saw them put her to +bed.... She's all right.... And then I came here--to tell you, Thor--" + +He struggled to his feet, throwing his head back and clenching his +fists. "I swear to God that if I ever see Claude again I'll--I'll kill +him!" + +Without rising she caught one of his hands and pulled him downward. "Sit +down, Thor," she said, in a tone of command. "You mustn't take it like +that. You mustn't make things worse than they are. They're bad enough as +it is. They're so bad--or at least so hard for--for some of us--that we +must do everything we can to make it possible to bear them." + +He sat down at her bidding; but with elbows resting on the table he +covered his face with his hands. She clasped her own and sat looking at +him. That is, she sat looking at his strong knuckles and at the shock of +dark hair that fell over the finger-tips where the nails dug into his +forehead. She felt a great pity for him; but a pity that permitted her +to sit there, watchful, detached, not as if it was Thor--but some one +else. + +There would be an end now to silences and concealments. She saw that +already. He was making no further attempt to keep her in the dark. In +the shock of the moment all the barricades he had built around his +secret life had fallen like the walls of Jericho. She had nothing to do +but walk upward and inward and take possession. All was open. There was +neither shrine nor sanctuary any longer. It was no privilege to be +admitted thus; anybody would have been admitted who sat beside him as +she was sitting now. + +But in the end the paroxysm passed and his hands came down. + +"I know it's hard for you, Thor--" The eyes he turned on her were full +of such unspeakable things that she stopped. She was obliged to wait +till he looked away again before she could go on. "I know it's hard for +you, Thor. It's hard for--for us all. But my point is that bitterness or +violence will only make it worse. You must remember--I feel that I +_must_ remind you of it--that you're not the--not the only sufferer." + +He bowed his head into his hands again, but without the mad anguish of a +few minutes earlier. + +"Where so much is intolerable," she pursued, "what we have to do--each +one of us--is to see how tolerable we can make things for every one +else." + +He raised his head for one quick, reproachful glance. "Do you mean +tolerable for--for Claude?" + +"Yes, I do mean for Claude. _We_ sha'n't have to punish him." + +He gave her another look. "Then what have we got to do?" + +"Nothing that isn't kind--and well thought out beforehand. That's really +the important thing. When one can't move without hurting some one, isn't +it better not to move at all?" + +It was the old doctrine of tarrying the Lord's leisure against which his +instincts were still in revolt. His indignation was such that he could +partially turn and face her. "Do you mean to say that we should _let_ +him abandon her--_now_?" + +She laid her hand on his arm. "Oh, Thor dear, it isn't for us to let--or +prevent--or anything. We can't drive other people--and it's only to a +slight degree that we can lead them. Even I know that. What we can do +best is to follow--and pick up the pieces." + +He shook his head blankly. "I don't understand. What good would that +do?" + +She rose, saying quietly, "I shall have to let you think it out for +yourself." + +As he remained seated, his forehead resting on his hand, she passed +behind him. With her arm thrown lightly across his shoulders she bent +over him till her cheek touched his hair. "Thor dear," she whispered, +"we've got our own problems to solve, haven't we? We can't solve +Claude's and Rosie's too. No one can do that but themselves. Whatever +happens--whether he comes back and marries her, or whether he +doesn't--no help would ever come of your interference or mine. If we'd +only understood that before--" + +"You mean, if I had." + +"Well, Thor darling, you haven't. You see, human beings are so terribly +free. I say terribly, on purpose--because you can't compel them to be +wise and prudent and safe, even when they're making the most obvious +mistakes. We must let them make them--and suffer--and learn." She bent +closer to his ear. "And it's what we must do, Thor dear, you and I. +We've made our mistakes already--though perhaps we didn't know it. Now +we must have the suffering--and--and the learning." + +She brushed her lips lightly across his hair and left him. + +As she walked through the Square, and past the terminus of the +tram-line, and on into the beginning of County Street, she was obliged +to keep repeating her own words--"Nothing that isn't kind and well +thought out beforehand." Having counseled him against bitterness and +violence, she saw that her immediate task was not to swallow her own +words. Bitterness was beyond suppression, and violence would have been +so easy! "_Well thought out beforehand_," she emphasized. "Whatever I do +I must keep to that. If _I_ don't, God knows where we shall be." + +In pursuance of this principle she turned in at her father-in-law's +gate. He and Mrs. Masterman must also be warned. Rosie's rash act would +touch them so closely that unless they were informed of it gently +something regrettable might be said or done. + +As to that, however, her fears proved groundless. Masterman himself +opened the door for her as she went up the steps. "Saw you coming," he +explained. "Just got out from town. Ena's been telling me the most +distressing thing--the most damnably theatrical, idiotic thing. Perhaps +you've heard of it." + +"I know what you mean. I've been there. I was there when they brought +her ashore. It may have been idiotic, as you say, but I don't think it +was theatrical." + +"You will when you know. Ena," he called up the stairs after they had +entered the hall; "Lois is here. Come down." + +Mrs. Masterman entered the library a minute later with both hands +outstretched. "Oh, my dear, what a comedy this is!" It was not often +that her manner forsook its ladylike suavity. "_What_ a comedy! But of +course you don't know. Nobody knows, thank God! But we must tell _you_." +She turned to her husband. "Will you tell her, Archie, or shall I?" + +"If it's about Claude and Rosie Fay," Lois said, when they had got +seated, "I know all that. Thor told me. He told me yesterday, +because--well, because I'd been taking an interest in Rosie for some +months past, and when I went to see her yesterday afternoon old Mr. Fay +wouldn't let me. He said there'd been trouble--or something--between +Claude and Rosie--" + +"Oh, he's been so romantic, poor boy," Ena interrupted, "and so loyal. +You'd hardly believe. He's been taken in completely. He _did_ want to +marry her. That's true. There's no use denying it. He told his father +and he told me. Oh, you've no idea. We've been _so_ worried. But he must +have found her out--_simply_ found her out." + +Lois weighed the wisdom of asking questions or of learning more than +Thor chose to tell her, but in the end it seemed reasonable to ask, +"Found her out--how?" + +Ena threw up her pretty hands. "Oh, well, with a girl of that sort what +could you expect? Claude's been completely taken in--or he was. He's so +innocent, poor boy. He wouldn't believe--not even when I told him. I +tried to stand by him--I really did. Didn't I, Archie? When he said he +wanted to marry her I said, said I, 'If she's a good girl, Claude, and +loves you, I'll accept her.' I really did, Lois--and you can imagine +what it cost me. But I could see at once. Any one who wasn't infatuated +as Claude was would have seen at a glance. The girl must be--well, +something awful." + +Lois spoke warmly. "Oh, I don't think that." + +"My dear Lois, I _know_. What's more, Thor knows, too. And I must say I +can't help blaming Thor. He's backed Claude up--and backed him up when +all the while he's known what she was." + +Lois felt obliged to speak. "I don't think he's known anything--anything +to her discredit." + +"Oh, but he has. I assure you he has. And what amazes me about +Thor--simply amazes me--is that he shouldn't see it in the right light. +Archie did, as soon as I told him. Didn't you, Archie? And I _didn't_ +tell him," Ena ran on, excitedly, "till I saw what trouble dear Claudie +was in. When Claudie began to see for himself I betrayed his confidence +to the extent of telling his father, but not before. You could hardly +blame me for that, could you?--his own father. And when I did tell +Archie--why, it was so plain that a child could have understood." + +The question, "What was plain?" could not but come to Lois's lips, but +she succeeded in withholding it. She even rose, with signs of going. It +was Archie who responded to his wife, taking a man's view of that which +seemed to her so damning. + +"We must make allowances, of course, for its being a cock-and-bull story +to begin with. Girls like that never know how to tell the truth." + +"We couldn't treat it as a cock-and-bull story so long as Claude +believed it," the mother declared, in defense of her right to be +anxious. "And Thor believed it, too. I know he did. And I _do_ blame +Thor for not telling Claude--a boy so inexperienced!--that a girl +couldn't be getting money from some other man--and go on getting it +after she was married--unless there'd been something wrong." + +Lois felt as if her blood had been arrested at her heart. "Money from +some other man?" + +"Money from some other man," Mrs. Masterman repeated, firmly. "I told +Claude at the time that no man in his senses would settle money on a +girl like that unless there'd been a reason--and a very good reason, +too. A very good reason, _too_, I said. But Claude's as ignorant of the +world as if he was ten years old. He really is. She took him in +completely." + +Being too consciously a gentleman to say more in disparagement of a +woman's character than he had permitted himself already, Masterman +remained in the library while his wife accompanied Lois to the door. The +latter had said good-by and was descending the steps when Ena cried out +in a tone that was like a confession: + +"Oh, Lois, you don't think that poor girl had any _reason_ to throw +herself into the pond, do you?" + +At the foot of the steps Lois turned and looked upward. Ena was wringing +her hands, but the daughter-in-law didn't notice it. As a matter of +fact, Lois was too deeply sunk into thoughts of her own to have any +attention to spare for other people's searchings of heart. Having heard +the question, she could answer it, but absently, and as though it were a +point of no pressing concern. + +"She hadn't the reason you're thinking of. I feel very sure of that. +I've asked her mother--and she says she knows it." + +Mrs. Masterman was uttering some expression of relief, but Lois could +listen to no more. In her heart there was room for only one +consideration. "Money! Money!" she was saying to herself as she went +down the avenue beneath the leafing elms. "He was going to give +her--that." + +But Ena returned to the threshold of the library, where her husband, +standing with his back to the empty fireplace, was meditating moodily. + +"Archie," she faltered, "you do think that girl was only seeking +notoriety, don't you?" + +He raised his head, which had been hanging pensively. "Certainly. Don't +you?" + +She tried to speak with conviction. "Oh yes; of--of course." + +"That is," Archie analyzed, "she was going in for cheap tragedy in the +hope that the sensation would reach Claude. That was her game--quite +evidently. Dare say it was a put-up job between her and those two young +men. Took very good care, at any rate, to have 'em 'longside." + +"But if Claude should hear of it--" + +"Must see that he doesn't. Wiring him to-night to go on to Japan, after +he's seen California. Let him go to India, if he likes--round the world. +Anything to keep him away--and you and I," he added, "had better hook it +till the whole thing blows over." + +She looked distressed. "Hook it, Archie?" + +"Close the house up and go abroad. Haven't been abroad for three years +now. Little motor trip through England--and back toward the end of the +summer. Fortunately I've sold that confounded property. Good price, too. +Hobson, of Hobson & Davies. Going to build for residence. Takes it from +the expiration of the lease, which is up in July. He'll clear out the +whole gang then, so that by the time we come back they'll be gone. What +do you think? Might do Devonshire and Cornwall--always wanted to take +that trip--with a few weeks in Paris before we come home." + +The suggestion of going abroad came as such a pleasing surprise that +Mrs. Masterman slipped into a chair to turn it over in her mind. "Then +Claude _couldn't_ come back, could he?" expressed the first of the +advantages she foresaw. "He'd have nowhere to go." + +"Oh, he'll not be in a hurry to do that," Archie said, confidently. + +"And I do want some things," she mused further. "I had nothing to wear +for the Darlings' ball--nothing--and you know how long I've worn the +dinner-dresses I have. I really couldn't put on the green again." She +was silent for some minutes, when another of those queer little cries +escaped her such as had broken from her lips when she stood at the door +with Lois: "But, oh, Archie, I want to do what's right!--what's right, +Archie!" + +He looked at her from under his brows as his head again drooped moodily. +"What's--_what_?" + +"What's right, Archie. Latterly--Oh, I don't know!--but latterly--" She +passed her hand across her brow.... "Sometimes I feel--I get to be +afraid, Archie--as if we weren't--as if we hadn't--as if something were +going to happen--to overtake us--" + +Crossing the room, he bent back her pretty head and kissed her. +"Nonsense," he smiled, unsteadily. "Nerves, dear. Don't wonder at +it--with all we've been through--one way and another. But that's what +we'll do. Close the house up and go abroad for three months. +Inconvenient just now with the upset in the business--but we'll do it. +Get out of the way. See something new. There, now, old girl," he coaxed, +patting her on the shoulder, "brace up and shake it off. Nothing but +nerves." He added, as he moved back toward his stand by the fireplace, +"Get 'em myself." + +"Do you, Archie? Like that? Like--like what I said?" + +He had resumed his former attitude, his feet wide apart, his hands +behind his back, his head hanging, when he muttered, "Like the devil." + +She was not sure how much mental discomfort was indicated by the phrase, +so she sat looking at him distressfully. Being unused to grappling with +grave questions of right and wrong, she found the process difficult. It +was like wandering through morasses in which she could neither sink nor +swim, till she found herself emerging on solid, familiar ground again +with the reconciling observation, "Well, I do need a few things." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +It was not till Rosie was well enough to go listlessly back to work, and +the Mastermans had sailed, that Lois found her own emotions ripe for +speech. During the intervening fortnight she and Thor had lived their +ordinary life together, but on a basis which each knew to be temporary. +While he kept his office hours in the mornings and visited his patients +in the afternoons, and she busied herself with household tasks or +superintended the gardener in replanting the faded tulip-beds with phlox +and sweet-peas and dahlias; while she sewed or did embroidery in the +evenings and listened to him reading aloud, or--since the nights were +growing warm--they sat silent on an upper balcony, or talked about the +stars, each knew that the inner tension would never be relaxed till it +was broken. + +If there was any doubt of that it was on Thor's side. Because she said +nothing, there were minutes when he hoped she had nothing to say. +Unaware of a woman's capacity for keeping the surface unruffled while +storm may be raging beneath, he beguiled himself at times into thinking +that his fears of her acuteness had been false alarms. If so, he could +only be thankful. He wanted to forget. If he had had a prayer to put up +on the subject, it would have been that she would allow him to forget. +So, as day followed day, regularly, peacefully, with an abstention on +her part from comment that could give him pain, he began to indulge the +hope--a hope which he knew in his heart to be baseless--that she had +nothing to remember. + +When he was called on at last to face the realities of the case the +moment was as unexpected to him as it was to her. She had not meant to +bring the subject up on that particular evening. She had made no +program--not because she was uncertain as to what she ought to say, but +because the impulse to say it lagged. In the end it came to her without +warning, surprising herself no less than him. + +"Thor, were you going to give money to Rosie Fay?" + +The croaking of frogs seemed part of the silence in which she waited for +his answer. The warm air was heavy with the scents of lilac, +honeysuckle, and syringa. As they stood by the railing of the balcony +that connected the exterior of their two rooms, she erect, he leaning +outward with an arm stretched toward the sky, a great white lilac, whose +roots were in the early days of the Willoughby farm, threw up its +tribute of blossom almost to their feet. The lights of the village being +banked under verdure, the eye sought the stars. + +Thor loved the stars. On moonless nights he spent hours in contemplation +of their beckoning mystery. From Auriga and Taurus in January, he +followed them round to Aries and Perseus in December, getting a beam on +his inward way. Just now, with the aid of a pencil, he was tracing for +his wife's benefit the lines of the rising Virgin. Lois could almost +discern the graceful, recumbent figure, winged, noble, lying on the +eastern horizon, Spica's sweet, silvery light a-tremble in her hand. She +was actually thinking how white for a star was Spica's radiance, when +the words slipped out: "Thor, were you going to give money to Rosie +Fay?" + +He suppressed the natural question concerning her sources of information +in order to say, as quietly as he could, "If--if Claude had married her +I was going to--to help them out." + +She resented what she considered his evasiveness. "That isn't just what +I asked." + +"Even so, it tells you what you want to know. Doesn't it?" + +"Not everything I want to know." + +"Why should you want to know--everything?" + +"Because--" It struck her that her reason could be best expressed by +shifting her ground. "Thor dear, exactly why did you want to marry me?" + +The change in tactics troubled him. "I think I told you that at the +time." + +"You told me you came to me as to a--to a shelter." + +"And as to a home. I said that, too, Lois." + +"Yes," she agreed, slowly, "you said that, too." A brief interval gave +emphasis to the succeeding words: "But did you think it was enough?" + +"I couldn't judge of that. I could only say--what I had to +say--truthfully." + +"Oh, I know it was--truthfully. It's--it's just the trouble. You see, +Thor," she went on, unsteadily, "I thought you were telling me only some +of what was in your heart--and it was all." + +"I'm not certain that I know what you mean by all. What I felt was--so +much." He added, reproachfully, "It's surely a great deal when a man +finds a woman his refuge from trouble." + +"That's perfectly true, Thor; and there's no one in the world who +wouldn't be touched by it. But in the case of a wife, she can hardly +help thinking of the kind of trouble he's escaping from." + +"But so long as he escapes from it--" + +She interrupted quickly: "Yes; so long as he does. But when he doesn't? +When, instead of leaving his trouble outside the refuge, he brings it +in?" + +He took an uneasy turn up and down the balcony. "Look here, Lois; have +you any particular motive in bringing this up now?" + +"Yes, Thor. It's the same motive I had a few weeks ago, only that I +haven't been sure of it till to-night. I want you"--she hesitated, but +urged herself on--"I want you--to let me go away." + +"Go away?" he cried, sharply. "Go away where?" + +"I don't know yet. Anywhere. There are one or two visits I might +make--or I could find a place. That part of it doesn't matter." + +"But when you wanted to go away a few weeks ago--" + +"It was to--to take _her_. I shouldn't need to do that now, because +she's better. In a way she's all right--all right, only changed." + +It was to make a show of not being afraid to mention Rosie that he said, +"Changed in what way?" + +"Well, you'll see." She decided that for his own sake it was kindness to +be cruel, and so added: "Changed to a healthier frame of mind. She's +very much ashamed of what she tried to do, and wants to begin again on +a--on a less foolish basis. So," she continued, reverting to her former +point, "my going away wouldn't now have anything to do with her. It +would be on my own account. I want to--to think." + +"Think about what?" + +"Well, chiefly about you." + +He knew they were nearing the heart of the question, and so went up to +it boldly. "To wonder--whether or not--I--love you? Is that it?" + +"N-no; not exactly." She allowed a second to pass before letting slip +the words: "Rather the other way." + +"The other way--how?" + +She spoke very softly. "Whether or not--I love _you_." + +"Oh!" His tone was as soft as hers, but with the ejaculation he moved +his big hands about his body like a man feeling for his wound. "I +thought you did." + +"Yes, I thought so, too--till--till lately. Perhaps I do, even now. I +don't know. It's what I want to get away for--to think--to see. I can't +do either when you're so near me. You--you overwhelm me--you crush me. I +don't get the free use of my mind." + +He turned again to pace the narrow limits of the balcony. "If you ever +did love me, Lois," he said, in a voice she hardly recognized because of +the new thrill in it, "I've done nothing to deserve the withdrawal +of--of your affection." + +She answered while still keeping her eyes absently on Spica's white +effulgence. "I know you haven't, Thor dear. But that's not the point. +It's rather that I have to go back and--and revise everything--form new +conceptions." + +He paused, standing behind her. "I don't think I get your idea." + +"No, probably not. You couldn't without knowing what it all used to mean +to me." + +"_Used_ to mean?" + +"Yes, Thor; used to mean in a way that it doesn't now, and never can any +more." + +There was pain in his voice as he said, "That's hard, Lois--damnably +hard." + +"I know, Thor dear. I wouldn't say it if I hadn't made up my mind that I +must--that I ought to. I've had a great shock--which has been in its way +a great humiliation--but I could go on keeping it to myself if I hadn't +come to the conclusion that it's best for you to know. Men are so slow +to fathom what their wives are thinking of--" + +"Well, then, tell me." + +She turned slowly round from her contemplation of the stars, a hand on +each side grasping the low rail against which she leaned. The spangles +on a scarf over her bare shoulders glittered iridescently in the light +streaming from her room. Of Thor she could discern little more than the +whiteness of his face and of his evening shirt-front from the obscurity +in which he kept himself. A minute or more elapsed before she went on. + +"You see, Thor, I didn't fall in love with you first of all for your own +sake; it was because--because I thought you'd fallen in love with me. +That's a sort of confession, isn't it? It may be something I ought to be +ashamed of, and perhaps I am--a little. But you'd understand how it +could happen if you were to realize what it was to me that a man should +fall in love with me at all." + +He tried to interrupt her, but she insisted on going on in her own way. +"I wasn't attractive. I never had been. During the years when I was +going out I never received what people call attentions--not from any +one. I don't say that I didn't suffer on account of it. I did--but I'd +begun to take the suffering philosophically. I'd made up my mind that no +one would ever care for me, and I was getting used to the +idea--when--when you came." + +Because her voice trembled she pressed her handkerchief against her +lips, while Thor stood silent in the darkness of the far end of the +balcony. + +"And when you did come, Thor dear, it couldn't but seem to me the most +amazing thing that ever happened. I didn't allow myself to think that +you were in love with me--I didn't dare--at first. It made me happy that +you should think it worth while just to come and see me, to talk to me, +to tell me some of the things you hoped to do. That in itself--" + +She broke off again, losing something of her self-command. In the stress +of physical agitation she drew the spangled scarf over her shoulders and +stepped forward into the shaft of light that fell through the open +French window of her room. + +"But, finally, Thor, I came to the conclusion that you must love me. I +couldn't explain your kindness in any other way. Believe me, I didn't +accept that way till--till it seemed the only one, but when I did, well, +it wasn't merely pride and happiness that I felt--it was something +more." A sob in her throat obliged her to interrupt herself again, while +the croaking of frogs continued. "And so, Thor dear, love came to me, +too. It came because I thought you brought it; but now that I see you +didn't bring it, you can understand why I should be in doubt as to--as +to whether or not--it really did come." + +Since he recognized the futility of making an immediate response, they +stood confronting each other in silence. + +She took another step nearer him. "But what I'm not in any doubt about +at all is the scorn I feel for myself for ever having cherished the +delusion. If I'd been a woman with--with more claim, let us say, to +being loved--" + +"Lois, for God's sake, don't say that!" + +"But I must say it, Thor. It's at the bottom of all I mean. I was weak +and foolish enough to think that in spite of the things I lacked a man +had given me his heart--when he hadn't." + +"Lois, I can't stand this. Please don't go on." + +"But I have to stand it, Thor. I have to stand it day and night, without +ever getting away from the thought of it. I have to go back and puzzle +and wonder and speculate as to why you did what you've done to me. I see +things this way, Thor: There was a time when you thought you might come +to care for me. You really thought it. And then--something happened--and +you were not so sure. Later, you felt that you couldn't--that you never +would. But the something that happened happened the wrong way for +you--and papa broke down as he did--and I was in danger of being +poor--and you were kind and generous--and--you weren't very happy as +things were--you told me so, didn't you? And--and--in short--you thought +you might as well. You knew I expected it--or had expected it once--and +so--so you did it. Tell me, Thor dear; am I so very far wrong? Wasn't it +like that?" + +He raised his head defiantly. "And if I admitted that it was like that, +what then?" + +"Oh, nothing. I should merely ask you the same thing--to let me go +away." + +"Away for how long?" + +She reflected. "Till I could establish a new basis on which to come +back." + +"I don't know what you mean by a new basis." + +"I dare say I don't mean anything very different from the compromise +most people have to make--a little while after marriage; only that in my +case the necessity comes more as--a shock. You see, Thor, you're not the +man--not the man I thought you were. I must have a little while to get +used to that." + +He stirred uneasily. "You find I'm--I'm not so good a man." + +"Oh, I don't say that. I don't say that at all. You're just as good. +Only you're not--" She went up to him, laying her hands on his +shoulders--"Oh, you don't understand. I loved the other Thor. I'm not +sure that I love this one. I don't know. Perhaps I do. I can't tell till +I get away from you. Let me go. It may not be for long." + +She stepped back from him toward the window of her room, through which +she seemed about to pass. He was obliged to speak in order to retain +her. + +"Look here, Lois," he began, not knowing exactly how he meant to +continue. She turned with a foot on the threshold, her hand on the knob +of the open window-door. The pose, set off by the simplicity of the old +black evening dress she was in the habit of wearing when they were +alone, displayed the commanding beauty of her figure to a degree which +he had never observed before. He remembered afterward that something +shot through him, something he had associated hitherto only with +memories of little Rosie Fay, but for the minute he was too intensely +preoccupied for more than a subconscious attention. She was waiting and +he must say something to justify his appeal to her. "It's all right," +were the words he found. "I'm willing. That is, I'm willing in +principle. Only"--he stammered on--"only I don't want you to go roaming +the country by yourself. Why not let me go? I could go away for a while, +and you could stay here." He warmed to the idea as soon as he began to +express it. "This is your home, rather than mine. It's your father's +house. You've lived in it for years. I couldn't stay here without +you--while you're used to it without me. I'll go. I'll go--and I'll not +come back till you tell me. There. Will that do?" + +The advantages of the arrangement were evident. She answered slowly. +"It--it might. But what about your patients?" + +"Oh, Hill would look after them. He said he would if I wanted to attend +the medical congress at Minneapolis. I told him I didn't, but--but"--he +tapped the rail to emphasize the timeliness of the idea--"but, by +George! I'll do it. You'd have three weeks at least--and as many more as +you ask for." + +She gave the suggestion a minute's thought. "Very well, Thor. Since the +congress is going on--and your time wouldn't be altogether thrown +away--You see, all I want is a little quiet--a little solitude, +perhaps--just to realize where I am--and to see how--to begin again--if +we ever can." + +She closed one side of the window, softly and slowly. Her hands were on +the other _battant_ when he uttered a little throaty cry. "Aren't you +going to say good night?" + +Standing on the low step of the window, she was sufficiently above him +to be able to fold his head in her arms, to pillow it on her breast, +while she imprinted a long kiss on the thick, dark mass of his hair. +Having released him, she withdrew, closing the window gently and pulling +down the blinds. + +Outside in the darkness Thor turned once more to where the Virgin, +recumbent, noble, outlined and crowned with stars, Spica the wheat-ear +in the hand hanging by her side, rose slowly toward mid-heaven. +Irrelevantly there came back to his memory something said months before +by his uncle Sim, but which he had not recalled since the night he heard +it. "You may make an awful fool of yourself, Thor, but you'll be on the +side of the angels--and the angels will be on yours." + +"Humph!" he snorted to himself. "That's all very fine. But--where are +the angels?" And again he sought the stars. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +It was Jim Breen who told Lois that Jasper Fay's tenancy of the land +north of the pond was definitely ended. "Want a nice fern-tree, Mrs. +Masterman?" he had asked, briskly. "Two or three beauties for sale at +Mr. Fay's place. Look dandy in the corner of a big room. Beat palms and +rubber-plants like a rose'll beat a bur. Get a nice one cheap at Mr. +Fay's." + +Lois wondered. "Is Mr. Fay selling off?" + +"Well, not exactly. Father's selling what he don't want to cart over to +our place. Didn't you know? Father's bought out Mr. Fay's stock. Mr. +Fay's got to beat it by July ninth." + +As Lois looked into the honest face she made the reflection with a +little jealous pang that Rosie Fay was just the type that men like Jim +Breen fell in love with. There was something in men like Jim Breen, in +men like Thor Masterman--the big, generous, tender men--that impelled +them toward piteous little creatures like Rosie Fay, driven probably by +the protective yearning in themselves. It placed the tall women, the +strong women, the women whose first impulse was to give to others rather +than to get anything for themselves, at a disadvantage. In response to +the information just received, she said, anxiously, "Why, Jim, tell me +about it." + +He drew from the wagon a wooden "flat" filled with zinnia plantlings, +like so many little green rosettes. "Hadley B. Hobson owns that property +now, Mrs. Masterman," he said, cheerily, depositing the "flat" on the +ground. "Going to build. Didn't you know? Have a dandy place there. Had +architects and landscape-gardeners prowling 'round for the last two +weeks, and old man Fay won't allow one of them on the grounds. You'd die +laughing to see him chasing them off with a spade or a rake or whatever +he has in his hand. His property till July ninth, he says, and he +wouldn't let so much as a crow fly over it if it belonged to Hadley B. +Hobson. You'd die laughing." + +"I don't see how you can laugh when he's in such trouble, poor man." + +"Oh, well," Jim drawled, optimistically, "he won't do so bad. He can +always have a job with father. Father's mingled with him ever since the +two of them were young. If Mr. Fay hadn't been so moonstruck he'd have +had just the same chance as father had." + +Lois chose a moment which seemed to be discreet in order to say: "I know +Rosie quite well. I've seen a good deal of her during the past few +months." + +"Rosie's all right, Mrs. Masterman," Jim answered, suddenly and a trifle +aggressively. "I don't care what any one says--she's all right." + +"I know she's all right, Jim. She's one of the most remarkable +characters I've ever met. I often wish she'd let me help her more." + +"Well, you hold on to her, Mrs. Masterman," he advised, with a curious, +pleading quality in his voice. "You'll find she'll be worth it. And if +ever a girl was up against it--she is." + +"I will hold on to her, Jim." + +"It's all rot what people are saying that she'd gone melancholy because +she took that fool jump into the pond. I know how she did it. She'd got +to the point where she couldn't help it, where she just couldn't stand +any more--with the business all gone to pieces and Matt coming out of +jail, and everything else. Who wouldn't have done it? I'd have done it +myself, if I'd been a girl. She'd got worked up, Mrs. Masterman, and +when girls get worked up, why, they'll do anything. I believe the +shock's done her good. Sort of cleared her mind like." + +Lois tried to be tactful. "Then you see her?" + +"We-ll--on and off." He grew appealing and confidential. "I don't mind +telling you, Mrs. Masterman," he began, as if acknowledging an +indiscretion, "I went with Rosie once. Went with her for over a year." + +"Did you, Jim?" + +He leaned nonchalantly against Maud's barrel-shaped body, his face +taking on an expression of boyish regret. "And I'd have gone on going +with her if--if Rosie hadn't--hadn't kind of dropped me." + +"Oh, but, Jim, why should she?" + +"We-ll, I can understand it. Rosie's high-toned, you know, Mrs. +Masterman, and she's got a magnificent education. I guess you wouldn't +come across them more refined, not in the most tip-top families. Pretty! +My Lord! pretty isn't the word for it. And I think she grows prettier. +And work! Why, Mrs. Masterman, if that girl was at the head of a plant +like ours there wouldn't be anything for father and me to do but sit in +a chair and rock." + +"I'm glad she's willing to see you," Lois ventured. + +He sprang to his seat behind Maud. "Well, I guess she needs all the +friends she's got." + +Lois ventured still further. "I'm sure she needs friends like you, Jim." + +There was a flare in his eye as he fumbled for the reins. "Well, she's +only got to stoop and pick me up. Git along, Maud. Gee!" In obedience to +his pull Maud arched her heavy neck and executed a sidewise movement +uncertainly. "She knows I'm there," he continued, as the wagon creaked +round. "Been there ever since she dropped me. Gee! Maud, gee! What you +thinking of? I've never gone with any one else, Mrs. Masterman--not +really _gone_ with them. Rosie's been the only one so far. Well, +good-by. And you _will_ hold on to her, Mrs. Masterman, now, won't you?" + +"Indeed I will, Jim--and--and you must do the same." + +He threw her a rueful look over his shoulder, as Maud paced toward the +gate. "Oh, I'm on the job every time." + +The visit gave her a number of themes for thought, of which the most +insistent was the power some women had of drawing out the love of men. +For the rest of the day her gardening became no more than a mechanical +directing of the setting out of seedlings, while she meditated on the +problem of attractiveness. + +How was it that women of small endowments could captivate men at sight, +and that others of inexhaustible potentialities--she was not afraid to +rank herself among them--went unrecognized and undesired? If Rosie Fay +had been content with the honors of a local belle, she could have had +her choice among half the young men in the village. What was her gift? +What was the gift of that great sisterhood, comprising perhaps a third +of the women in the world, to whom the majority of men turned +instinctively, ignoring, or partially ignoring, the rest? Was it mere +sheep-stupidity in men themselves that sent one where the others went, +without capacity for individual discernment?--or was there a secret call +that women like Rosie Fay could give which brought them too much of that +for which other women were left famishing? + +She put the question that evening to Dr. Sim Masterman, who had dropped +in to see her, as he not infrequently did after his supper, now that +Thor was away. Indeed, his visits were so regular as to make her afraid +that with his curious social or spiritual second sight he suspected more +in Thor's absence than zeal for the science of medicine. + +"Why do men fall in love with inferior women?--become infatuated with +them?" + +He answered while sprawling before the library fire, his long legs +apart, his fingers interlocked over his old tan waistcoat. "No use to +discuss love with a woman. She can't get hold of it by the right end." + +"Oh, but I thought that was just what she could do--one of the few +capabilities universally conceded her." + +"All wrong, my dear. A man occasionally understands love, but a woman +never--or so rarely that it hardly counts. Gets it backward--wrong end +first--nine women out of ten." + +She looked up from her sewing. "I do wish you'd tell me what you mean by +that." + +"Clear enough. Love is in the first place the instinct to love some one +else, and only in the second place the desire to be loved in return. Ten +to one, the woman puts the cart before the horse. She's thinking of the +return before she's done anything to get it. She don't want to love half +as much as to be _loved_--and so she finds herself left." + +Lois went on with her sewing again, but she was uneasy. She thought of +her confession to Thor. Could it be that there was something wrong with +her love as well as with his? It was to see what he had to say further +that she asked, "Finds herself left in what way?" + +"Make 'emselves too sentimental," he grumbled on. "In love with love. +They like that expression, and it does 'em harm. Sets 'em to +wool-gathering--with the heart. Makes 'em think love more important than +it is." + +"It's generally supposed to be rather important." + +"Rather's the word. But it's not the only thing of which that can be +said--and more. Women reason as if it was. Make their lives depend on +it. Mistake. If you can get it, well and good; if not--there's +compensation." + +She lifted her head not less in amazement than in indignation. +"Compensation for having to do without _love_?" + +"Heaps." + +"And may I ask what?" + +"No use telling you. Wouldn't believe me. Be like telling a man who's +fond of his wine that he'd be just as well off with water." + +She said, musingly, "Yes; love _is_ the wine of life, isn't it?" + +"Wine that maketh glad the heart of man--and can also play the deuce +with it." + +She sat for some time smiling to herself with faint amusement. "Do you +really disapprove of love, Uncle Sim?" she asked, at last. + +He yawned loudly and stretched himself. "What 'd be the good of that? +Don't disapprove of it any more than I disapprove of the circulation of +the blood. Force in life--of course! Treasure to be valued and peril to +be controlled. To play with it requires skill; to utilize it calls for +wisdom." + +She had again been smiling gently to herself when she said, "I doubt if +_you_ can ever have been in love." + +"Got nothing to do with it. Not obliged to have been insane to +understand insanity. As a matter of fact, best brain specialists have +always kept their senses." + +"Oh, then, you rate love with insanity." + +"Depends on the kind. Some sorts not far from it. Obsession. +Brain-storm. Supernormal excitement. Passing commotion of the senses. +Comes as suddenly as a summer tempest--thunder and lightning and +rain--and goes the same way." + +"Oh, but would you call that love?" + +"You bet I'd call it love. Love the poets write about. Grand passion. +Whirls along like a tornado--makes a noise and kicks up dust--and all +over in an afternoon. That's the real thing. If you can't love like +that, you can't love at all--not in the grand manner. The going just as +vital as the coming. Very essence of it that it shouldn't last. That's +why Shakespeare kills his Romeo and his Juliet at the end of the +play--and Wagner his Tristan and his Isolde. Nothing else to do with +'em. People of that kind go through just the same set of high jinks six +or eight months later with some one else; and in poetry that wouldn't +do. Romantic lovers love by crises, and never pass twice the same way. +People who don't do that--and lots of 'em don't--needn't think they can +be romantic. They ain't." + +"But surely there _is_ a love--" + +"Of the nice, tame, house-keeping variety. Of course! And it bears the +same relation to the other kind as a glass of milk to a bottle of +champagne. Mind you, I like milk. I approve of it. In the long run it +'ll beat champagne any day--especially where you expect babies. I'm only +saying that it doesn't come of the same vintage as Veuve Cliquot. Women +often wish it did; and when it doesn't they make things uncomfortable. +No use. Can't make a Tristan out of good, honest, faithful William +Dobbin, nohow. The thing with the fizz is bound to go flat; and the +thing that stands by you, to be relied on all through life, won't have +any fizz." + +Feeling at liberty to reject these vaporings as those of an eccentric +old man who could know little or nothing on the subject, Lois reverted +to the aspect of the question which had been in her mind when she +started the theme. "You still haven't answered what I asked--as to why +men fall in love with inferior women, and often with a kind of +infatuation they hardly ever feel for the good ones." + +He took longer than usual to reflect. "Part of man's dual nature. Paul +knew a good deal about that. Puts the new man in contrast to the old +man--the inner man in contrast to the outer man--the spiritual man in +contrast to the carnal. The old, outer, carnal man falls in love with +one kind of person, and the new, inner, spiritual man with another. +Depends on which element is the stronger. The higher falls in love with +the higher type; the lower with the lower." + +"But suppose neither is stronger than the other?--that they're equally +balanced--and--?" + +"And in conflict. One of the commonest sights in life. Known fellows in +love with two women at the same time--with a good wife at home, mother +of the children, and all that--and another kind of woman somewhere else. +True, in a way, to 'em both. Struggle of the two natures." + +Lois was distressed. "Oh, but that kind of thing can't be love." + +"Can't be? 'Tis. Ask any one who's ever felt it--who's been dragged by +it both ways at once. He'll tell you whether it's love or not--and each +kind the real thing--while it lasts." + +It was the expression "while it lasts" that Lois most resented. It +reduced love to a phase--to a passing experience that might be repeated +on an indefinite number of occasions. It was more than a depreciation; +it had the nature of a sacrilege. And yet no later than the following +day she received a shock that showed her there was something to be said +in its favor. + + * * * * * + +She had gone nominally to see Rosie, but really to verify for herself +Jim Breen's report of the collapse of Jasper Fay's little industry. She +found it hard to believe that after Claude's conduct toward Rosie her +father-in-law could have the heart to bring further woe upon a family +that had already had enough. Nothing but seeing for herself could coerce +her incredulity. + +She had seen for herself. Over the little place which had always been +neat even when it was forlorn there was now the stamp of desolation. The +beds which had been seeded or planted a month before, and which should +now have been weeded, trimmed, and hoed, were growing with an untended +recklessness that had all the proverbial resemblance to moral breakdown. +In the cucumber-house the vines had become rusty and limp, sagging from +the twines on which they climbed in debauched indifference to +sightliness. The roof of the hothouse that had contained the flowers had +a deep gash in the glass which it was no longer worth while to mend. +There was no yellow-brown plume from the furnace chimney, and the very +windows of the old house with the mansard roof had in their stare the +glazed, unseeing expression of eyes in which there is death. Inside, +Mrs. Fay was packing up. Battered old trunks that had long been stored +in some moldy hiding-place stood agape; a packing-case held the place of +honor in a forbidding "best room" into which Lois had never looked +before. Mrs. Fay had little to say. Tears welled into her cold eyes with +the attempt to say anything. Outside, Fay himself had nothing to say at +all. Lois had accosted him, and though he had ceased to regard her as an +enemy, he stood grimly silent as his only response to her words of +consolation. + +"I know things will come all right again, Mr. Fay. They must. They look +dark now; but haven't you often noticed that after the worst times in +our lives we're able to look back and see that the very thing that +seemed most cruel was the turning-point at which a change for the better +began? You must surely have noticed that--a man with so much experience +as you." + +He looked vaguely about him, standing in patience till she had said her +say, but giving no indication that her words had anything to do with +him. The change in his appearance shocked her. Everything in his face +had taken on what was to her a terrible significance. The starry +mysticism had vanished from the eyes to be replaced by a look that was +at once hunted and searching, vindictive and yet woebegone. The mouth +was sunken as the mouths of old men become from the loss of teeth, and +the thin lips which used to be kindly and vacillating were drawn with a +hard, unflinching tightness. The skin that had long been gray was now +ghostly, with the shadowy, not quite earthly, hue of things about to +disappear. + +She had talked to him for some minutes before he woke to animation. At +sight of two young men--surveyor's clerks, perhaps--who had set up in +the roadway what might have been a camera on a tripod, or more probably +a theodolite, through which they were squinting over the buildings and +the slope of the land, he left her abruptly. With a hoe in his hand he +crept forward, taking his place behind a clump of syringa that grew near +the gate, ready to strike if either of the lads ventured to put foot on +his property. It was the situation at which, according to light-hearted +Jim Breen, you would have died laughing; but Lois had difficulty in +keeping back her tears. + +She found Rosie in the hothouse, of which the interior corresponded to +the gash in the roof. All the smaller plants had been removed, +disclosing the empty, ugly, earth-stained, water-stained wooden +stagings. Only some half-dozen fern-trees remained of all the former +beauty. + +But even here Rosie was at work, sitting at the old desk, which, +deprived of its sheltering greenery, was shabbier than ever, making out +bills. There was still money owing to her father, and it was important +that it should be collected. Over and over again she wrote her neat +"Acct. rendered," while she added as a postscript in every case: "Please +remit. Going out of business." + +And yet, if there was anything on the dilapidated premises that could +cheer or encourage it was Rosie. With the enforced rest and seclusion +following on her fruitless dash to escape, her prettiness had become +more delicate, less worn. Shame at her folly had put into her greenish +eyes a pleading timidity which became a quivering, babyish tremble when +it reached the lips. The contrast which the girl thus presented to her +parents, as well as something that was visibly developing within her, +enabled Lois to affirm that which hitherto she had only hoped or +suspected, that the wild leap into the pond had worked some mysterious +good. + +Like her father and mother, Rosie had little to say. The meeting was +embarrassing. There were too many unuttered and unutterable thoughts on +both sides to make intercourse easy or agreeable. All they could achieve +was to be sorry for each other, in a measure to respect each other, and +to make up by an enforced, slightly perfunctory, good will for what they +lacked in the way of spontaneity. + +Lois took the chair on which Rosie had been seated at the desk, while +Rosie leaned against a corner of the empty staging. It furnished the +latter with something to say to be able to tell the new plans of the +family. Her father had taken a job with Mr. Breen. It wouldn't be like +managing his own place, but it would be better than nothing. He had also +rented a tenement in a "three-family" house on the Thorley estate, to +which they would move as soon as possible. It was important to make the +change, so as to be settled when Matt came out of jail. Both Rosie and +her mother were glad that he wouldn't be free till the 10th of July, +because the lease terminated on the 9th. He would return, therefore, to +absolutely new conditions, and there would be no necessity of going over +any of the old ground again. As far as they were concerned--Rosie and +her mother--the sooner they went the better they would like it, since +they had to go; but "poor father," Rosie said, with a catch in her +voice, "won't leave till the last minute has struck. Even then," she +added, "I think they'll have to drive him off. This place has been his +life. I don't think he'll last long after he's had to leave it." + +Having given sympathetic views on these points as they came up, Lois +rose to depart. She had actually shaken hands and turned away when Rosie +seemed to utter a little cry. That is, her words came out with the +emotion of a cry. "Mrs. Masterman! I want to ask you something!" + +Lois turned in surprise. "Yes, Rosie? What?" + +With one hand Rosie clung to the staging for support. The back of the +other hand was pressed against her lips. She could hardly speak. "Is--is +Claude staying away on my account?" Before Lois could answer, Rosie +added, "Because he--he needn't." + +Lois wondered. "What do you mean by that, Rosie?" + +"Only that--that he needn't. I--I don't care whether he stays away or +not." + +Lois took a step back toward the girl. "You mean that it doesn't make +any difference to you what he does?" + +She shook her head. "No; not now; not--not any more." + +"That is, you've given him up?" + +Rosie sought for an explanation. "I haven't given him up. I +only--_see_." + +"You see what, Rosie?" + +"Oh, I don't know. It's--it's like having had a dream--a strange, awful +dream--and waking from it." + +"Waking from it?" + +Rosie nodded. She made a further effort to explain. "After I--I +did--what I did--that day at Duck Rock--everything was different. I +can't describe it. It was like dying--and coming back. It was like--like +waking." + +"Do you mean that what happened before seemed--unreal?" + +She nodded again. "Yes, that's it. It was like a play." But she +corrected herself quickly. "No; it wasn't like a play. It was more than +that. It was like a dream--an awful dream--but a dream you like--a dream +you'd go through again. No; you wouldn't go through it again--it would +kill you." She grew incoherent. "Oh, I don't know--I don't know. It's +gone--just gone. I don't say it wasn't real. It _was_ real. It was a +kind of frenzy. It got hold of me. It got hold of me body and soul. I +couldn't think of anything else--while it lasted." + +Lois was pained. "Oh, but, Rosie, love can't come and go like that." + +"Can't it? Then it wasn't love." But she contradicted herself again. +"Yes, it _was_ love. It was love--while it lasted." + +While it lasted! While it lasted! The phrase seemed to be on every one's +lips. There was distress in Lois's voice as she said, "But if it was +love, Rosie, it ought to have lasted." + +And Rosie seemed to agree with her. "Yes, it ought to have. But it +didn't. It went away. No, it didn't go away; it just--it +just--_wasn't_." She wrung her hands, struggling with the difficulty she +found in explaining herself. "After that day at Duck Rock it was +like--it was like the breaking of a spell that was on me. Everything was +different. It was like seeing through plain daylight again after looking +through colored glass. I didn't want the things I'd been wanting. They +were foolish to me--I _saw_ they were foolish--and--and impossible. But +it wasn't as if they had died; it was as if I had--and come back." + +It was on behalf of love that Lois felt driven to make a protest. "And +yet, Rosie, if you were to see Claude again--" + +"No, no, no," the girl cried, excitedly; "I don't want to see him. He +needn't stay away--not on my account--but I sha'n't see him if I can +help it. It would be like dying the second time. All the same, he +needn't be afraid of me; and his family needn't be afraid of me. I want +to--to forget them all." + +Enlightenment came slowly to Lois because of her unwillingness to be +convinced of the heart's capriciousness. That love could be likened to +brain-storm--obsession--the tornado whose rage dies out in an +afternoon--was a wound to her tenderest beliefs. That the natural man +must be taken into consideration as well as the spiritual also did +violence to what she would have liked to make a serene, smooth theory of +life. She stood looking long at the girl, studying her subconsciously, +before she was able to say, calmly: "Very well, Rosie, dear. I'll let +Claude know. I can get his address, and I'll write to him." + +But another surprise was in store for her. She was near the door leading +from the hothouse when she became aware that Rosie was behind her, and +heard the same little gasping cry as before. "Mrs. Masterman! I want to +ask you something!" Lois had hardly looked round when the girl went on +again. "You know father and mother. They think the world of you--mother +especially. Do you suppose they'd mind very much if I--if I turned?" + +Lois was puzzled. "If you did what, Rosie?" + +"If I turned; if I turned Catholic." + +"Oh!" + +The reformed tradition was strong in Lois. She was prepared to defend it +by argument and with affection. For a minute she was almost on the point +of stating the historical Protestant position when she was deterred by +the thought of Dr. Sim. What would he have said to Rosie? She remembered +suddenly something that he once did say: "If you can seize any one +aspect of the Christian religion, do it--for the least of them all will +save you." + +Remembering this, Lois withheld her arguments, asking the non-committal +question, "Why should you think of doing that?" + +Rosie flushed. "Oh, I don't know. I've been"--she hung her head--"I've +been pretty bad, you know. I've told lies--and I--I tried to kill +myself--and everything." + +"And you think you'd get more help that way than any other?" + +"Oh, I don't know. I went twice lately--not here--in town. It frightened +me. I--I liked it." + +Had Lois dared she would have asked if Jim Breen had inspired this +sudden change, but she said, merely: "Oh, I don't believe your father +and mother would feel badly in the end--not if it brought comfort to +you, Rosie dear. Is it that you want me to talk to them?--to help you +out?" + +Rosie nodded silently, and with face averted in a kind of shame. + +"Very well, then, I will." She felt it due to her own convictions to +add: "Perhaps I can do it all the better because--because my personal +opinions are the other way. They'll see I'm only seeking whatever may +make for your happiness." There was silence for a few seconds before she +said, in conclusion, "And oh! Rosie dear, I do hope you'll be happy, +after all--all that's been so hard for you." + +Rosie was too strong and self-contained to cry, but there was a mist in +her eyes as they shook hands again and parted. + + * * * * * + +That night Lois wrote to her husband: "You ask me, dear Thor, if I see +my way yet, and frankly I can't say that I do. I begin, however, to +wonder if there is not a reason for my remaining puzzled and so long in +the dark. I begin to ask if I know what love is--if anybody knows what +it is. Do you? If so, what is it? Is it the same thing for every one? or +does it differ with individuals? Is it a temporary thing?--or a +permanent thing?--or does it matter? Is it one of the highest promptings +we have?--or one of the lowest?--or is it that primary impulse of +animate nature which when developed and perfected leads to God? Is there +a spiritual man and a carnal man, each with a love that can conflict +with the love of the other? Is the one man on the side of the angels, as +Uncle Sim would say, and the other man on that of the flesh, till the +stronger gains the victory? Or is there something in love of the nature +of obsession? Does it come and go like the tornado--as violent in its +passage, but as quickly passed? Thor, darling, I begin to be afraid of +love. If we are to start again I want it to be on some other ground--a +new ground--a ground we don't know anything about as yet, but which +perhaps we shall discover." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +Thorley Masterman pondered on the words Lois had written him as he +tramped along the bluffs above the Mississippi, with the towers and +spires of Minneapolis looming like battlements through the haze of an +afternoon at the end of June. He had left the conference on new methods +of treating the thyroid gland which was being held in St. Paul in order +to think his position out. Having motored over from his hotel in +Minneapolis, he preferred to "tramp it" back. The glorious wooded way on +the St. Paul side of the river was in itself an invitation to his +strong, striding limbs, while the wine of Western air and the stimulus +of Western energy quickened the savage outdoor impulse so ready to leap +in his blood. The song of mating birds quickened it, too, and the +romance of the river gliding through the gorge below, and the beauty of +the cities eying each other like embattled queens from headland across +to headland and through the splendor of the promise of a gold-and-purple +sunset. + +It was a great setting for great thoughts, inspiring ideas so large that +when he reached his hotel he found them too big to reduce easily to +paper. + +"You ask me what love is, and say you don't know. I'm more daring than +you in that I think I do know. I know two or three things about it, even +if I don't know all. + +"For one thing, I know that no one can do more than say what love is for +himself. You can't say what it is for me, or isn't, or must be, or ought +to be. That's my secret. I can't always share it, or at any rate share +it all, even with the person I love. But neither can I say what it is, +or isn't, or should be, or must be, for you. You have your secret. No +two people love in the same way, or get precisely the same kind of joy +or sorrow from loving. Since love is the flower of personality, it has +the same infinite variety that personalities possess. We give one thing +and we get back another. Do not some of our irritations--I'm not +speaking of you and me in particular--arise from the fact that, giving +one thing, we expect to get the same thing back, when all the while no +one else has that special quality to offer? The flower is different +according to the plant that produces it. When the pine-tree loved the +palm there was more than the distance to make the one a mystery to the +other. + +"Of the two things essential to love, the first, so it seems to me, is +that what one gives should be one's best--the very blossom of one's +soul. It may have the hot luxuriance of the hibiscus, or the flame of +the wild azalea in the woods, or no more than the mildly scented, +flowerless bloom of the elm or the linden that falls like manna in the +roadway. Each has its beauties and its limitations; but it is worth +noticing that each serves its purpose in life's infinite profusion as +nothing else could serve it to that particular end. The elm lends +something to the hibiscus--the hibiscus to the elm. Neither can expect +back what it gives to the other. Perfection is accomplished when each +offers what it can. + +"Which brings me to the remaining thing I know about love--that it +exists in offering. Love is the desire to go outward, to pour forth, to +express, to do, to contribute. It has no system of calculation and no +yard-stick for the little more or the little less. It is spontaneous and +irrepressible and overflowing, and loses the extraordinary essence that +makes it truly love when it weighs and measures and inspects too closely +the quality of its return. It is in the fact that love is its own +sufficiency, its own joy, its own compensation for all its pain, that I +find it divine. The one point on which I can fully accept your Christian +theology is that your God is love. Given a God who is Love and a Love +that is God, I can see Him as worthy to be worshiped. Call Him, then, by +any name you please--Jehovah, Allah, Krishna, Christ--you still have the +Essence, the _Thing_. Love to be love must feel itself infinite, or as +nearly infinite as anything human can be. When I can't pour it out in +that way--when I pause to reflect how far I can go, or reach a point +beyond which I see that I cannot go any further--I do not truly love." + +Having written this much, he laid down his pen and considered. He had +said nothing personal, unless it was by implication. It was only after +long meditation that he decided to leave the matter there. The prime +question was no longer as to whether or not he loved her, but as to +whether or not she loved him. That was for her to decide. It was for her +to decide without his urging or tormenting. He began to feel not only +too sensitive on the subject, but too proud to make appeals to which she +would probably listen out of generosity. Since he had been in the wrong, +it was for her to make the advances; and so he ended his letter and +posted it. + +The discussion continued throughout the correspondence that ensued while +he migrated from Minneapolis to Milwaukee, from Milwaukee to Denver, and +from Denver to Colorado Springs. It was partly from curiosity of travel +that he zigzagged in this way across the country, and partly to make it +plain to Lois without saying it that he awaited her permission to come +home. That he should be obliged to return one day, without her +permission if not with it, was a matter of course, but it would make the +meeting easier if she summoned him. As a hint that she could do so and +have no fear, he asked her in a postscript to one of his letters to tell +him, when she next wrote, what was happening to Rosie Fay. + +To this she replied as simply and straightforwardly as he had put the +question, imparting all that Jim Breen had told her and whatever she had +gleaned for herself, adding as a seeming afterthought in the letter she +wrote next day: + +"If Rosie _could_ bring herself to marry Jim it would be the happiest of +all solutions, and make things easier for Claude. I think she will. If +so, it won't be so much because her heart will have been caught in the +rebound as that the poor little thing is mentally and emotionally +exhausted, and glad to creep into the arms of any strong, good man who +will love her and take care of her. Just to be able to do that much will +be enough for Jim. I see a good deal of him; so I know. Every time he +brings an order of new plants we have a little talk--always about Rosie. +His love is of the kind you wrote about the other day; it has no +yard-stick for the little more or the little less in the return. Perhaps +men can love like that more easily than women do. Uncle Sim seemed to +hint one evening that there is generally a selfish strain in a woman's +love, in that what it gets is more precious to it than what it gives. I +wonder." + +Thor received these two letters together on returning to Colorado +Springs from a day's visit to that high wilderness in which John Hay +sought freedom from interruption in writing his _Life of Lincoln_. He +understood fully that Lois was deliberately being cruel in order to be +kind. The very spacing out of her information over two separate days was +meant to impress him and at the same time to spare. Things would be +easier for Claude, she said, when she meant that they would be easier +for him. + +But for him it was a matter of indifference. That is, it was the same +kind of matter of indifference that pain becomes in a limb that has +grown benumbed. For reasons he could hardly explain, that part of his +being to which Rosie Fay had made her pathetic appeal couldn't feel any +more. It was like something atrophied from over-strain. There was the +impulse to suffer, but no suffering. Moreover, he was sure that though +these nerves might one day vibrate again, they could never do so +otherwise than reminiscently. To the episode he felt as a mother might +feel to the dead child she has never been able to acknowledge as her +own. It was something buried, and yet sacred--sacred in spite of the +fact that it never should have been. As an incident in his life it had +brought keen joy and keener pain, but he had already outlived both. He +had outlived them as apparently Rosie had outlived them herself--not by +the passage of time, but by an intensity of experience which seemed to +have covered years. + +He came to this conclusion not instinctively, nor all at once, but by +dint of reflection, as he sat on the broad terrace of the hotel, +watching the transformation scene that takes place in the Rockies during +the half-hour before sunset. His pipe was in his mouth; Lois's letters +lay open on the little table he had drawn up beside his chair. Other +tourists bore him company, scattered singly or in groups, smoking and +drinking tea. A mild suggestion of Europe, a suggestion of Cap Martin or +of Cannes, was blocked by the domes of the great range and by a shifting +interplay of magic lights where his eye was impelled to look for the +broad, still levels of Mediterranean blue. + +There was a wonder in the moment which the yearning in his spirit was +tempted to take as symbolic, and perhaps prophetic, of his future. Where +all day long he had seen nothing but hard ridges packed against one +another, without water, without snow, without perspective, without a +shred of mist, without a hint of mystery, without anything to set the +mind to wondering what was above them or beyond them, the dissolving +views of late afternoon began to throw up a succession of lovely ranges, +pierced by valleys, glens, and gorges. Where the eye had ached with the +harsh red of the rocks spread with the harsh green of the scant +vegetation, soft vapors rose insensibly--purple, pink, and +orange--changing into nameless hues as they climbed into the great +clefts and veiled the rolling domes and swathed the pinnacles and +furrowed the deep passes and put the horizon infinitely far away. The +transmutation from conditions in which Nature herself seemed for once to +be barbaric, alien, hostile to civilized man, painted with Cheyenne +war-paint and girdled with a belt of scalps, to this breaking up of +glory into glory, of color into color, and of form into form, rising, +mingling, melting, fading, rising and mingling again, melting again, +fading again, passing swiftly in a last brief recrudescence from gold +into green and from green into black, with the hurried eclipse and the +sudden tranquillity of night--the transmutation which produced all this +was to Thor hopeful and in its way inspiriting. In the last rays of +light he drew out his fountain-pen and the scribbling-book he kept for +notes by the way, writing quickly without preamble or formality. + +"Thanks for telling me about Rosie. It is as it should be--as will be +best. Jim saved her. Nothing so good could ever happen to her as to +marry him. + +"As for me, there are two things, Lois, that I can truthfully affirm. I +can declare them the more emphatically because I have had time to think +them over--to think you over, and myself. If I ever had a doubt about +them I haven't now, because leisure and solitude have enabled me to see +them clearly. The first is that I have given you my best; and the +second, that I have given it without any restriction of which I have +been aware. If there was anything I withheld from you, and which you +think you should have had, I can only say that it was not of the nature +of my best. What it was I make no attempt to say, nor would it do any +good to try. Whatever it was, I wish neither to depreciate it nor to +deny it. It was something that swept me--like the tornado of which one +of your letters speaks--but it passed. It passed, leaving me tired and +older--oh, very much older!--and with an intense desire to creep home. +As a physicist I know nothing of a carnal man and a spiritual man, so +that I cannot enter into your analysis; but I do know that there are +higher and lower promptings in the human heart, and that in my case the +higher turn to you. As compared with you I'm only as the ship compared +to the haven in which it would take refuge. The ship is good for +something, but it needs a port." + +Again he decided to leave his appeal suspended here, and on the next +morning began his preparations for gradually turning homeward. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +It was William Sweetapple, the gardener's boy, who informed Lois that +Claude had come back, throwing the information casually over his +shoulder as he watered the lawn. + +"Seen Mr. Claude to-day, 'm." + +"Oh no, you didn't, Sweetapple," Lois contradicted. "Mr. Claude is in +the West." + +"He may be in the West now, 'm, but he wasn't at twenty-five minutes +past two this afternoon." + +Sudden fear brought Lois down a step or two of the portico, over the +Corinthian pillars of which roses clambered in early July profusion. In +white, with a broad-brimmed Winterhalter hat from which a floating green +veil hung over her shoulders and down her back, her strong, slim figure +seemed to have gained in fulfilment of herself even in the weeks that +Thor had been away. + +"Where did you see him, Sweetapple?--or think you saw him?" + +Sweetapple turned the nozzle of the hose so as to develop a crown of +spray with which he bedewed the roses of all colors grouped in a great +central bed. "I didn't think, 'm. It was him." + +"Well, where?" + +"See him first going into the woods leading up to Duck Rock. That was +when I was on my way to Lawyer Petley's." + +"Did you see him twice?" + +"See him again as I come back. He was down in the road by that +time--looking up toward old man Fay's--Hadley B. Hobson's place that is +to be. Old man Fay's got to quit. Family moved already. You knew that, +didn't you, 'm?" + +It was because Lois was really alarmed by this time that she said, "Oh, +you must have been mistaken, Sweetapple!" + +"Just as you say, 'm," Sweetapple agreed; "but I see him; it was him." + +She withdrew again, reseating herself in the shade of the semicircular +open porch protecting the side-door, where she had been writing on a +pad. Though so near the roadway, a high growth of shrubs screened her +from all but the passers up and down Willoughby's Lane. At this time of +year they were relatively few, many of the residents of County Street +having already gone to the seaside or the mountains. Lois enjoyed the +seclusion thus afforded her, and the tranquillity. The garden and her +poorer neighbors gave an outlet to her need for physical activity, while +in the solitude of the house and in that wider solitude created by the +absence of all the Willoughbys and Mastermans something within her was +being healed. It was being healed--but healed in a way that left her +changed. The change was manifest in what she said when, with the pad on +her knee again, she began to write. + +"I am deeply moved, dear Thor, by your last letter from Colorado +Springs, and would gladly say something adequate in response to it. When +I can I will--if I ever can. As to that the decisive word must be with +time. I cannot hurry it. I can give you no assurance now. Now I +feel--but why should I repeat it? An illusion once dispelled can rarely +be brought back. Still less can you replace it by reality. What we are +looking for is a substitute for love. You may have found it--but I have +not. I can accept your definition of love as a giving out, a pouring +forth, a desire to do and to contribute; but it is precisely here that I +fail to respond to the test. There is something in me stagnated or +dammed up. My heart feels like a well that has gone dry. I have nothing +to yield. I understand what Rosie Fay said to me the day when I talked +to her on Duck Rock: 'I'm empty; I've given all I had to give.' It was +less blameworthy on her part than on mine, because she, poor little +thing, had given so much and I so little. And yet my supply seems to be +exhausted. It must have been thin and shallow to begin with. As I feel +at present it would take a new creation to replenish it. + +"With regard to my calling forth what is best in you, dear Thor--well, +any one would do that or anything. You're one of those who have nothing +but the best to offer. Do you know what Uncle Sim said of you last +night?--'Thor is always on the side of the angels--and, though he makes +mistakes, they'll rescue him.' They will, dear Thor; I'm sure of it. +They may rescue us both--even if at present I don't see how." + +Having written this much, she paused to ask what she should say further. +Should she speak of his coming home? No. Since the address he had given +her indicated that he was on his way, it was best that he should take +the responsibility of his own return. Should she tell him that +Sweetapple thought he had seen Claude? No. It would alarm him without +doing any good. If Claude was back, he was back--besides which, +Sweetapple might be wrong. So she signed her name with her usual +significant abruptness, sealing the envelope and addressing it. + +Her hesitation came in putting on the stamp. Somehow the letter seemed +too cold to send. She didn't want to be cold--only to be sincere. +Sincerity during these weeks of solitude had become a sort of obsession. +She couldn't tell him that she had forgiven him as long as resentment +lingered in her heart, and yet she was anxious not to wound him more +than she could help. Wounding him she wounded herself more deeply, for +in spite of everything his pain was hers. + +Slowly she tore the letter open again, to a sunset chorus of birds of +whose song she had just become conscious. From tree to tree they fluted +to one another and answered back, now with a reckless, passionate +warble, now with a long, liquid love-note. It was the voice of the rich +world that lay around her--a world of flowers and lawns, and meadows and +upland woods, and cool, deep shades and mellowing light. But it was also +the voice that had accompanied her into the enchanted land on that +winter's day when Thor had kissed her wrist. The day seemed now +immeasurably far away in time, and the enchanted land had been left +behind her; but the voice was still there, fluting, calling, reminding, +entreating, with an insistence that almost made her weep. + +She wrote hurriedly in postscript: "If there was ever anything I could +do for you, dear Thor, perhaps what I used to feel would come back to +me. If it only would! If I could only be great and generous and +inexacting as you would be! I want to be, Thor darling; I long to be; +but I am like a person paralyzed, whose limbs no longer answer to his +will. I pray for recovery and restoration--but will it ever come?" + +As encouragement to Thor she was no more satisfied with this than with +what she had said earlier, but it expressed all she could allow herself +to say. Anything more would have permitted him to infer such things as +he had permitted her to infer, an accident that must have no repetition. +She ended the note definitely, getting it ready for the post. + +She was still engaged in doing so when, the crunching of footsteps +causing her to lift her head, she saw Claude. Having come round to the +side portico on a hint from William Sweetapple, he stood at a little +distance, smiling. He was smiling, but as a dead man might smile. Lois +could neither rise nor speak, from awe. Claude himself could neither +speak nor advance. He stood like a specter--but a specter who has been +in hell. The very smile was that of the specter who has no right to come +out of hell, and yet has come. + +Lois was not precisely troubled; she was terrified. If Claude had only +spoken a word or taken a step forward it would have broken the spell +that held her dazed and dumb. But he did nothing. He only stood and +smiled--that awful smile which expressed more anguish than any rictus of +pain. He stood just as he came into sight, on turning the corner of the +house, with the many colors of the rose-bed at his left hand. It was +exactly like this, she had always imagined, that disembodied spirits or +astral forms made their appearances to portend death. + +She got possession of her faculties at last. "Claude!" She could just +whisper it. + +He continued to smile as he advanced and came up the steps; but it was +not till he was actually beside her that he said, in a voice which might +also have been that of a dead man, "You didn't expect me, did you?" + +She remembered afterward that they neither shook hands nor exchanged any +of the usual forms of greeting, but at the minute it didn't seem natural +that they should. Her own tone was as strained as his as she answered, +awesomely: "No. Sit down, Claude. When did you come?" + +Throwing his hat on the floor, he dropped wearily into a deck-chair and +closed his eyes. With the sharp profile grown extraordinarily white and +thin, the dead-man expression terrified her again. She wished he would +raise his head and look at her--look more like life. All he did was to +open his eyes heavily, as he replied, "Got back yesterday." + +It was less from interest than from the desire to get on the plane of +actual things that she asked, "Where are you staying?" + +"Slept at the house last night. Old Maggs, the caretaker, has the key, +so I made him let me in." + +"But are you going to stay any time?" + +"Might as well. Don't see why not." + +There was so much to say and so much she was afraid to say that she +hardly knew with what to begin. "Weren't you," she ventured, +timidly--"weren't you having a good time?" + +His answer as he lay back with eyes closed again was another of his +smiles, only dimmer now with a faint bitter-sweetness. She knew it was +like asking a man if his pain is better when it is killing him. +Nevertheless, the ground of common, practical things was the only one to +keep to, so she went on: "But you won't like sleeping at the house every +night--with no one in it. Don't you want to come here?" + +He shook his head. "No, thanks. Mrs. Maggs will make my bed and give me +breakfast. That's all I need. Get the rest of my meals in town." + +"But you'll stay to dinner now, won't you?" + +He lifted himself up in his chair at last, his face taking on its first +look of life. "Thor be there?" + +"Why, no. Thor's away--in the West. Didn't you know?" + +He started nervously. "Away in the West? Not looking for me?" + +She tried to smile. "Of course not. He went to attend the medical +congress in Minneapolis. He's on his way home now." + +"When do you expect him?" + +"Oh, not at once. I don't know when. He's taking his time." + +He studied her awhile, with eyes that seemed to read her secret. "What +for?" + +"To see the country, I suppose. My last letter was from Colorado +Springs." + +He dropped back into the chair with a tired sigh of relief. "All right. +I'll stay to dinner. Thanks." + +She allowed him to rest, asking no more questions than she could help +till dinner was over and they had come out again on the portico, so that +he might have his cigar in the cool, scented evening air. She was more +at ease with him, too, now that she could no longer see the suffering in +his pinched, emaciated face. + +"Claude, why did you come home?" + +He withdrew the cigar from his lips just long enough to say, "Because I +couldn't stay away." + +"Why couldn't you?" + +"Because I couldn't." + +"Don't you think it would have been well to make the effort?" + +"What was the good of making the effort when I couldn't keep it up?" + +"But you kept it up for a while." + +"Not after--after I heard." + +"Heard about Rosie?" + +He made an inarticulate sound of assent. + +"What did you hear?" + +"I heard--what she did." + +"How? Who told you?" + +"That chump Billy Cheever. Wrote me." + +"How did he know it had anything to do with you?" + +"Oh, I was fool enough to tell him about her once--and so he caught on +to it. Put two and two together, I suppose, when he heard that--that--" + +She seized the opportunity to make the first incision toward getting in +her point. "That she threw herself into the pond? Did he say that Jim +Breen dived after her and brought her up?" + +He answered indifferently. "He said some one did. He didn't say who." + +"It was Jim. He saved her." As the statement evoked no response, she +continued, "Claude, what did you come home _for_?" + +Again he withdrew his cigar from his mouth, looking at her obliquely. +"To marry her." + +She allowed some time to elapse before saying, "Claude, I don't think +you will." + +"Oh yes, I shall." + +"What makes you so sure?" + +"Because I am." + +"I'm not. Or, rather, if I _am_ sure--it's the other way." + +He sprang up, seizing her by the arm over which there was nothing but a +gauze scarf by way of covering. "Lois, for God's sake! What do you mean? +You know something. Tell me. She hasn't gone away with Thor, has she?" + +She, too, sprang up, shaking off his hand as if it had been a serpent. +"You fool! Don't touch me! She'll marry Jim Breen. She'll be in love +with him in a week or two." + +It was all over in an instant, but the blaze in her eyes seemed +literally to knock him down. He fell back into the deck-chair again, +though he sat astride on it with his feet on the floor, covering his +face with his hands. + +"I beg your pardon, Lois," he muttered, humbly. "I don't know what I'm +saying." + +"No, you don't," she agreed, speaking breathlessly because the leaping +of her heart was so wild; "but that's hardly an excuse for taking leave +altogether of your senses." + +He continued to mutter into his hands. "I'm crazy! I'm drunk! I'm stark +mad! But, oh, Lois, if you knew what I've been through you wouldn't +mind." + +The hot anger that had rolled over her with a wrath such as she had +never felt before began to roll away again, leaving her sick and +shivering. It was an excuse for going into the house to find a cloak and +for getting the minute's respite necessary to self-control. To regain +it--to overcome that throb of her being of which the after effect was a +faintness unto death--she was obliged to walk steadily, holding her head +high. She was obliged, too, to repent of the tigress impulse with which +she had turned on Claude, flinging in his face that for which she had +meant to prepare him by degrees. The fact that it had seemingly passed +over his head was no palliation to the outrage. As she mounted the +stairs and went to her room she repeated her own formula: "_Nothing that +isn't kind and well thought out beforehand._" What she had said had been +neither well thought out nor kind, but the temptation had been +overwhelming. For the instant it had seemed secondary that Thor hadn't +taken Rosie to the West, since Claude, who knew so much more of the +inner history of the episode than she did herself, had thought such an +action possible. More clearly than ever before she saw that some +appalling struggle for the possession of the little creature must have +taken place, and that it had been going on during those months when life +was apparently so peaceful and she had been living in her fool's +paradise. It was not till he had lost the fight that Thor had come to +her in the snow-bound woods with the twitter of birds and the deep music +of the tree-tops accompanying those half-truths she had been eager to +believe. She herself had been fatuous and vain in assuming that he could +love her; but if there was little to say for her, there was nothing at +all to be said for him. He had been the more false for the reason that, +as far as he went, he had been sincere. It was his very sincerity that +had tricked her. Less than at any time since the day when he had +stammered out his futile explanations did she feel it possible to pardon +him. + +But there was something else. Now, if she chose, she could _know_. In +his present state of mind Claude would betray anything. She had only to +question him, to throw the emphasis adroitly here or there, and the +whole story would come out. It was like having a key come into her +hands--a key that would unlock all those mysteries which were her +terror. She was still irresolute, however, as to using it after she had +taken an old opera-cloak from a wardrobe, thrown it over her shoulders, +and gone down=stairs again. + +She found Claude as she had left him--astride on the deck-chair, his +face in his hands, the burning end of the cigar that protruded between +his fingers making a point of light. The abject attitude moved her to +pity in spite of everything. She herself remained standing, her tall +figure thrown into dim relief between two of the white Corinthian +pillars of the portico. By standing, it seemed to her obscurely, she +could more easily escape if any such awful revelation as she was afraid +of were to spring on her against her will. She could almost feel it +waiting for her in the depths of the heavy-scented darkness. + +For the minute, however, the folly of Claude's return was the matter +immediately to be dealt with; to get him to go away again was the end to +be attained. It was with this in view, as well as with a measure of +compassion, that she said: + +"You poor Claude! You _have_ been through things, haven't you?" + +The answer came laconically: "Been in hell." + +"Yes, that's what I thought," she agreed, simply. "I thought it the +instant you came round the corner this afternoon. But why? For what +reason--exactly?" + +He lifted his haunted face, stammering out his recital in a way that +reminded her of Thor. She could see that he had profited by his mistake +of a few minutes earlier, and that just as Thor had tried to tell +Claude's story without involving his own, so Claude was endeavoring to +spare her by doing the same thing. Being able to supply the blanks more +accurately now than on the former occasion, she found a kind of +poignant, torturing amusement in fitting her knowledge in. + +He began with his first meeting with Rosie, describing the scene. He had +not taken the adventure seriously, not any more than he had taken a +dozen similar. Girls like that could generally be thrown off as easily +as they were taken on, and they bore you no ill-will for the change. As +a matter of fact, a new flirtation generally began where the old one +ended, which made part of the fun for the girl as for the man. He was +speaking of respectable girls, Lois was to understand--village girls, +shop girls, and others of the higher wage-earning variety, who didn't +mind showing a spice of devil before they married and settled down. Lots +of them didn't, and were no worse for it in the end. It had not occurred +to him that Rosie would be different from others of the class, or that +she would take in deadly earnest what was no more than play for him. + +When he had made this discovery he had tried to withdraw, but only with +the result of becoming involved more deeply. Over the processes by which +he was led finally to pledge himself he grew incoherent, as also over +the signs which caused him to suspect that Rosie was playing fast and +loose with him. His mutterings as to "somebody else who was in love with +her" and who was "ready to put up money" threw her back on memories of +his uneasy questions concerning Thor on the evenings after the return +from the honeymoon. It was with a sense of the key slipping into the +lock that she said: + +"And that made you jealous?" + +"As the devil. It was because it did that I knew I couldn't give her +up--that I'd never let her go." + +There was sincere curiosity in her tone as she asked the question, "But, +Claude, why did you?" + +"Because she lied to me." + +"Oh! And had you never lied to her?" + +He mumbled something about that not being the same thing. "She swore to +me that there'd never been any put-up job between her and--and--" + +She helped him out. "The--the other person." She could hear the key +grating as it turned. "And was there?" + +He made the impatient, circular movement of his head, as though his +collar chafed him, with which she was familiar. He was gaining time in +order to use tact. "Oh, I don't know. There was--there was something. +Whatever it was, she denied it, when all the while they were--" + +She felt obliged fully to turn the key. She knew how perilous the +question might be, but it was beyond her to keep it back. "They were +what, Claude?" + +"They were trying to catch me in a trap." + +It was like the door into the hall of mysteries opening, but only to +make disclosures dimmer and more mystifying still. The postponement of +dreadful certainties enabled her, however, to say with some slight +relief, "But this--this other person couldn't have been very fond of her +himself if he--if he gave her up to you." + +He bowed his head still lower into his hands, muttering toward the +floor: "Oh, I don't know. I don't care--now. Anyhow, she lied to me, +and"--he lifted his haggard eyes again--"and I jumped at it. I saw the +way out--and I jumped at it. I told her--I told her--I'd go and marry +some one else." + +"Did you mean Elsie Darling?" + +He nodded speechlessly. + +It was to come back again to the point which her anger had caused her to +miss that she went forward and laid her hand on his shoulder kindly. "I +would, Claude, if I were you," she said, in a matter-of-fact voice. +"She'd make you a good wife." + +"No one will make me a good wife now," he said, hoarsely. "I'm going to +marry Rosie. I'll marry her if it puts me in the gutter. I'll marry her +if I never have a cent." + +She went back to her place between the pillars, leaning against one of +them. "But, Claude," she reasoned, "would that do any good? Would it +make either of you happy, after all that's been said and done?" + +He seemed to writhe. "I don't care anything about that. I've got to do +it." + +"You haven't got to do it if Rosie doesn't want it." + +"It's got nothing to do with her." + +She looked at him in astonishment. "Nothing to do with her? What do you +mean?" + +He tried to explain further. He had not primarily come back to atone for +the suffering he had inflicted on Rosie, or because his love for her was +such that he couldn't live without her. He had come back to propitiate +the demon within himself--the demon or the god, he was not sure which it +was, for it possessed the attributes of both. He had come back to escape +the chastisement his soul inflicted on itself--because without coming +back he could no longer be a man. He had come back because the Furies +had driven him with their whip of knotted snakes, and he could do +nothing but yield to their hounding. If Lois thought that traveling in +the West was beer and skittles when hunted and scourged by yourself like +that--well, she had better try it and see. + +What she must understand already was that Rosie and happiness had become +minor considerations. He would sacrifice both to regain a measure of his +self-respect. He had never supposed, and he didn't suppose now, that +Rosie would be happy in marrying him, but that was no longer to the +point. The demon or the god must be appeased, at no matter what cost to +the victim. + +He made these explanations not straightforwardly or concisely, but with +rambling digressions that took him over half the Middle West. He +described, or hinted at, all sorts of scenes, peopled by gay young +business men and garnished by pretty girls, in which he could have +enjoyed himself had it not been for the enemy in his heart. It wasn't +merely that he had thrown over Rosie with a cruelty that made her try to +kill herself, and still less was it that he couldn't live down his love +when once he set about it. It was that the Claude who might have been +was strangled and slain, leaving him no inner fellowship but with the +Claude who was. Reviving the Claude who might have been was like +reviving a corpse, and yet there was nothing to do but make the attempt. + +"I'm a gentlemen--what?" he asked, raising his white face pitifully. "I +must act like a gentlemen--what?" + +"Yes, but if it's too late, Claude--for that particular thing?" + +"Oh, but it isn't--it won't be--not when she sees me." + +"It might be; and if she doesn't want it, Claude, I don't see why you--" + +"You don't see why because you're not me. If you were, you would. A +woman hasn't a man's sense of honor, anyhow." + +She let this pass with an inward smile in order to say, "But, Claude, +suppose you _can't_ do it?" + +He twisted his neck, with his customary chafing, irritated movement. +"I'll do it--or croak." + +"Oh, but that's nonsense!" + +"To you--not to me. You haven't been through the mill that I've been +ground up in. You don't know what it is to have been born--born a +gentleman--and to have blasted yourself into human remains. That's what +I am now--not a man--to say nothing of a gentleman--just human +remains--too awful to look at." + +She tried to reason with him. "But, Claude, you mustn't exaggerate +things or put the punishment out of proportion to the crime. Admitting +that what you did to Rosie was dishonorable--brutal, if you like--" + +"Oh, it isn't that. It's what I did to myself. Can't you see?" + +She saw, but not with the intensity of Claude himself. Sitting down at +last, she let him talk again. He had felt something shattered in him, so +he said, at the very minute when he had turned to leave the +cucumber-house on the day of the final rupture. He knew already that he +was a cad, and that he was doing what only a cad would have done; but he +had expected the remorse to pass. He had known himself for a cad on +other occasions, and yet had outlived the sense of shame. That he should +outlive it again he had taken for granted, though he knew that this time +he couldn't do it without suffering. He was willing to take the +suffering. He was not specially unwilling that Rosie should take it, +too. In her way she had been as much to blame as he was. Though he +didn't question the sincerity of her love for him, she had plotted and +schemed to catch him, because from her point of view he was a rich man's +son, and even so had had moments of disloyalty. He found it not +unreasonable to expect her to share the responsibility for what had +overtaken her. But she, too, would outlive the pain of it and follow his +example in marrying some one else. + +Lois felt her opportunity to have fully come. "I think she will. She'll +marry Jim Breen--if you'll only leave her alone." + +"Oh, rot!" + +The tone expressed the degree of importance he attached to this +possibility. He went on again, discursively, incoherently, covering much +of the same ground, but with new and illuminating details, details of +which the background was still a jumble of suppers and dances and +journeys, but in which the god or the demon gave him no rest. His +distaste for diversion having declared itself from the day of his +starting for Chicago, he had whipped up an appetite to counteract it. +Availing himself of the freedom of a young man plentifully supplied with +money for the first time in his life, he had made use of all the +resources with which strange and exciting cities could furnish him to +get back his zest in light-heartedness. The result was not in pleasure, +but in disgust, and a horror of himself that grew. It grew from the +beginning, like some giant poisonous weed. It grew while he was in +Chicago; it grew with each further stage of his journey--in St. Louis, +in Cincinnati, in Los Angeles. It was in Los Angeles that he had +received Billy Cheever's letter with the news of Rosie's mad leap, and +he knew for a certainty that the only thing to be done was to turn his +face eastward. Whatever happened, and whoever suffered, he must redeem +himself. Redemption had become for him a need more urgent than food, +more vital than life. Though he didn't use the word, though his terms +were simple and boyish and slangy, Lois could see that his stress was +that which sent pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher, and drove Judas to go +and hang himself. Redemption lay in marrying Rosie, and restoring his +honor, and bringing the Claude who might have been back to life. Indeed, +it was difficult to tell at times which of the two was slain--whether +the Claude who might have been, or the other Claude--so distraught and +involved were his appeals. But beyond marrying Rosie and keeping his +word--being a gentleman, as he expressed it--his outlook didn't extend. +"Any damn thing that liked could happen" when that atoning act had been +accomplished. + + * * * * * + +There were so many repetitions in his turns of thought that Lois ended +by following them no more than listlessly. Not that she had ceased to be +interested, but her mind was occupied with other phases of the drama. +She remembered, what she had so often heard, that in the Mastermans +there was this extraordinary strain of idealism of which no one could +foresee the turn it would take. She knew the traditions of the +great-grandfather whose heart had broken on finding that America was not +the regenerated land he hoped for. Tales were still current in the +village of old Dr. Masterman, his son, who through sheer confidence in +his fellow-men never paid any one he owed and never collected money from +any one who owed it to him. Archie Masterman, in the next generation, +was supposed to have taken the altruistic tendency by the throat in +himself and choked it down; but Uncle Sim was a byword of eccentric +goodness throughout the countryside. Now the impulse was manifest in +Claude, in this revulsion against his own failure, in this marred and +broken vision of a Something to which he had not been true. And as for +Thor.... + +But here she was tortured and frightened. Who knew what this strange +inheritance might be working in him? Who could tell how big and tender +and transcending it might become? That it would be transcending and +tender and big was certain. If poor, frivolous, futile Claude could feel +like this, could feel that he must redeem his soul though "any damn +thing that liked" should happen as the price of his redemption, in Thor +the yearning would outflank her range. Might not the secret of secrets +be in that? Might not that which she had been seeing as treachery to +herself be no more than a conflict of aspirations? If Claude, with his +blurred distortion of the divine in him, served no other purpose, he at +least threw a light on Thor. Thor, too, was a Masterman. Thor, too, was +born to the vision--to the longing after the nationally perfect that had +become legendary since the time of the great-grandfather--to the sweet, +neighborly affection that ran through all the tales of that man's +son--to the sturdy righteousness of Uncle Sim--to the standards of honor +from which poor Claude had fallen as angels fall--and to God only knew +what high promptings strangled and vitiated in his father. Thor was heir +to it all, with something of his own to boot, something strong, +something patient, something laborious and loyal, something +long-suffering and winning and meek, that might have marked the leader +of a rebellious people or a pagan, skeptic Christ. + +Her mind was so full of this ideal of the man against whom--and also for +whom--her heart was hot that she made no effort to detain Claude when, +after long silence, he picked up his hat and slipped away into the +darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +He slipped away into the darkness, but only to do what he had done on +the previous evening after making arrangements with old Maggs. He +climbed the hill north of the pond, not so much in the hope of seeing +Rosie or any one else, as to haunt the scenes so closely associated with +his spiritual downfall. + +It was a languorous, luscious night, with the scent of new-mown hay +mingling with that of gardens. If there was any breeze it was lightly +from the east, bringing that mitigation of the heat traditional to the +week following Independence Day. As there was no moon, the stars had +their full midsummer intensity, the Scorpion trailing hotly on the +southern horizon, with Antares throwing out a fire like the red rays in +a diamond. Beneath it the city flung up a yellow glow that might have +been the smoke of a distant conflagration, while from the hilltop the +suburbs were a-sparkle. As, standing in the road, Claude looked through +the open gateway down over the slope of land, the hothouse roofs and the +distant levels of the pond gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance like +the sheen of ancient tarnished crystal. + +The house was dark. It was dark and dead. It was dark and dead and +haunted. Everything was haunted; everything was dark. Even the furnace +chimney looming straight and black against the stars was plumeless. But +in the silence and stillness there was something that drew him on. He +crossed the road and went a few paces within the gate. He had not +ventured so far on the previous evening, and during the day he had dared +no more than to look upward from the boulevard below, after that +pilgrimage to Duck Rock on which William Sweetapple had surprised him. +Now in the darkness and quietness he stood, not searching so much as +dreaming. He was dreaming of Rosie, dreaming of her with a kind of +cheer. After all, he would be bringing joy to her as well as getting +peace of spirit for himself. It wouldn't be so hard. She would meet him +as she used to meet him here, as she used to let him come and visit her, +and then the atonement would be made. The process would be simple, and +he should become a man again. + +The conviction was so sweet that he lingered to enjoy it, penetrating a +few steps farther into the spacious dimness of the yard. It was the +first minute of inward ease he had known since he had turned his back on +it. Now that he was once more on the spot, the Claude who was a +devil-of-a-fellow, something of a sport, but a decent chap all the same, +began again to run with red blood where there had been nothing but a +whining, shriveling apostate. It was like rejuvenescence, like a +re-creation. + +Suddenly something moved. It moved at first in the shadow of the house, +and then out in the starlit spaces. It moved stealthily and creepily and +with a grotesque swiftness. Its action seemed irregular and uncertain, +like that of some night-marauding animal, till Claude perceived that it +was stalking him. He waited long enough to get a view that was almost +clear of a crouching attitude, the crouching attitude of a beast when it +means to spring, whereupon he turned and fled. + +That is, he turned and walked away swiftly. He would have run had it not +been for his renascent self-respect. He couldn't bring himself to run +from poor old Fay even though his nerves were tingling. He tried to +reassure himself by saying that it was no more than a repetition of that +dogging to which he had been subjected before, and that it would +discontinue once he was off the premises. + +But when he turned to glance over his shoulder it seemed to him that the +sinister footsteps glided after him. That, he reasoned, might have been +no more than fancy. The arc-lights were rare on this rather lonely road, +and the enormous shadows they flung lent themselves to the startling of +sick imaginations. Nevertheless, as he walked Claude continued to look +back over his shoulder, always with renewed impressions of a creepy +thing trying to track him down. Having entered the obscurity of their +own driveway, he broke at last into a light, soundless trot which was +not slackened till he reached the relative protection of the door. + + * * * * * + +But by morning he had regained a measure of tranquillity. Knowing what +he had to do, he was resolved to do it promptly. With sunlight and +summer and the sense of being home again to brace him up, the Claude who +was a devil-of-a-fellow seemed in a fair way to be reborn. Waiting after +breakfast only long enough to be discreet, he took his way up the hill +again. + +He was confident by this time, and the more so because of his being +beyond the need of concealments. There would be no more shrinking into +the odorous depths of the hothouse, or hesitancies, or equivocations. He +would walk up and avow himself--to father and mother as well as to +Rosie. The hero in him was coming to his own at last. + +The gash in the hothouse roof which he could see from a distance was +what he noticed first. In his two nocturnal visits this had not been +apparent. Now that he saw it he stood stock-still. It was something like +a gash within himself, a gash in his courage perhaps, or a gash in the +dream of a reconstituted self. He knew vaguely that his father had +refused the renewal of the lease and that at some time in the near +future Fay would have to go; but he had not expected the immediate signs +of complete demoralization. Now that they were there they disconcerted +him. + +He went on till he was in view of the house. It gave him the blind stare +with which empty houses respond to interrogation. He continued his way +to the gate and into the yard. All was neglected and fantastically +overgrown. Vetch, burdock, and yarrow were in luxuriant riot with the +planting and seeding of the spring. No living creature was in sight but +a dappled mare, whose round body and heavy fetlocks spoke of a Canuck +strain, hitched in the shade of the magnolia-tree. + +The mare wore a straw hat to which was attached a bunch of artificial +roses, and switched her tail to drive away the flies. Harnessed to a +light form of dray, the animal suggested business, so that Claude put on +a business air, going forward with the assurance of one who has a right +to be on the spot. He had not advanced twenty paces before the hothouse +door opened to allow the passage of a fern-tree in a giant wooden pot, +behind which came the pleasant countenance of Jim Breen, red and +perspiring from so much exertion under a July sun. Claude paused till +the fern-tree was deposited in the dray, when the two men stared at each +other across the intervening space. + +For the first time Lois's mention of the young Irishman's name returned +to Claude as significant. What the young Irishman thought of him he had +no means of knowing, for a sudden eclipse across the cheery face was +followed by an equally sudden clearing. + +"Hello, Claude!" + +Jim threw off the greeting guardedly, and yet with a certain challenge. +His very use of the Christian name was meant to be a token of man-to-man +equality. Having attended the public school with Claude, and taken part +with him in ball-games at an age too early for class distinctions, he +was plainly disposed to use that fact as a basis of privilege. He +attempted, however, no other advance, remaining sturdily at the tail of +his dray, hatless and in his shirt-sleeves, but with head erect and gray +eyes set fixedly. The only conciliating feature was his smile, which had +come back, not with its native spontaneity, but daringly and +aggressively, as a brave man smiles at a foe. + +Claude resented the attitude; he resented the smile; he resented the use +of his Christian name; but he was resolved to be diplomatic. He went +forward a few steps farther still, but in spite of himself his voice +trembled when he spoke. "Mr. Fay 'round?" + +Jim answered nonchalantly. "No; gone to town. Want a good fern-tree, +Claude? Two or three corkers here. Look at that one, now. Get it cheap, +too. Dandy in the corner of a big room." + +Sickeningly aware of his feebleness in contrast with this easy, honest +vigor, Claude made an effort to be manly and matter-of-fact. "Mr. Fay +selling off?" + +"Not exactly selling off. Fixed things up with father. Father's taken +the stock, and Mr. Fay's going in with him. Didn't want this old place +any longer," Jim continued, loftily. "Kind o' clung to it because he'd +put money into it, like. Money-eater; that's what it was. Make more in a +year with father than he would in this old rockery in ten. Hadley B. +Hobson's bought the place. Know that, don't you? Come to think of it, it +was your old man who owned it. Well, it's Hadley B. Hobson's now--or +will be the day after to-morrow. Have a swell residence here. Good +enough for that, but too small for a plant like Mr. Fay's." + +Claude did his best to digest such details in this information as were +new to him while he nerved himself to say, "Is Miss Fay a-about?" + +Jim nodded toward the blank windows of the house. "Moved. Better take a +fern-tree, Claude. Won't get a bargain like this, not if every florist +in the town goes bankrupt. This one's a peach, and yet you'll call it a +scream compared to the one I've got inside. Bring it out so as you can +get a squint at it. Can't wait, can't you? Well, so long! Got to finish +my job. Back, Maud, back! Any time you do want a fern-tree, Claude--" + +Claude was obliged to speak peremptorily in order to detain him. "I want +to know where the Fays have moved to." + +"To town," was the ready answer. "Well, so long! If I don't get on with +my job--" + +"What part of town?" + +Jim turned at the hothouse door. "Oh, a very nice part." + +"But that's not telling me." + +"No," the young Irishman threw back, with his peculiar smile, "and if +you take my advice you won't ask anybody else. If old man Fay was to see +you within a mile of the place--" + +Claude decided to be confidential. "Old man Fay has no reason to be +afraid any longer, Jim--not as far as I'm concerned." + +"Oh, it isn't as far as you're concerned; it's as far as he is. The +boot's on that foot now." + +Claude loathed this discussion with a man so inferior to himself, but he +was obliged to get his information somehow. "If he thinks--" + +"It's not what he thinks, but what he knows. That's what's the matter +with old man Fay. If I was you I'd give him a darned wide berth--from +now on." + +"Yes, but Jim, you don't understand--" + +"I understand what I'm telling you, Claude. If you don't clear out of +this village for the next six months--" + +Claude was beside himself with exasperation. "But, good God, man, I've +come back to marry Rosie! Now don't you see?" + +Jim stalked forward from the hothouse door, standing over the smaller, +slighter man with a tolerant kindliness which persisted in his sunny, +steely smile. "No, I don't see. You clear out. Take a friend's advice. +Whether you've come back to marry Rosie or whether you haven't won't +make a cent's worth of difference to old man Fay. Clear out, all the +same." + +In his excitement Claude screamed, shrilly, "Like hell, I will!" + +"Like hell, you'll have to. Mind you, Claude, I'm telling you as a +friend. And as for marrying Rosie--well, you can't." + +Claude became aggressive. "If that's because you think you _can_--" + +"Gee! Me! What do you know about that! It's all I can do to get her to +look at the same side of the road I'm on--so far. But if I can't, still +less can you, and for a very good reason." + +"What reason?" Claude demanded, with his best attempt to be stern. + +The other became solemn and dramatic. "The reason that--that she's +dead." + +Claude jumped. "Dead! What in thunder are you talking about? She wasn't +dead this afternoon." + +"Oh yes, she was, Claude--_that_ Rosie. She--she drowned herself. When I +dived in after her it was another Rosie altogether that I brought up. Do +you get me?" + +Claude broke in with smothered objurgations, but Jim, feeling the value +of the vein he had started, persisted in going on with it. He did so not +bitterly or reproachfully, but with a playful, Celtic sadness in which a +misty blinking of the eyes struggled with the smile that continued to +hover on his lips. + +"The Rosie you knew, Claude, was all limp and white as I held her in my +arms while Robbie Willert rowed us ashore. She was gone. The soul was +out of her. She was as much in heaven as if she'd been dead a week. Her +eyes were shut and her eyelashes wet, just as you might see the fringe +of a flower hung with dewdrops of a morning. And her mouth! You know the +kind of mouth she's got--a little open when she looks at you, as if +you'd taken her by surprise, like. Well, that's the way it was then--a +wee little bit open--as if she was going to speak--but more as if she +was going to cry--and her lips that white!--and not a beat to her heart +no matter how tight you held her! When Dr. Hill brought the breath into +her again it was a different Rosie that came back entirely." + +Claude wheeled away in order to hide the spasm that shot across his +face. "Ah, shut up, damn you!" was all he had the strength to say, but +the tone moved Jim to compunction. + +The Irishman in him came out as he tried to make things easier for +Claude, without at the same time desisting from his object. "Sure _you_ +couldn't tell that that was the way she'd take it. You couldn't tell +that at all. If you'd known it beforehand you'd have acted quite +different. We all know that. Any one else might have done the same thing +that was--that was"--he sought a consolatory phrase--"that was like +you." He plunged still further. "I might have done it myself if I +hadn't--hadn't been built the other way 'round. Only that won't matter +to old man Fay--nor to Matt, neither." + +Claude turned so suddenly pale at the mention of the brother that Jim +followed up his advantage. "The old fellow has to be out of this by +to-morrow night, and Matt gets his walking-ticket from Colcord the next +morning." He laid his strong, earthy hand on the neat summer +black-and-white check of Claude's shoulder with the lightest hint of +turning him in the direction of the gate. "Now if you'll make yourself +scarce for a spell I'll be able to manage them both and coax them back +to their senses." + +Though he felt himself irresistibly impelled toward the road, Claude +made an effort to recover his dignity. "If you think I'm going to run +away--" + +Jim slipped his arm through his companion's, helping him along. "Sure +you're not going to run away. Lay low for a spell, that's all you'll be +doing. Old man Fay is crazy--stark, staring, roaring crazy. It isn't +you, and it isn't Rosie; it's having to get out of here. It was bluff +what I said a minute ago about the place being too small for his plant. +He's dotty on these three old hothouses. My Lord! you'd think no one +ever had hothouses before and never would again. You'd think it was the +end of the world, to hear him talk. You'd die laughing. The fellow he'd +like to put it over on is your old man! Gives me a mouthful about him +three or four times a day--and it'd be a barr'l full of buckshot in the +back if he could get at _him_. Lucky he's in Europe. But I'll calm him +down, don't you fret; and I'll calm down Matt, once I get at him. Let me +have two months--let me have a month!--and I'll have 'em coming to you +like a gray squirrel comes for nuts." + +Out in the roadway Claude made a last effort to react against his +humiliation, doing it almost tearfully. "But, look here, Jim, I've got +to marry Rosie--I've _got_ to." + +The Irishman in the young man was still in the ascendant as he wagged +his head sympathetically. "Sure you've got to--if she wants it." + +"Well, she does want it, doesn't she? She must have told you so, or you +wouldn't know so much about it." + +"She's told me all about it from seeding to sale, and it's God's truth +I'm handing out to you--no bluff at all. This Rosie's another +proposition." + +"I'll marry her, whatever she is," Claude declared, bravely; "and I've +got to see her, too." + +Jim looked thoughtful. "It isn't so easy to see her because--Well, now, +I'll tell you straight, Claude--because it makes her kind o' sick to +think of you. Oh, that's nothing!" he hastened to add, on seeing a +second convulsion pass across Claude's face. "Sure she'd feel the same +about any one who'd done the like o' that to her, now wouldn't she? It +isn't you at all--not any more than it 'd be me or anybody else." + +"If I could see her," Claude said, weakly, "I'd--I'd explain." + +"Ah, but you couldn't explain quick enough. That's where the trouble +about that'd be. She'd be down on the floor in a faint before you'd be +able to say knife. You couldn't get near her at all at all--not this +Rosie--not if it was to explain away the ground beneath her feet." + +"She'd get over that--" Claude began to plead. + +"She'd get over it if it didn't kill her first; but it's my belief it +would. If you could have seen her the night she told me about you! It +was like cutting out her own heart and picking it to pieces. She's never +mentioned you before nor since--and I don't think ever will again. No, +Claude," he continued, in a reasoning tone, "there's no two ways about +it, but you've got to get out--for a spell, at any rate. If you don't, +old man Fay'll be after you with a gun, and what Matt Fay'll do may be +worse. I can handle them if you'll keep from hanging yourself out like a +red rag to a bull, like; but if you don't--then the Lord only knows +what'll happen." + +"What'll happen," Claude cried, with a final up-leaping of resistance, +"is that you'll marry Rosie." + +"I'll marry her if she'll have me. Don't you fret about that. But I +won't _try_ to marry her--not if I see that she's got the least little +bit of a wish to marry you, Claude. I'll play fair. If she changes her +mind from the way she is now, and gets so as to be able to think of you +again, and wants you--wants you of her own free will--then I'll put up +the banns for you myself--and that's honest to God." + +He offered his hand on the compact, but Claude didn't take it. He didn't +take it because he didn't see it, and he didn't see it because he looked +over it and beyond it, as over and beyond the young Irishman himself. It +was not that he had any doubt as to Jim's word being honest to God, or +that he questioned Rosie's state of mind as Jim had sketched it. It was +rather that he was seeing the Claude who was a gentleman and a hero and +a devil-of-a-fellow recede into the ether, while he was left eternally +with the Claude who remained behind. + +Jim felt no resentment for the neglect of his proffered hand, but the +long stare of those sick, unseeing eyes made him uneasy. "Well, I guess +I must beat it back to my job," he said, beginning to move away. "So +long, Claude, and good luck to you!" He added, in order to return to a +colloquial tone, "If you ever want a fern-tree, don't forget that we've +got some daisies." + +But Claude was still staring at the great blue blank which the fading of +his ideal had left behind it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +Twenty-four hours after Claude turned to take the way of humiliation +down the hill, undeceived by Jim Breen's friendly tone and the hope of +future possibilities held out to him, Thor Masterman found himself +almost within sight of home. On arriving in the city late in the +afternoon he went to a hotel, where he took a room and dined. When he +had devised the means of letting Lois know that he was camping outside +her gates she might be sufficiently touched to throw them open. She +might never love him again; she might never have really loved him at +all; but he would content himself with a benevolent toleration. Like +her, he was afraid of love. The word meant too much or too little, he +was not sure which. It was too explosive. Its dynamic force was at too +high a pressure for the calm routine of married life. If Lois could find +a substitute for love, he was willing to accept it, giving her his own +substitute in return. All he asked was the privilege of seeing her, of +being with her, of proving his devotion, of having her once more to +share his life. + +It was not to force this issue, but to play lovingly with the hope in +it, that when dusk had deepened into evening he took the open electric +car that would carry him to the village. He had no intention beyond that +of enjoying the cool night air and loitering for a few minutes in sight +of the house that sheltered her. She might be on the balcony outside her +room, or beneath the portico of the garden door, so that he should catch +the flutter of her dress. That would be enough for him--to-night. He +might make it enough for the next night and the next. After absence and +distance, it seemed much. + +County Street was as he had known it on every warm summer night since he +was a boy, and yet conveyed that impression which every summer night +conveys, of being the first and only one of its kind. The sky was +majestically high and clear and spangled, with the Scorpion and the red +light of Antares well above the city's amber glow. Along the streets and +lanes dim trees rustled faintly, casting gigantic trembling shadows in +the circles of the electric lights. The breeze being from the east and +south, the tang of sea-salt mingled with the strong, dry scent of +new-mown hay and the blended perfumes of a countryside of gardens. All +doors were open as he passed along, and so were all windows. On all +verandas and porches and steps faint figures could be discerned, +low-voiced for the most part, but sending out an occasional laugh or +snatch of song. Thor knew who the people were; many of them were +friends; to some of them he was related; there were few with whom he +hadn't ties antedating birth. It was soothing to him, as he slipped +along in the heavy shadow of the elms, to know that they were near. + + * * * * * + +On approaching his father's house, which he expected to find dark, he +was astonished to see a light. It was a light like a blurred star, on +one of the upper floors. From what window it shone he found it difficult +to say, the mass of the house being lost in the general obscurity. The +strange thing was that it should be there. + +He passed slowly within the gate and along the few yards of the +driveway, pausing from time to time in order to place the quiet beacon +in this room or in that, according to the angle from which it seemed to +burn. He was not alarmed; he was only curious. It was no furtive light. +Though the curtains were closed, it displayed itself boldly in the eyes +of the neighbors and of the two or three ornamental constables who made +their infrequent rounds in County Street. He could only attribute it to +old Maggs, who lived in the coachman's cottage at the far end of the +property, though as to what old Maggs could be doing in the house at +this hour in the evening, at a time when the parents were abroad and +Claude away on a holiday, he was obliged to be frankly inquisitive. An +investigating spirit was further aroused by the fact that in one of his +pauses, as he alternately advanced and halted, he was sure he heard a +footstep. If it was not a footstep, it was a stirring in the shrubbery, +as if something had either moved away or settled into hiding. + +He was still unalarmed. Night-crimes were rare in the village, and +relatively harmless even when they were committed. The sound he had +heard might have been made by some roving dog, or by a cat or a startled +bird. Had it not been for the light he would scarcely have noticed it. +Taken in conjunction with the light, it suggested some one who had been +watching and had slunk away; but even that thought was slightly +melodramatic in so well-ordered a community. He went on till he was at +the foot of the steps, at a point where he could no longer descry the +glow in the upper window, but could perceive through the fanlight over +the inner door that, though the lower hall was dark, the electrics were +burning somewhere in the interior of the house. + +He verified this on mounting the steps and peering into the vestibule +through the strip of window at the sides of the outer door. Turning the +knob tentatively, he was surprised to find it yield. On entering, he +stood in the porch and listened, but no sound reached him from within. +Taking his bunch of keys from his pocket, he detached his latch-key +softly, and as softly inserted it in the lock. The door opened +noiselessly, showing a light down the stairway from the hall above. He +could now hear some one moving, probably on the topmost floor, with an +opening and shutting of doors that might have been those of closets, +followed by a swishing sound like that of the folding or packing of +clothes. He entered and closed the door with a distinctly audible bang. + +Listening again, he found that the sounds ceased suspiciously. Whoever +was there was listening, too. It was easy, by the light streaming from +above, to find the button and turn on the electricity in the lower hall, +whereupon the movement up-stairs began again. Some one came out of a +room and peered downward. He himself went to the foot of the stairs, +looking up. When the watcher on the third floor spoke at last it was in +a voice he didn't instantly recognize. He would have taken it for +Claude's, only that it was so frightened and shrill. + +"Who's there?" + +"Who are you?" Thor demanded, in tones that rolled and echoed through +the house. + +There was a long, hesitating silence. Straining his eyes upward, Thor +could dimly make out a white face leaning over the highest banister. +When the question came at last it was as if reluctantly and shrinkingly. + +"Is that you, Thor?" + +Thor retreated from the stairs, backing away to the library, of which +the door was the nearest open one. He distinctly recorded the words that +passed through his mind. He might have uttered them audibly, so +indelible was the impression with which they cut themselves in. + +"By God! I've got him." + +Out of the confused suffering of two months earlier he heard himself +saying: "I swear to God that if I ever see Claude again I'll kill him." + +He hadn't meant on that occasion deliberately to register a great oath; +the oath had registered itself. It was there in the archives of his +mind, signed and sealed and waiting for the moment of putting it into +execution. He had hardly thought of it since then; and now it urged +itself for fulfilment like a vow. It was a vow to cover not merely one +offense, but many--all the long years of nameless, unrecorded +irritations, ignored but never allayed, culminating in the act by which +this man had robbed him; robbed him uselessly, robbed him not to enjoy +the spoil, but to fling it away. + +It was a moment of seeing red similar to many others in his life. For +the instant he could more easily have killed Claude than refrained from +doing it. That he should so refrain was a matter of course. Naturally! +He still kept a hold on common sense. He would not only refrain, but be +civil. If Claude were in need of anything or were short of cash he would +probably write him a check. It was the irony of this kind of rage that +it was so impotent. It was impotent and absurd. It might shake him to +the foundations of his being, but it would come to nothing in the end. +It both relieved and embittered him to foresee this result. + +From the threshold of the library he called up to Claude, "Come down!" +The tone was imperious; it was even threatening. That degree of menace +at least he was unable to suppress. + +Claude's steps could be heard on the stairs. They were slow and clanking +because the carpets were up and the house full of echoes. To Thor's +fevered imagination it seemed as if Claude dragged his feet like a man +wearing chains, going haltingly and clumsily before some ominous +tribunal. The sensation--it was more that than anything else--caused the +elder brother to withdraw into the depths of the library, where he +turned on a light. + +The room, with its bare floors, its shrouded furniture, its screened +book cases, its blank pictures swaddled in linen bags, its long, gaunt +shadows, and its deadened air, suggested itself horribly and +ridiculously as a fitting scene for a crime. He might kill Claude with a +blow, and if he turned out the lights and shut the door and stole back +to his hotel no one would ever suspect him as the murderer. The idea +would have been no more than grotesque had it not acquired a certain +terror from the mingling of affection and anger and pity in his heart at +the sound of Claude's shrinking, clanking advance. In proportion as +Claude seemed to be afraid of him, he was the more aware that he was a +man to be afraid of. The consciousness caused him to get deeper into the +dimly lighted room, taking his stand at the remotest possible spot, with +his back to the empty fireplace. + +But when Claude appeared coatless in the doorway, his head was thrown up +defiantly in apparent effort to treat Thor's entrance as unwarranted. +"What the devil are you doing here?" + +Because of the semi-obscurity his face was white with a whiteness that +quickened Thor's sympathy into self-reproach. + +"What are _you_ doing here?" + +"That's my business." In making this reply Claude seemed to take it for +granted that they met on terms of hostility, though he added, less +aggressively: "If you want to know, I'm packing up. Taking the train for +New York at one o'clock to-night." + +Thor endeavored to speak with casual fraternal interest. "What brought +you back?" + +Claude took time to light a cigarette, saying, as he blew out the match, +"You." + +"Me? I thought it might be--might be some one else." + +"Then you thought wrong." He walked to a metal ash-tray which helped to +keep the covering that protected one of the low bookcases in its place, +and deposited the burnt match. He threw off with seeming carelessness as +he did so, "I know only one traitor, to make me keep returning on my +tracks." + +Because the impulse to violence was so terrific, Thor braced himself +against it, standing with his feet planted apart and his hands clenched +behind him till the nails dug into the flesh. He could not, however, +restrain a scornful little grunt which was meant for laughter. "_You_ +talk of traitors! I'd keep quiet about them, Claude, if I were you. You +make it too easy for an opponent." + +"Oh, well," Claude returned, airily, "I'm used to doing that. I made it +infernally easy for an opponent--last winter. But, then, sneaking's +always easy to a snake, till you get your heel on him." + +"And snarling's easy to a puppy, till you've throttled him." + +"And bluster's easy to a fool, till you let him see you hold him in +contempt." + +"As to holding in contempt, two can play at that game, Claude; and you +might find the competition dangerous." + +Claude came nearer, the lighted cigarette between his fingers. "Not on +your life! That's one thing in which I'm not afraid to bet on myself." +He came nearer still, planting himself within a few paces of his +brother. His smile, his mirthless, dead-man's smile, held Thor's eyes as +it had held Lois's a day or two before. He made an effort to speak +jauntily. "Why, Thor, a volcano can't belch fire as fast as I can spit +contempt on you. There! Take that!" + +With a rapid twist of the hand he threw the lighted cigarette into +Thor's face, where it struck with a little smarting burn below the eye. +Thor held himself in check by clenching his fists more tightly and +standing with bowed head. It was a minute or more before he was +sufficiently master of himself to loosen the grip with which his fingers +dug into one another, and put up his hand to brush the spot of ash from +his cheek. Being in so great fear of his passions, he felt the necessity +for speaking peaceably. + +"What did you do that for, Claude? It's beastly silly." + +"Oh no, it isn't--not the way I mean it." + +"But why should you mean it that way? What have I ever done to you?" + +"Good Lord! what haven't you done? You've--you've ruined me." + +The charge was so unexpected that Thor looked more amazed than +indignant. "Ruined you?" + +"Yes, ruined me. What else did you set out to do when you began your +confounded interference?" + +"I didn't mean to interfere--" + +Claude might have posed for some symbolical figure of accusation as, +with hands in his trousers pockets and classic profile turned in a +three-quarter light, he flung his words and directed his glances +obliquely and disdainfully at the brother who glowered with bent head. +"When you don't mean to go into a thing you keep out. That was your +place--out. Do you get that?--_out_. But you're never satisfied till +you've made as vile a mess of every one else's affairs as you've made of +your own." + +Feeling some justice in the charge, Thor began to excuse himself. "If +I've made a mess of my own, Claude, it's because--" + +"Because you can't help it. Oh, I know that. No one can be anything but +a damn fool if he's born one. All the more reason, then, why you should +keep away from where you're not wanted." + +By a great effort Thor managed to speak meekly. "How could I keep away +when--?" + +"When you're a rubber-neck bred in the bone. No, I suppose you couldn't. +But you hate a spy and a liar even when he can't be anything else; and +the worst of it is--" + +"Oh, is there anything worse than that?" + +"There's this that's worse, that your spying and your lying weren't bad +enough till you got me into a fix where I have to look like a cad, +when"--the protest in his soul against the role he was compelled to play +expressed itself in a little gasp--"when I'm--when I'm not one." + +The elder brother found himself unable to resist the opportunity. "If +you look like a cad, I suppose it's because you've acted like a cad. +It's the usual reason." + +"Oh, there's cad and cad. There's a fellow who gets snarled up in the +barbed wire because he runs into it, and there's another who +deliberately lays the trap for him. The one can afford to crawl away +with a grin on his face, while the other lies scratched and bleeding." + +It seemed to Thor that there was an opening here for a timorous attempt +to cry quits. "If it comes to the question of suffering, Claude, it +isn't all on one side. You may be scratched and bleeding, as you say, +and yet you can get over it; whereas I'm lamed for life." + +"Ah, don't come the hypocrite! If you're lamed for life, as I hope to +God you are, it's because you've got a bullet in the leg--which is what +any one hands out to a poacher." + +The relatively gentle tone was again the effect of a surprise stimulated +to curiosity. "When was I ever a poacher?" + +"You were a poacher when you went making love to a woman who belonged to +another man, while you belonged to another woman." + +"Very well," Thor said, quietly, after a minute's thinking. "I accept +the explanation. But I never did it." + +"Then you did something so infernally like it that to deny it is mere +quibbling with words." + +"All the same, I insist on making the denial." + +Claude shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not surprised at that. It's exactly +what your type of cur would do. Unfortunately for you, I've the proof." + +"The proof of what?" + +"Of your torturing a poor girl into saying she was willing to marry +you--and then throwing the words in her teeth." + +It was from the flame in Thor's eyes that Claude leaped back a +half-pace, though he steadied himself against a small table covered up +from the accumulation of summer's dust by a piece of common calico. +Giving himself time enough to have deliberately counted twenty, Thor +subdued the impulse of the muscles as well as that of speech. "Who told +you that?" he asked, at last, in the tone he might have used of some +matter of no importance. + +"Who do you think?" + +"There's only one person who _could_ have told you--" + +"Oh, you admit as much as that, do you? There is a person who could have +told me?" + +"Yes, I admit as much as that--but you must have misunderstood her." + +Thor's dignity and self-restraint were not without an effect that might +eventually have made for peace had not the brother's conscience been +screaming for a scapegoat on which to lay a portion of his sins. For him +alone the entire weight had become intolerable. Thor had been known to +accept such vicarious burdens before now. In the hope that he would do +so again, Claude answered, tauntingly: + +"I didn't misunderstand her when she said you were making me a cat's-paw +to do what you wouldn't do yourself. What kind of stuff are you made of, +Thor? You go flaunting your money before a poor little girl who you know +can't resist it, and then, when you get her willing to do God knows +what, you push her off on me and want to pay me for the job of relieving +you of your dirty work. After you've dragged her in the dust she's still +considered good enough for me--" + +"Stop!" + +The roar of the monosyllable echoed through the empty house, while Thor +strode forward, the devil in him loose. With the skill of a toreador in +throwing his cloak into the eyes of an infuriated bull, Claude snatched +the calico strip from the table beside which he stood and flung it in +Thor's face. The result was to check the latter in his advance, giving +Claude time to dart nimbly to the other side of the room. As Thor stared +about him, dazed by his rage, he bore out still further the resemblance +to a maddened animal in the bull-ring. + +Fear struggled in Claude's heart with the lust for retaliation. Like +Thor himself, he knew the minute to be one in which he could work off a +thousand unpaid scores that had been heaping themselves up since +childhood. For the time being it seemed as if he could not only make the +scapegoat bear his sins, but stab him to the heart while he did it. + +"Stop?" he laughed, shrilly. "Like hell, I'll stop. Did you stop when +you went sneaking after Rosie Fay till you got her in a state where she +wanted to kill herself?" The red glare in Thor's eyes was an incentive +to going on. "Did you stop when you tried to father your beastly actions +off on me, and juggle me into marrying the girl you'd had enough of? Did +you stop when you fooled Lois Willoughby into thinking you a saint, and +breaking her heart when she found you out? Look at her now--" + +With a smothered oath Thor charged as a wounded rhinoceros might +charge--in a lunge that would have borne his brother down by sheer force +of weight had not Claude eluded him lightly. Once more Thor shook +himself, stupefied by his passion, blinded by the blood in his eyes. He +needed an instant to place his victim, who, with white face and wild, +terrified glances, had found temporary shelter behind the barricade of +the heavy library table. + +But before renewing his rush Thor marched to the door that led to the +hall, the only door to the room, locking it and pocketing the key. The +muttered, "By God, I'll have you now!" reached Claude's ears, bringing +to his lips a protest which had not burst into words before the huge +figure charged again. Behind his fortification Claude was alert, dancing +now this way and now that, as Thor brought his strength to bear on the +table to wrench it aside. But by the time that was done Claude was +already elsewhere, overturning tables and chairs in his flight. + +Behind a sofa Claude intrenched himself again, a small chair raised +above his head as a weapon of defense. Thor sprang on the sofa, only to +receive the weight of the chair in his chest, staggering him backward +while Claude bounded off to another refuge. Both were cursing +inarticulately; both were panting in broken grunts and sobs; from both +the perspiration in that airless room and in the heat of the July night +was streaming as rain. The pursuit was like that of a leopard by a +lion--the one lithe, agile, and desperate; the other heavy, tremendous, +and sure. + +In darting from point to point Claude found himself near a window, where +he fumbled with the fastening in the hope of throwing up the sash, +though wooden shutters defended the outside. Driven from this attempt, +he made for the locked door, pulling at it vainly on the chance that it +would yield. Seeing Thor bearing down on him with redoubled fury, he +obeyed the impulse of the moment and switched off the electricity as he +crept swiftly along the wall. In the darkness he stumbled to a corner, +where his labored breathing could not but betray his hiding-place. While +he crouched in the corner, making himself small, he knew Thor was +stalking him by the sound. + +He was stalking him, and yet in the inky blackness of the room accurate +hunting down was difficult. It was like a duel between blind men. Thor +was moving uncertainly, pausing from second to second to fix the object +of his search. + +In the mad hope of reaching the fireplace and creeping into the chimney, +Claude wriggled from his corner along the floor, keeping close to the +wainscot. As he did so he touched the legs of a footstool which +suggested its use at once. Controlling the thumping of his heart and the +pumping of his lungs as best he could, he got noiselessly to his feet. +Inch by inch, slinging the footstool by a leg, he moved toward the spot +from which Thor's panting breath seemed to proceed. If he could but +batter in that long skull he would be acquitted of responsibility on the +ground of self-defense. But he was afraid of anything that approached +the hand-to-hand. When it seemed to him that he could vaguely make out +the swaying of a figure in the darkness, he hurled the missile with all +his might--only to hear it crash into one of the covered pictures. + +Claude was disappointed, and yet in the din of the shattering glass he +was able to escape again. He had lost all sense of direction. Even his +touch on the furniture didn't help him, since everything was now +displaced. Nevertheless, he continued to duck and dodge, to wriggle and +creep and elude. Once Thor's clutch was actually upon him, but he +managed to tear himself free with nothing worse than a long rent in his +shirt-sleeve. Again Thor seized him, but only to tear his collar from +the stud. A third time Thor's strong fingers were closing round his +throat, and yet after a momentary choking groan he had been able to slip +away. Never before had Claude supposed himself so strong. There was a +minute when he had felt Thor's hot breath snorting in his face, and +still was able to pick up a small, round table on which his mother +sometimes placed her tea-tray, sending it hurtling toward his pursuer, +checking him again. With a splutter of stifled oaths, Thor grasped the +piece of furniture, throwing it violently back. Claude rejoiced as it +crashed into a window and loosened the shutters outside. If he only knew +which of the windows it was, there might be a chance of his getting out +by it. + +With this possibility before him he took heart again. The sound of the +breaking of the window enabling him to fix his whereabouts, he began +feeling his way toward the unexpected hope of exit. It became the more +urgent to reach it as he guessed by the fumbling of Thor's hands along +the wall that the latter was trying to find the electric button so as to +turn on the light. He groped, therefore, between the tables and +overturned chairs, getting as far from his enemy as possible. If only +his heart wouldn't pound as though about to burst from his body! If only +his breath wouldn't wheeze itself out with the gurgle of water through a +bottle-neck! He couldn't last much longer. He was so nearly spent that +if Thor kept up the attack he must wear him out. In the end he must let +those powerful hands close round his throat, as he had felt them close a +few minutes before, while he strangled without further resistance. He +felt oddly convinced that it would be by means of strangling that Thor's +quiet, awful tenacity of revenge would wreak itself. + + * * * * * + +During these horrible minutes Thor had the same conviction. All the +force of his excited nerves had seemed to be centering in his hands. If +he could only tear out that tongue which had hardly ever addressed him +except with a sneer since it had begun to lisp! Now that the amazing +opportunity was at hand, he wondered how he could have put it off so +long. That he should do the thing he was bent on might have been written +like a fate. It was like something he had always known, like something +toward which he had been always working. The tenderness with which he +had yearned over Claude ever since the days when they were children +seemed never to have had any other end in view. + +So he stalked his prey while the minutes passed--five minutes--ten +minutes--perhaps more, perhaps less--he had lost all count of time. So +he stalked him--through the darkness, round and round, over tables and +chairs, into corners and out of them. The room was sealed; the house was +empty; the grounds were large. They might have been in some subterranean +vault. When the right moment came he would find the button by which to +turn on the light, and then.... + +Revulsion came from the fact that he had accidentally put his hand on +the button and lit up the spectacle of the room. At sight of it he could +have laughed. Nothing but the big library table and one of the heavy +arm-chairs stood on its legs. One of the windows had a gash like a grin +on its prim countenance, and one of the pictures sagged drunkenly from +its hook, a mere bag of gilded wood and glass. Cowering in a corner, +Claude was again arming himself with a chair. It was not his weapon, but +his whiteness, that stirred Thor to a pity almost hysterical. One of his +arms was bare where the shirt-sleeve had been torn from it; one side of +his collar sprang loose where it had been wrested from the stud; his +lips were parted in terror, his eyes starting from his head. The thing +Thor could have done more easily than anything else would have been to +fling himself down and weep. + +As it was, he could only hold out his hands with a kind of shamed, +broken-hearted appeal, saving, "Claude, come here." + +Though his trembling hands dropped the raised chair, Claude shrank more +desperately into his corner. When, to reassure him, Thor took a step +forward, Claude moved along the wall, with his back to that protection, +ready to spring and dodge again. If he understood Thor's advances, he +either mistrusted or rejected them. + +"Don't be afraid," Thor tried to say, encouragingly, but after the +attacks of the past few minutes his voice sounded hollow and +unconvincing to himself. + +In proportion as he went nearer Claude sidled away, always keeping his +back to the wall, with gasps that were like groans. He spoke but once. +"Open that door!" It was all he could articulate, but it implied a test +of the brother's sincerity. + +Thor accepted it, striding to the threshold, turning the key +energetically, and flinging the door wide open. The quiet light burning +in the quiet hall produced something in the nature of a shock. He +stepped into the hall to wipe his brow and curse himself. He could never +win his own pardon for the madness of the past quarter of an hour. +Neither, probably, could he ever win Claude's, though he must go back +and make the attempt. + +What happened as he turned again into the library he could never clearly +explain, for the reason that he never clearly knew. The minute remained +in his consciousness as one unrelated to the rest of life, with nothing +to lead up to it and nothing to follow after. Even the savagery of their +mutual onslaught had been no adequate preparation for what now took +place so rapidly that the mind was unable to record it. As he re-entered +the room Claude was standing by one of the low bookcases. So much +remained in the elder brother's memory as fact. The vision of Claude +raising his arm in a quick, vicious movement was a vision and no more, +since on Thor's part it was blurred and then effaced in a sharp, sudden +pain accompanied by a blinding light. Of his own act, which must have +followed so promptly as to be nearly simultaneous, Thor had no +recollection at all. By the time he was able to piece ideas together +Claude was senseless on the floor, while he was bending over him with +blood streaming down his face. + +For the instant the brother was merged in the physician. To bring Claude +back to life after the blow that had stunned and felled him was +obviously the first thing to be done. Thor worked at the task madly, +tearing open the shirt, chafing the hands and the brow, feeling the +pulse, listening at the heart. Whether or not there was a response there +he couldn't tell; his own emotion was too overpowering. His fingers on +Claude's wrist shook as with a palsy; his ear at Claude's heart was +deafened by the pounding of his own. Meanwhile Claude lay limp and +still, dead-white, with eyes closed and mouth a little open. Thor had +seen many a man in a state of syncope, but never one who looked so much +like death. Was he dead? Could he be dead? Had the great oath been +fulfilled? He worked frantically. Never till that instant had he known +what terror was. Never had he beheld so clearly what was in his own +soul. As he worked he seemed to be looking in a mirror from which the +passion-ridden fratricide whom he had always recognized dimly within +himself was staring out. The physician disappeared again in the brother. +"O God! O God!" He could hear himself breathing the words. But of what +use were they? As he knelt and chafed and rubbed and listened they came +out because he couldn't keep them back. And he was accomplishing +nothing! Claude was as still and limp as ever. Not a breath!--not a +sign!--not a throb at the pulse!--and the minutes going by! + +He dropped the poor arm that fell lifeless to the side, and threw back +his head with a groan. "O God--if you're anywhere!--give him back to +me!" + +The broken utterance was the first prayer he had ever uttered in his +life, but, having said it, he went on with his work again. He went on +with new vigor and perhaps a little hope. He fancied he saw a change. It +was not much of a change--a little warmth, a little color, but no more +than might have been created by a fancy. + +He ran for water to the nearest tap. In returning to the library his +foot struck something on the floor. It was the metal ash-tray which had +helped to keep the covering in place on one of the bookcases, and into +which Claude had thrown a match. The picture of a few minutes earlier +reformed itself--Claude standing just there, with the ash-tray under his +hand--the rapid motion of the arm--the paralyzing pain--the dazzling +light--and then the blow with which he must have hurled himself on +Claude, striking him to the floor. There was no time to coordinate these +memories now or to attend to the wound in his own forehead. The +explanation came of its own accord as he touched the ash-tray with his +foot while dashing back to Claude's side. + +The change continued. There were positive signs of life. The mouth had +closed; there was the faintest possible quiver of the lids. When he +threw a little water into Claude's face there was a twitching of the +muscles and a slight protesting movement of the hand. + +"Thank God!" + +He couldn't note the involuntary expression of his gratitude, which had +nevertheless been audible. Claude had need of air. Taking him in his +arms, he lifted him like a baby and staggered to his feet. The body hung +loosely over his shoulder as he crossed the room and laid it on the +sofa. The broken window served its purpose now, for a little air was +coming in by it through the spot where the wooden shutter had given way. +Thor succeeded in forcing the shutter altogether, letting the light +summer breeze play into the marble face. + +If he only had a little brandy! He summed up hurriedly the possibilities +in the house, coming to the conclusion that nothing of the sort would +have been left within reach. Even the telephone had been disconnected +for the summer. It would be, however, an easy thing to run to his +office. It would be easier still to run to his house, which was nearer. +Claude was breathing freely now. He could be safely left for the few +minutes which was all he needed to be away. With a simple restorative +the boy would soon be on his feet again. + +He pushed the sofa closer to the open window, kneeling once more beside +it. Yes, the danger was past. "Thank God! Thank God!" The words were +audible again. It was deliverance. It was salvation. There was a +positive tinge of color in the cheeks; the eyes opened wearily and +closed again. Thor seized the two cold hands in his own and spoke: + +"It's all right, old chap. Just lie still for a minute, till I go and +get you a taste of brandy. Be back like a shot. Don't move. You'll be +all right. Fit as a fiddle when you've had something to brace you up." + +No answer came, but Thor sought for none. The worst was past; the danger +was averted. With the two cold hands still pressed in his own, he bent +forward and kissed the pale lips with a life-giving kiss such as Elijah +gave to the Shunamite woman's son. Under the warmth of the imprint +Claude stirred again as if making a response. + +He ran pantingly like a spent dog--but he ran. He had no idea what time +it was. It might have been midnight; it might have been near morning. He +was amazed to hear the village clock strike ten. Only ten! and he had +lived a lifetime since nine. + +He rejoiced to see a light in the house. Lois would be up. As he drew +near he saw it was the light streaming from her room to the upper +balcony outside it. When nearer still he caught the faint glimmer of a +white dress. She was sitting there in the cool of the night, as they had +so often sat together in the spring. + +He called out as soon as he thought he could make her hear him. "Lois, +come down!" + +The white figure remained motionless, so that as he ran he called again, +"Lois, come down!" + +He could see her rise and peer outward. Still running, he called the +third time: "Lois, come down! I want something!" + +There was a hurried "Oh, Thor, is it you?" after which the figure +disappeared in the light from the open window. + +She met him at the door as he ran up the steps. There was no greeting +between them. He had just breath enough to speak. "It's Claude. He's +down there in the house. He's hurt. I want some brandy." + +He was in the hall by this time, while she followed. His own appearance, +now that he was in the light, drew a cry from her. "But, Thor, you're +all cut--and bleeding." + +He was now in the dining-room, fumbling at a drawer of the sideboard. +"Never mind that now. It doesn't hurt. I'll attend to it by and by. I +must get back to Claude. Is it here?" + +"No; here." She produced the bottle of cognac from a cupboard, thrusting +it into his hands. "Now come. I'm going with you." + +They stopped for no further explanation. That could wait. Thor was out +of the house, tearing down the empty street, while she followed scarcely +less swiftly. At that time of night they were almost sure to have the +roadway to themselves. + +She lost sight of him as he turned in at the avenue, but continued to +press on. That there had been a struggle between the brothers she could +guess, though she let the matter pass without further mental comment. +The fact that filled her consciousness was that in some strange way Thor +was back--wild-eyed and bleeding. Whatever had happened, he would +probably need her now, accepting the substitute for love. + +Half-way up the avenue she saw that both the inner and outer doors of +the house were open and that the electricity from the hall lit up the +porch and steps. Thor was still running, but at the foot of the steps he +surprised her by coming to a halt instead of leaping up them, two or +three at a time. Stopping abruptly, silhouetted in the spot of light, he +threw his hands above his head as if he had been shot and were +staggering backward. He hadn't been shot, because there was no sound. He +hadn't even been wounded, because as she sped toward him she could see +him stoop--spring away--return--and stoop again. She was about to call +out, "Oh, Thor, what is it?" when, on hearing her footsteps, he bounded +to his feet and ran in her direction. "Go back!" he cried, hoarsely. "Go +back! Go back, Lois, go back!" + +But she hurried on. If there was trouble or danger she must be by his +side. + +He wheeled around again to that over which he had been stooping, but +with a repetition of the movement of flinging up the hands. After that +he seemed to crawl away--to crawl away till he reached the steps, where, +pulling himself half-way up, he lay with his face hidden. The thing he +had seen was something fatal and final, leaving no more to be done. The +thought came to her that if there was no more for him to do, it was +probable that her work was just beginning and that she must keep herself +calm and strong. + +She came to him at last and bent over his long, prostrate form. It was +racked and heaving. The sobbing was of a kind she had never heard +before--the violent, convulsive sobbing of a man. + +Raising herself, she looked about for the cause of this grief, for a +second or two seeing nothing. The respite enabled her to renew her sense +of the necessity laid upon her to be helpful. Whatever was there, she +must neither flinch nor cry out. She must take up the task where he had +been forced to lay it down. + +It was a bare arm from which the shirt-sleeve had been torn away that +caught her attention first--a bare arm with a spatter of blood on it. It +lay extended along the grass just beside the driveway. She was obliged +to take a step or two toward it before seeing that it was Claude's arm, +and that he himself was lying on the sward of the lawn, with a little +trickle of blood from his heart. + +She was not frightened. She was not even appalled. She understood as +readily what she ought to do as if the accident had been part of every +day's routine. But as her glance went first to the dead brother and then +to the living one she knew that her substitute for love had been found. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +When Jasper Fay was tried for the murder of Claude Masterman, and +acquitted of the charge, it was generally felt that the ends of justice +had been served. No human being, whatever his secret opinion, could have +desired the further punishment of that little old man whose sufferings +might have expiated any possible crime in advance. The jury having found +it improbable that at his age, and with his infirmities, he should have +been lurking in the village at ten o'clock at night and waiting in the +neighborhood of Colcord jail at dawn of the next morning, the verdict +was accepted with relief not only in the little court-house of the +county town, but by the outside public. To none was this absolution more +nearly of the nature of a joy than to the unfortunate young man's +family. + + * * * * * + +That was in the winter of 1912, and in the mean while Lois had been led +so successfully by her substitute for love as to be at times unaware of +her lack of the divine original. For she was busy, so it seemed to her, +every day of every week and every minute of every day. The first +dreadful necessities on that night of the 9th of July having been +attended to, her thought flew at once to the father and mother of the +dead boy. + +"Thor dear, I know exactly what I'm going to do about them, if you'll +let me." + +It was early morning by the time she said that, and all that was +immediately pressing was over. Claude was lying in one of the spare +rooms that had been prepared for him, and Dr. Noonan, together with the +four or five grave, burly men, Irish-Americans as far as she could +judge, who had been in and about the house all night hunting for traces +of the crime, had gone away. Those who were still beating the shrubbery +and the grounds were not in view from the library windows. Maggs and his +wife were in the house, as well as Dearlove and Brightstone, getting it +ready for re-occupation, since it was but seemly that the dread guest +who had come under its roof should be decently lodged. + +Thor, having spent some hours before the stupefied village authorities, +was surprised and obscurely disappointed not to be put under arrest. +Public disgrace would have appeased in a measure the clamor of +self-accusation. To be treated with respect and taken at his word in his +account of what had happened between himself and Claude was like an +insult to a martyr's memory. When dismissed to his home he found it hard +to go. + +Having dragged himself back through the gray morning light, it was to +discover strange wonders wrought in the immediate surroundings. Lois and +her four assistants had whisked the coverings from the furniture and +restored something like an air of life. Even the library, having been +sufficiently noted and described, had been set in what was approximately +order, the broken picture taken from its nail and the broken window +hidden by a curtain. + +On the threshold of the room Thor paused, shrinking from a spot which +henceforth he must regard as cursed. But Lois insisted. "Come in, Thor +dear; come in." She felt it imperative that he should overcome on the +instant anything in the way of terrible association. He must counteract +remorse; he must not let himself be haunted. She herself sat still, +therefore, with the restrained demeanor of one who has seen nothing in +the circumstances with which she has not been able to cope. Pale, with +dark rings under the eyes betraying the inner effect of the night of +stress, she nevertheless carried herself as if equal to confronting +developments graver still. The strength she inspired came from rising to +the facts as to some tremendous matter of course. + +Now that there was a lull in the excitement she had been quietly +discussing the conditions with Uncle Sim and Dr. Hilary. The latter went +forward as Thor, tall, gaunt, red-eyed, the wound in his forehead +stanched with plaster, advanced into the room. + +"You're face to face with a great moral test, me dear Thor," he said, +laying his hands on the young man's shoulders, "but you'll rise to it." + +Thor started back, less in indignation than in horror. "Rise? Me?" + +"Yes, you, me dear Thor. You'll climb up on it and get it under your +feet. The best use we can make of mistake and calamity is to stand on +them and be that much higher up. I don't care what your sin has been or +what your self-reproach. Now that they're there, you'll utilize them for +your spiritual growth. Neither do I say God help you! for I'm convinced +in me soul that He's doing it." + +Thor moved uneasily from under the weight of the benedictory hands. It +was as part of his rejection of mercy that he muttered, "I don't know +anything about Him." + +"Don't you, now? Well, that's not so important. He knows all about you. +It's not what we know about God, but what God knows about us that tells +most in the long run." + +He passed on into the hall, where he picked up his hat and went out. +Uncle Sim, who, with more of Don Quixote in his face than ever, had been +pacing up and down the room, threw over his shoulder, "Always said you +were on the side of the angels, Thor--and you are." + +Thor found his way wearily to the chimney-piece, where he stood with his +face buried in his hands and his back to his two companions. He groaned +impatiently. "Ah, don't talk about angels!" + +Uncle Sim continued his pacing. "But I will. Now's the time. What, after +all, are they but the forces in life that make for the best, and who's +ever been on their side more than you?" + +Thor groaned again. "What good does that do me now?" + +"This good, that when you've been with them they'll be with you, and +don't you forget it! Life doesn't forsake the children who've been +trying to serve it, not even when they lose control of themselves for a +few minutes and do--do what they're sorry for afterward." + +Thor writhed. "I killed Claude." + +"Oh no, you didn't, Thor dear," Lois said, quietly. "It's wrong for you +to keep saying so. We can see perfectly well what has happened, can't +we, Uncle Sim? If Claude revived while you were away and went out to get +more air, and some one, as you think, was lurking in the shrubbery--" + +"But if it hadn't been for me--" + +"As far as that goes I might as well say, If it hadn't been for me. I've +told you how he came to me two days ago and how I discouraged him. We're +all involved--you no more than the rest of us." + +"If he _is_ involved more than the rest of us," Uncle Sim declared, +"it's all the more reason why the good forces by which he's stood should +now stand by him. It's a matter of common experience to all who've ever +made the test that they do." He turned more directly to Thor. "There's a +verse in one of those old songs I'm fond of quoting at you--I'll never +trouble you with another," he promised, hurriedly, in answer to a +movement of protest on his nephew's part, "if you'll only listen to +this. It's right to the point, and runs this way: 'The angel of the Lord +encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.' They're +camping round about you now, Thor, as I've always told you they would." + +Thor raised his head just enough to say savagely over his shoulder, "But +when I never _have_ feared Him, in the way you mean--and don't." + +"Oh, but you have--and do. There's two types for that sort of thing, +both sketched in graphic style by the Master. There's the two sons sent +to work in the vineyard, of whom one said to his father, 'I go, sir,' +and went not. The other said, 'I will not,' but went. 'Whether of them +twain,' the Master asks, 'did the will of his father?' I leave it to +yourself, Thor." + +Unable to escape from this ingenious pardon that caught and blessed him +whether he would or no, Thor remained silent, while the uncle addressed +himself to the niece. "I'll be off now, Lois, but I'll come back before +long and bring Amy. We'll stay here. The house'll need to have people in +it, to make it look as if it was lived in, till Archie and Ena can be +got at and brought home." + +Thor turned and looked from the one to the other distressfully. "Poor +father and mother! What about them?" + +It was then that Lois showed that the matter had already received her +attention. "Thor, dear, I know exactly what I'm going to do, if you'll +let me." + +She had been so efficient throughout the night that both men listened +expectantly while she sketched her plan. She would cable the facts as +succinctly as she could put them to her own father and mother, who were +in their _petit trou pas cher_ on the north coast of France. They would +then cross to England and break the news to Mr. and Mrs. Masterman. The +very fact of the breach between her parents on the one side and the +bereaved couple on the other was an additional reason for charging the +former with the errand of mercy. Where so much had been taken it was the +more necessary to rally what remained. + +Having expressed his approval of these suggestions, Uncle Sim took his +departure. + +"Where is he?" Thor asked at once. + +"Come." + +Though she rose, she lingered to say, with a manner purposely kept down +to the simplest and most matter-of-fact plane: "You'll come up to the +house and have breakfast, won't you, Thor? It will be ready about +eight." As he began to demur on the ground that he couldn't eat, she +insisted. "Oh, but you must. You know that yourself. You'll feel better, +too, when you've had a bath. You can't take one here, because Mrs. Maggs +hasn't put the towels out. Cousin Amy will attend to that when she comes +down." + +These and similar maternal counsels having been given and received, she +led the way into the hall, only to pause again at the foot of the +stairs. "I shall go out now to send my cablegram to mamma. The sooner I +get it off the better it will be, so that they can cross from Havre to +Southampton to-night. I've got it all thought out and condensed, and I +shall write it in French so as to keep it from the people in our own +office here. I suppose that everything will be in the papers by the +afternoon, and we shall have to accept the publicity." Seeing the pain +in his face, she took the opportunity to say: "Oh, we can do that well +enough, Thor dear. We mustn't be afraid of it. We mustn't flinch at +anything. Whatever has to come out will get its significance only from +the way we bear it; and we can bear it well." + +Having advanced a few steps up the stairs, she turned again on the first +landing, speaking down toward him as he mounted. "If possible, I should +like to tell Rosie myself. It will be a shock to her, of course; but I +want to be with her when she has to meet it. Don't you think I ought to +be?" On his expressing some form of mute agreement, she continued: +"Then, if you approve, I shall telephone to Jim Breen, asking him to +bring her to see me. Rosie will guess, by my sending for her, that +something strange has happened. I shall word my message to her in that +way." + +Her last appeal was made to him as she stood with one hand on the knob +of the door beyond which Claude was lying. "Thor dear, I hope you get at +the truth of the things Uncle Sim and Dr. Hilary have been saying. +There's a great message to you there. You _are_ on the side of the good +things, you know. You always have been, and always will be." + +He shook his head. "It's too late to say that to me now." + +"Oh no, it isn't! And what's also not too late to say is that you +mustn't let yourself be ridden by remorse." His haggard eyes seeming to +ask her how he could help it, she continued: "Remorse is one of the most +futile things we know anything about. It can't undo the past, while it +destroys the present and poisons the future." + +He was almost indignant. "But when you've--?" + +"When you've given way as you say you gave way last night? You brace +yourself against doing it again. You make it a new starting-point. Isn't +that it?" + +"Yes, but if you're like me!" + +With her free hand she brushed back the shock of dark hair from his +forehead. It was the first touch of personal contact between them since +his sudden reappearance. "If one is like you, Thor, of course it's +harder. You're a terrific creature. I begin to see that now. I never +took it in before, because in general you're so restrained. I know it's +the people who are most restrained who can be swept most terribly by +passion--but I hadn't expected it of you. Even so, it's the sort of +thing which only goes with something big in the soul--" + +He put up a hand protestingly. "Don't!" + +"But I must. It ought to be said. You should understand it. +Fundamentally--I see it quite plainly now--you're the big primitive +creature that's only partially tamed by the tenderest of tender hearts. +Do you know what you remind me of?--of a great St. Bernard dog that asks +nothing better than to love every one and save life, but which when it's +roused...! You see what I mean," she went on, with a kind of soothing, +serious cajolery. "Thor dear, I was never so afraid of you as I've been +this night, and I never"--_loved_ was what she was going to say, but, as +on the day in the winter woods, she suppressed the word for another--"I +never admired you so much. I'm going to make a confession. What you say +you felt toward Claude is what I've often felt myself in--in glimpses. +God knows I don't say that to malign him. I shouldn't say it at all if +it were not to point out that you wouldn't have done him any more +harm--not when it came to the act--than I myself. Would you, now?" + +He hung his head, murmuring, brokenly, "No." + +"What we've got to see is that you're very human, isn't it? and that's +what they mean--Uncle Sim and Dr. Hilary--when they say that you're face +to face with a great moral test. They mean that after you've used +what--what's happened within the last few hours--as you can use it--as +you _can_ use it, Thor dear--you'll be a far stronger man than you were +before--and you were a strong man already." + +With eyes downcast he murmured words to the effect that it was difficult +to see the way. + +"Won't the way be to take each new thing as it comes--and there are some +very hard things still to come, you know!--as a step to climb by, to get +it under our feet as something that holds us up instead of over our +heads as something that crushes us down? Won't that be the way? It may +be like climbing a Calvary, but all the same we shall be there--up +instead of down--and," she added, with a smile so faint that it was in +her eyes rather than on her lips, "and you know, Thor darling, that no +one is ever on a Calvary alone." + +With these words she turned the handle of the door, leading him into a +room from which the morning light was only partially excluded, and about +which vases and bowls of roses had already been set. + +Claude was lying naturally, wearing a suit of his own pajamas, white +with a little pink stripe, his face turned slightly and, as it were, +expectantly toward the two who approached. Having entered the room +first, Lois kept to the background, leaving Thor to go to the bedside +alone. + +The difference between the dead Claude and the sleeping one was in the +expression. In the sleeping Claude the features were always as if +chiseled in marble, and, like marble, cold. The dead Claude's face, on +the contrary, radiated that which might have passed for warmth and life. +The look was one he would have worn if mystified and pleased by +something he was trying to understand. In any other case Thor would have +explained away this phenomenon on grounds purely physiological; but +since it was Claude he found himself swept by an invading wonder. He +knew what people more credulous than himself would say. They would say +that on the instant of the great change toward which he had been so +suddenly impelled even poor Claude, with his narrow earthly vision, had +been dowered with an increase of perception that bewildered and perhaps +rejoiced him. Thor couldn't say this himself; but he could wonder. Was +it possible that Claude, with this pleasing, puzzled dawn upon his face, +could have entered into phases of life more vivid than any he had left +behind? Thor found the question surging within his soul; but before he +could silence it with any of his customary answers he heard the counsel +of wise old Hervieu of the Institut Pasteur: "_Ne niez jamais rien._" + +But his need was emotional and not philosophical. Stooping, he kissed +once more the lips on which there was this quiver of a new life that +almost made them move, and sank on his knees beside the bed. Lois, who +knew that beyond any subsequent moment this would be the one of last +farewell, slipped softly from the room and closed the door behind her. +She remembered as she did so that apart from her timid touch on his hair +there had been no greeting between her husband and herself since his cry +to her as she sat on the balcony in the darkness; but perhaps the +substitute for love didn't call for it. + +She went down-stairs to carry out her intentions of ringing up Jim Breen +and sending her cablegram to France. Since the necessity for doing the +former would take her to her own house, she would have the chance of +changing her dress before the relative publicity of the telegraph-office +in the Square. She would need also to explain the circumstances to her +servants, who by this hour would be moving about the house and might be +alarmed on finding that her room had not been occupied. The door to the +garden portico being that which would probably be unlocked, she turned +into Willoughby's Lane, where her attention was caught by the sight of +two men coming down the hill. + +What she saw was a young man helping an older one. The old man leaned +heavily on his companion, hobbling with the weariness of one who can +barely drag himself along. + +Lois was seized by sudden faintness; but a saving thought restored her. +It was no more than the prompting to give this spent wayfarer a cup of +coffee as he passed her door, but it met the instant's need. By a +deliberate effort of the will she banished every suggestion beyond this +kindly impulse. If there were graver arguments to urge themselves, they +were for others rather than for her. + + * * * * * + +That she was not the only person within eight or ten hours to be +startled by the sight of that little old man was abundantly evidenced +later. John Stanchfield, Elias Palmer, Harold Ormthwaite, and Nathan +Ridge, all farmers or market-gardeners of the Colcord district, +testified to frights and "spooky feelings" on being accosted by a dim +gray figure plodding along the Colcord road in the lonely interval +between midnight and morning. The dim gray figure seemed to have +recognized the different "teams" by the section of the road through +which they jolted or by their flickering lamps. + +"That you, 'Lias?" + +"Why, yes! Who be you? Darned if it ain't Jasper Fay! What under the +everlastin' canopy be you a-doin' this way so late at night?--so early +in the mornin', as you might say." + +"My poor boy! To be let out at five!" + +Grunts of sympathy and inquiries concerning the nature of the "truck" +being taken to market made up the rest of the conversation, which ended +in a mutual, "So long!" + +With John Stanchfield and Harold Ormthwaite the exchange of salutations +had been on similar lines. No one but old Nathan Ridge had had the +curiosity to ask: "What you trampin' the eight mile for? Could have took +the train at Marchfield, and got out at the jail door." + +"We-ell, the trains didn't just suit. Marchfield's three mile from my +place, and if it comes to trampin' three mile you might as well make it +eight." + +"Guess you're pretty nigh tuckered out, ain't you?" + +"We-ell, I'm some tired. Been takin' it easy, though. Left home about +eight o'clock last night and just strolled along. Fact is, Nathan, I had +to be out o' my little place last night root and branch, and it's kind +of eased my mind like to be footin' it through the dark." + +"Guess you feel pretty bad, don't you?" + +"Well, I did. Don't so much now." + +"Got used to it?" + +"No, it ain't that so much. It's just that if I've suffered, others +will--" But according to Mr. Ridge further explanation was withheld, the +speaker going on disappointingly to say: "Guess I'll be keepin' along. +Hope you'll get your price on them pease. Awful sight of them in the +market after this last dry spell." + +So Jasper Fay trudged on. He trudged on patiently, with the ease of a +man accustomed all his life to plodding through the soil, though now and +then he paused. He paused for breath or for a minute's repose, and +sometimes to listen. He listened most frequently to sounds behind him as +if expecting pursuit; he listened to the barking of dogs, the gallop of +grazing horses across the dark pastures, or to the occasional bray of a +motorist's horn. When nothing happened, he went on again, though with +each renewal of the effort his footsteps lagged more wearily. + +Dawn was gray by the time he had come face to face with the long, grim +house of sorrow. It was grim unintentionally, grim in spite of +well-meant efforts to cheer it up and make it alluring, at least to the +passer-by. For him ampelopsis had been allowed to clamber over the +red-brick walls; for him a fine piece of lawn was kept neatly cut; for +him the national flag floated during daylight over a grotesque pinnacle; +for him a fountain plashed on feast-days. Neither fountain nor flag nor +sward nor vine was visible except to the outsider, but it was for him +the effect was planned. For him, too, a little common had been set apart +on the other side of the roadway and garnished with a wooden bench under +a noble, fan-shaped elm. Jasper Fay sat down on the bench as he had sat +down on it many a time before, hunched and weary. + +For the three years, or nearly, in which Matt had been shut up here the +father had spent with him as many as possible of the minutes allowed for +intercourse, prolonging the sense of communion by sitting and staring at +the walls. In times past he had stared in patient longing for the moment +of the boy's release; but this morning he only stared. Behind the +staring, thought was too inactive for either retrospect or forecast; and +thought was inactive because both past and future now contained elements +too big for the overtaxed mind to deal with. He could only sit wearily +and expectantly on the bench, watching, at the end of one of the long +wings, a small gray door on which he had been told to keep his eyes. + +After the first flicker of light the day came slowly. The lowlands +around the prison were shrouded in a thin gray mist, through which +Lombardy poplars and warders' cottages and prison walls loomed ghostly. +When, a few minutes after the clock in the pinnacle had struck five, the +gray door opened soundlessly and a shadowy form slipped out, the effect +was like that of a departed spirit materializing within human ken. + +The shadowy form shook hands with some one who remained unseen, and +after it had taken a step or two forward the soundless door shut it out. +It looked timorous and lone in the wide, ghostly landscape, advancing a +few paces, stopping, searching, advancing again, but uncertainly. As it +emerged more fully into view it disclosed a bundle in the hand, a light +gray suit, and a common round straw hat. It moved as though testing +ground that might give way beneath it or as trying the conditions of +some new and awesome sphere of existence into which it had suddenly been +thrust. + +With all his remaining forces concentrated into one sharp, eager look, +Jasper Fay crept forward. The ground-mist blurring his outlines, the two +dim figures were face to face before the son perceived his father's +presence or approach. On doing so he started back. + +"Why, father! What's the matter? You look"--his voice dropped to +faintness--"you look--terrible." + +But the father's faculties were already too exhausted to catch the +movement and note of dismay. He was drained even of emotion. All he +could do was to extend his hand with the casual greeting: "Well, Matt! +How are you? Come to meet you." + +He explained, however, the immediate program, which was to go by the +five-thirty train to Marchfield, whence by taking the short cut through +Willoughby's Lane and County Street they could reach home for breakfast +by seven. Home, it had to be told, was no longer the little place on the +north bank of the pond, but a three-family house on the Thorley estate, +with a "back piazza" for yard and nothing at all in the way of garden. A +home without a garden to an old man who had lived in gardens all his +life was more of an irony than a home without a rooftree, but even this +evoked from the sufferer only a mild statement of the fact. Mildness, +resigned and apparently satisfied, marked all the turnings of the +narrative unfolded as they plodded to the station, while the son took +the opportunity to scan at his leisure those changes in the sunken face +that had shocked him at the moment of encounter. + +It was no new tale that Matt heard, but it pieced together the isolated +facts made known to him in the few letters he had received and the +scattered bits of family news he had been able to pick up on +visiting-days. For all of it he was prepared. He would have been +prepared for it even if he had received no hint in advance, since it was +nothing but what the weak must expect from the strong and the poor from +the rich. "We'll change all that," was his only comment; but he made it +whenever he found an opening. + +Only once did he permit himself to go beyond the dogged repetition of +this phrase. "Got in with some fellows there"--he jerked his head +backward in the direction from which they had come--"who've thought the +whole business out. Could always get together--us trusties. +Internationals them fellows were--the I. I. A--heard of 'em, haven't +you? No bread and treacle in _their_ program. Been handing that out too +long." + +The difference between the face Matt Fay had looked forward to seeing +and the one which was now turned up to him was that between a mirror and +a pane of glass. In a mirror there would have been reflection and +responsiveness. Here there was nothing but a blank, shiny stare, +vitreous and unintelligent. Jasper Fay, it seemed to his son, had passed +into some pitiful and premature stage of dotage. + +To the released prisoner the change was but one more determining factor +in his own state of mind. He was prepared to find his mother in worse +case than his father, and Rosie in worse case still. Poor little Rosie! +She was the traditional victim of the rich man's son. So be it. Since it +was for him to see that she was avenged, he asked nothing better. The +more wrongs there were besides his own, the more he was justified in +joining the campaign of blood and fire, of eloquence and dynamite, to +which he felt a call. + +He thought sullenly over these things as the train jogged through the +rich fields and market-gardens on the way to Marchfield, and the quiet +little man with the glassy stare and the gentle, satisfied, senile smile +sat silent in the seat beside him. Matt Fay was glad of the silence. It +left him the more free to gaze at the meadows and pastures, at the +turnips and carrots and cabbages, of which the dewy glimpses fled by in +successive visions of wonder. It was difficult not to believe that the +sky had grown bluer, the earth greener, and the whole round of nature +more productive during the years in which he had been "put away." His +surprise in this recognition of the beauty of the world gave a poignant, +unexpected blend to his wrath at having been compelled to forfeit it. + +He got the same effect from every bird and bee and butterfly that +crossed his path between Marchfield and the village. No yellowing spray +of goldenrod, no blue-eyed ragged-robin, but symbolized the blessings of +which he had been cheated. In proportion as the sun broke through the +bank of cloud, burning away the mist and drawing jeweled rays from the +dewdrops, the new recruit in revolution found his zeal more eager to +begin. The very flagging and stumbling of the steps that tottered beside +his own intensified his ardor. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +"It was more strange than I dare tell you, mother dear," Lois added to +the letter of details which she wrote at odd minutes during the day, +"that that poor old man should have broken down just at our door. There +was a kind of fatality in it, as if he had come to throw himself at our +feet. The son would have gone on if his father had been able to drag +himself another yard; but he wasn't. It was all we could do to get him +up the portico steps and into the nearest seat. + +"I wonder if you remember him--old Mr. Fay? If so, you wouldn't know him +now. I can only compare him to a tree that's been attacked at the roots +and shrivels and dries in a season. He seems to have passed from sixty +to ninety in the course of a few months, as if the very principle of +life had failed him. It would be pitiful if it wasn't worse. I mean that +we're afraid it may be worse, though that is a matter which as yet I +mustn't write about. + +"The son puzzles me--or rather he would if there were not something in +him like all the other Fays, desperate and yet attractive, appealing and +yet hostile. He looks like his sister, which means that he's handsome, +with those extraordinary eyes of the shade of the paler kinds of jade, +and a "finish" to the features quite unusual in a man. The prison shows +in his pallor, in his cropped hair, and in something furtive in the +glance which, Thor says, will probably pass as he gets used again to +freedom. I remember that Dr. Hilary once said of him that he's the stuff +out of which they make revolutionaries and anarchists. In that case I +should think he might be a valuable addition to the cause, for, as with +Rosie, there's a quality in him that wins you at the very moment when +you're most repelled. He makes you sorry for him. We're sorry for them +all. Even now, with poor Claude lying there, we've no other feeling than +that. We've had enough of retaliations and revenges. Nothing could prove +their uselessness more thoroughly than what happened here last night. If +we could let everything rest where it is, leaving the crime to be its +own punishment, God knows we would do it gladly." + +Later in the day she continued: "I wish you could have seen the meeting +between Thor and that poor fellow who has just come out of jail. Thor +was superb--so gentle and kind and tender, and all with an air that +tragic sorrow has made noble. There are things I cannot tell you about +him--that Thor must tell to his father if they're ever told at all--but +this I can say even now, that if any good is to come out of all this it +will be through Thor more than any one. He doesn't see his way as yet, +but he'll find it. He'll find it by the same impulse that made him march +up to Matt Fay, putting his hand on his shoulder and looking him in the +eyes with a simple, man-to-man sympathy which no one could resist. The +very fact that Thor feels so deeply that he's been to blame--very, very +much to blame--gives intensity now to his kindness. As for Matt Fay, he +colored and stammered and shuffled, and though he tried to maintain his +bravado, it was without much success. He was still more embarrassed +when, after the old man had finished his coffee and was able to move +again, Thor ordered Sims to bring round the car and drive the two of +them home. We said nothing to them about Claude. I couldn't have borne +its being mentioned to them here--or to have been obliged to watch the +effect. It would be like having to look on at a vivisection. There are +things I don't want to see or to know. All that is really imperative is +that, whatever the outcome, they should consider us their friends." + +The letter was not finished till she was alone that night. She wrote +carefully at first, choosing just the right words. "Thor is sleeping at +the other house, and may continue to do so for some time. He seems to +want to be there--as you can understand. Not only does he make it more +bearable for Uncle Sim and Cousin Amy, but he gets a kind of assuagement +to his grief in being near Claude. You needn't be surprised, therefore, +if he remains a little longer--perhaps longer than you might expect." + +Up to this point she had been cautious, but for a minute something less +controlled escaped her. "Oh, mother darling, I want to be a good wife to +Thor, as you've been a good wife to papa. He needs me, and yet in his +inmost heart he's bearing this great trial alone. Don't misunderstand +me. I haven't broken down. Perhaps if I could have broken down a little +it would have brought me nearer to him. But I'm not near to him. There's +the truth. I'm infinitely far away from him. In a sense I'm infinitely +below him; for though I've been right in certain matters in which he has +been wrong, I feel strangely his inferior. He has things on his +conscience for which I know he finds it hard to see the way of +repentance--and I have nothing on mine--nothing, that is, but a vague +discomfort and a sense of not being wholly right--and yet I feel that +he's--how shall I put it?--that he's the nearer to God of us two. He +needs me, and I ought to help him; but it's like helping some one who's +on a tower while I stay on the ground. Oh, mother darling, why can't I +be to him what you've been to papa? What is it that men get from women +which _saves_ them? Thor needs saving just as much as other men, though +you mightn't suppose so. I know you think him perfect, and I used to +think the same; but he's not. He has faults--grave ones. I even know +that he's weak where I'm strong, and that the thing he needs is the +thing I can supply--only I don't supply it. Mother dear, you've given it +to papa or he wouldn't be recovering as he is. Why can't I give it, too? +He's there in that house, and I'm here in this. His heart is aching for +grief, and mine because I don't know how to comfort him--and all because +the glimmer of light that leads me on isn't strong enough. It's better +than nothing; I don't deny that. I can grope my way by it when I might +expect to be utterly bewildered--but, oh, mother dear, it's not love." + +But having read this page in the morning, she suppressed and destroyed +it. After the night's rest she was more sure of herself. Since she had +any clue at all she felt it wise to possess her soul in patience and see +to what issue it would lead her. For the passages she withdrew she +substituted, therefore, such an account of Rosie as would put her mother +in touch with that portion of Claude's life. + +"It's hard to know how the little thing feels just now," she went on, +when the main facts had been given, "because she's so stunned by dread. +It's the same dread that oppresses us all, but which is so much more +terrible for them. For poor little Rosie the things that have happened +are secondary now to what may happen still. _That_ almost blots Claude +out of her mind. Luckily she has a great deal of pluck--of what in our +old-fashioned New England phrase was called grit. That she'll win in the +end, and come out at last to a kind of happiness, I haven't the least +doubt, especially as she has that fine fellow, Jim Breen, to turn to. +You remember him, don't you? It's touching to see his tenderness to +Rosie, now that she has such a need of him. It's the more touching +because she doesn't give him anything but the most indirect +encouragement. He knows perfectly well that whatever he gets from her +now will be only her second best, but he's grateful even for that. + +"She came to me yesterday morning of her own accord, before I could get +word to her. William Sweetapple had heard the news and told her as he +passed the house where they have just gone to live in Susan Street. +Rosie had been early to the door to take in the milk, and Sweetapple was +going by. She flew here at once. I had expected her to be crushed--but +she wasn't. As I've just said, she seemed to be looking forward rather +than looking back. She was looking forward to what I've hinted at and +dare not say, and setting her face as a flint. That is how I can best +describe her--and yet it was as a flint with a wonderful shine on it, as +if something had come to her in the way of inner illumination that used +not to be in her at all. Jim Breen is fond of saying that this is not +the Rosie of a year or two ago, and it isn't. It's not even the Rosie of +the episode with Claude. Her face is now like a lighted lamp as compared +with the time when it was blank. I'm not enough in her confidence to +know exactly what has wrought the change, so that I can only guess. It +seems to me the same thing that has given the mother a new view of life, +only that Rosie has probably come to it by another way. They're +strangely alike, those two--each so tense, so strong, so demanding, each +broken on the wheel, and each with that something firm and fine in the +grain to which the wheel can do no more than impart a higher _patina_ of +polishing. They seem to me to bring down into our rather sugary life +some of the old, narrow, splendidly austere New England qualities that +have almost passed away and to make them bloom--bloom, that is, as the +portulacca blooms, in a parched soil where any other plant would bake, +and yet with an almost painfully vivid brilliancy. Doesn't George +Meredith say in one of his books--is it _The Egoist_?--that the light of +the soul should burn upward? Well, that's what it seems to do in +them--to burn upward with a persistent glow, in spite of conditions that +might reasonably put it out." + +"The old man is a mystery to me," she wrote later, "chiefly because it +is so impossible to connect him with any of the things we fear. He +seemed so small and shrunken and harmless as he sat on the portico +yesterday morning, drinking his coffee and munching a slice of toast, +that he appealed to me only as something to be taken care of. That +sinister element which I've seen in him of late had gone altogether, +leaving nothing but his old, faded, dreamy mildness, contented and +appeased. That is the really uncanny thing, that he seems _satisfied_. +He showed no fear of us at all, nor the slightest nervousness, not even +when Thor came. Thor was startled to see him there at first, but I +managed to whisper a word or two in French, so that he went straight up +to Fay and shook hands. I was glad of that. It put us in the right +attitude--that of not trying to find a victim or looking for revenge." + +Before adding her next paragraph she weighed its subject-matter +pensively. It was not necessary to her letter; it was nothing her mother +was obliged to know. She decided to say it, however, from an instinct +resembling that of self-preservation. If her mother were ever to hear +anything.... + +"Thor saw Rosie, too. He was coming down-stairs from taking a bath just +as she was in the hall going away. It was the first time he'd seen her +since before we were married. He was so lovely to her!--I wish I could +tell you! You know he used to be interested in her in the days when her +mother was his only patient. It was through him, if you remember, that +Rosie and I came to be friends in the first place. He asked me to go and +see her, to be nice to her. He feels very strongly that we people of the +old, simple American stock should have held together in a way we haven't +done, and that we shouldn't have allowed money to dig the abyss between +us which I'm afraid is there now. I know that you personally are not +interested in ideals of this kind, and yet Thor wouldn't be the Thor you +love unless he had them. So he was lovely with Rosie, holding her hand, +and looking down at her with those kind eyes of his, and begging her, +whatever happened--_whatever happened_, mind you!--to throw everything +on him in the way they would do if he was brother to them all. People +talk about the brotherhood of man; but there will never be any such +thing as the brotherhood of man till more men, and more women, too, get +the spirit that's in him." + + * * * * * + +Claude had been a week or more in his grave when the letters began to +arrive from Mrs. Willoughby. + +"As to our sailing," she wrote from London, "everything depends on Ena. +My cablegrams will have told you that she's better, but not exactly +_how_. She's better mentally, and very sweet. _I_ think it surprising. +Now that the first shock is past, she's calmer, too, and doesn't say so +often that she expected it. Why she should have expected it I couldn't +make out till last night, when Archie told me that there'd been +something between Claude and a girl named Fay. I remember those Fays; +queer people they always were, and rather uppish. _She_ was a big, +handsome girl when I was a little one. Eliza Grimes was her name, and as +long ago as that she couldn't keep her place. I remember how she came +for a while to Aunt Rachel's school, though not for long. Aunt Rachel +couldn't draw too exclusive a line at first, but she did drop her in the +end. I should never have thought that Claude would take up with a girl +like that--Claude, of all people. You can't run counter to class +distinctions without making trouble, I always say--and you see how it +acts. You and Thor are far too republican, or too democratic, or +whatever it is, but I never thought that of poor Claude. + +"Not that Archie attributes this dreadful thing to the connection with +the Fays. He won't hear of any such suggestion. Ena seemed to look on it +at first as a retribution, but Archie insists that there never was +anything to retribute. There may be two opinions about that, though, +mind you, I'm not saying so. To the best of my ability I'm letting +bygones be bygones, as I think I've shown. But Ena certainly thought so +at first, and it's my belief she does still. She's told me herself that +when they were motoring through Devon and Cornwall they never reached +their destination for the night without her being afraid of a cablegram +awaiting their arrival. She was sure something terrible was going to +happen, and knew it before they left home. I asked her in that case why +in the name of goodness they should have come, but she couldn't answer +me. Or, rather, she did answer me--just the kind of answer you'd expect +from her. It was to get some new things, and she's got them. Lovely, +some of them are, especially the dinner-gowns from Mariette's--but with +their money--_and where it comes from_--it's easy to dress. Retribution +indeed! It must be retribution enough for the poor thing just to look at +them. She's already had a woman from Jay's to talk over her mourning. +Seems heartless, doesn't it? but then, of course, she must have it. +Jay's woman had to take her measurements from the gray traveling-suit, +for the doctor won't let her get up for another week, not even to be +fitted. That will show you how far we are from sailing, and poor Archie +has changed the bookings twice. + +"As for him, I can't tell, for the life of me, how he feels about being +kept here--he's so frightfully the gentleman. I've always said that he +wore good manners not as his natural face, but as a mask, and I feel it +now more than ever. It's a mask that hides even his tears, though I'm +sure, poor man, they flow fast enough beneath it. All the same, I +suspect that he finds it something of a relief to be held up here--for a +while, at any rate. He wishes he was home, and yet for some reason he's +afraid to get there. Terrible as everything is, I know he feels that it +will be more terrible still when he's on the spot." + +It was in a subsequent letter that Mrs. Willoughby wrote: "I had to +scrawl so hurriedly yesterday to catch the first mail that I couldn't +begin at the beginning, or get to the point, or anything. I'll try now, +though, as for the beginning, it's like going back to the dark ages, it +all seems so long ago. + +"Your first cablegram giving us the news arrived at Les Dalles in the +middle of the afternoon, and such a scramble as we had to get over to +Havre in time for the night boat! I can't tell you how we felt, for it +was one of those shocks so awful that you don't feel anything. At least +I didn't feel anything, though I can't say the same of your father. He, +poor lamb, has felt it terribly, so sensitive as he is, and so easily +upset. Well, we managed to get to Havre in time, and had a fair +crossing. We reached London about ten in the morning, and of course had +no notion of where Archie and Ena were. So we drove to their bankers, +and, as luck would have it, found they were in London on their way +between Cornwall and the north. + +"Once we'd learned that, we came straight to this hotel, and sent up our +cards. After that we waited. Waited! I should say so. Your father got +crosser and crosser, threatening to go away without breaking the news at +all. We knew they thought we'd come to make trouble about old scores, +and were discussing whether or not to see us. When word came at last +that we were to be shown up your father was in such a state that I had +to leave him in the public parlor and go and face it alone. + +"I wonder if you've ever had the experience of being ushered into a room +where you could see you weren't wanted? I don't suppose so. I never had +it before, and I hope I never shall again. It was one of those chintzy +English sitting-rooms with flowers in every corner. I shall never see +Shirley poppies again without thinking of poor Claude. Archie was +standing in the middle of the floor, looking more the gentleman than +ever, but no Ena! + +"'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Bessie,' he said, with that frigid +sympathy of his which to me is always like iced water down the spine. +'Is there anything I can do for you?' + +"We were facing each other, with a round table between us. 'No, Archie,' +I said. 'I didn't come on my account, but on yours.' + +"I can see him still--the way he stood--with a queer little upward flash +of the eyebrows. 'Indeed?' + +"'Yes. I had a cablegram yesterday afternoon--from Lois.' I gave him +time to take that in. 'We came over at once--Len and I.' + +"I had scarcely said this when my heart leaped into my mouth, for Ena +cried out from behind the door leading into the bedroom, where I felt +sure she was: 'It's about Claude!' It was the strangest sound I ever +heard--the kind of sound she might have made if she saw something +falling on her that would kill her. + +"Archie stood motionless, but he turned a kind of gray-white. 'Is it?' +was all he asked. + +"I waited again--waited long enough to let them see that what I had to +tell was grave. 'It is, Archie,' I said then. + +"'Is he--?' Archie began, but I saw he couldn't finish. In fact he +didn't need to finish, because Ena cried out again, 'He's dead!' + +"Archie could only question me with his eyes, so that I said, 'I'm sorry +to have been the one to bring you the news--' + +"I got no further than that when a kind of strangling moan came from Ena +and a sound as if she was falling. Archie ran into the bedroom, and the +first thing I heard was, 'Bessie, for God's sake come here!' When I got +there Ena was lying in a little tumbled heap beside the couch. She had +on her lilac kimono and could just as well have seen me as not, so I +knew that what we had said down-stairs had been true. They did want to +give us the cold shoulder. + +"Well, you can imagine that it was all over with that. We had everything +we could do to bring Ena around and get her on the couch. It took the +longest time, and while we were doing it--before she could follow +anything we said--Archie asked me what I knew, and I told him. I was +glad to be able to do it in just that way, because I could break it up +and get it in by pieces, a fact at a time. There was so much for him to +do, too, that he couldn't give his whole mind to it, which was another +mercy. + +"When I could leave Ena I slipped into the sitting-room, shutting the +door behind me, and letting Archie tell her what I had been able to tell +him. While he was doing that I scribbled a little note, saying that Len +and I were going to Garland's, where they would find us in case we could +do anything more to help them. Without waiting for him to come out of +the bedroom, I left the note on the table and went away." + +In succeeding letters Mrs. Willoughby told how Archie had come to them +at Garland's, had insisted on their returning with him to the hotel in +Brook Street, and had installed them in a suite of rooms contiguous to +his own. Moreover, he clung to them, begging them not to leave him. It +was the most extraordinary turning of the tables Bessie had ever known. +He produced the impression of a man not only stunned, but terrified. If +the hand that had smitten Claude had been stretched right out of heaven +he could not have seemed more overawed. He was afraid--that was what it +amounted to. If Mrs. Willoughby read him aright, the tragic thing +affected him like the first trumpet-note of doom. It was as if he saw +the house he had built with so much calculation beginning to tumble +down--laid low by some dread power to which he was holding up his hands. +He was holding up his hands not merely in petition, but in propitiation. +She was not blind to the fact that there was a measure of propitiation +in his boarding and lodging her husband and herself. He clung to them +because his desolation needed something that stood for old friendship to +cling to; but in addition to that he had dim visions of the dread power +that had smitten Claude looming up behind them and acting somehow on +their behalf. + +"It's all very well to insist that there's nothing to retribute," ran a +passage in one of the letters, "but the poor fellow is saying one thing +with his lips and another in his soul. What's the play in which the +ghosts come back? Is it "Hamlet," or "Macbeth," or one of Ibsen's? Well, +it's like that. He's seeing ghosts. He wants us to be on hand because we +persuade him that they're not there--that they can't be there, so long +as we're all on friendly terms, and that we're not laying up anything +against him. The very fact that he pays our bills makes him hope that +the ghosts will keep away." + +"We've promised to go back with them," she informed her daughter +elsewhere. "For one thing, Ena needs me. If I didn't go she'd have to +have a nurse; and I'd rather not leave her till she's safe in your +hands. I must say I can't make her out. She puzzles me more than Archie +does. Now that a week has gone by and the first shock is over, she's +like a person coming out of a trance. She's so sweet and gentle that +it's positively weird. Of course she's always been sweet--that's her +style--but not in this way. Upon my word, I don't know whether she has a +soul or not--whether she never had one, or whether one is being born in +her. But she's patient, and you might even say resigned. There's no +question about that. She's not a bit hard to take care of, making little +or no demand, and just trying to get up strength enough to sail. She's +grieving over Claude; and yet her grief has the touching quality in it +that you get from a sweet old tune. I must say I don't understand +it--_not in her_." + +It was when she was able to announce that Mrs. Masterman was well enough +to sail that Mrs. Willoughby acknowledged the first letters from her +daughter. "We go by the _Ruritania_ on the 3rd. Archie is simply furious +at the hints you're all throwing out about that old man Fay. Perfectly +preposterous, is what he calls them. He seems to think that, once he is +on the spot, he'll be able to show every one that Fay had no possible +reason to want to avenge himself, and must therefore be beyond +suspicion. I must say Archie doesn't strike me as vindictive, which is +another surprise, if one could ever be surprised in a Masterman. They're +all queer, Thor as much as any of them, though he's queer in such +lovable ways. I mean that you never can tell what freaks they'll take, +whether for evil or for good. Nothing would astonish me less than to see +Archie himself in sackcloth and ashes one of these days, and I do +believe that it's the thing he's afraid of himself. What he's fighting +in all this business about Fay is his own impulse to do penance. He's +thinking of the figure he'll cut, wearing a shroud and carrying a +lighted candle. Of course it interests us because--well, because it may +turn out to be a matter of dollars and cents. Not that I count on it. +I've put all that behind me, and I must say that your father and I have +never been so happy together as during these last few months. We get +along perfectly on what we have, and we don't lack for anything. Of +course the way in which your father, the sweet lamb, is improving makes +all the difference in the world to me. So Archie needn't repent on our +account. We've let all that go. It only strikes me as funny the way he +can't do enough for us--taxis at the door the minute we put our noses +out--flowers in the sitting-room--and everything. I know perfectly well +what it means. It isn't _us_. He's simply sacrificing to the hoodoo or +the voodoo that he sees behind us--just like any other Masterman." + +She added in a postscript: "You can read Thor as much or as little of my +letters as you choose. I don't care--not a bit! I told him before you +were married that I always intended to speak my mind about his father, +like it or lump it who would." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +The rest of that year became to Archie Masterman a period of popularity +and triumph, in so far as such terms could be used of a man so sorely +bereaved. Nothing ever sat on him with finer effect than the air of +dignity, charity, and sorrow with which he returned from Europe, while +his stand toward poor old Jasper Fay brought him a degree of sympathy +new even to one whose personality had been sympathetic at all times. The +letter he wrote to Eliza Fay when her husband was put under arrest, +dissociating himself from the act of the guardians of the law and +protesting his belief in his former tenant's innocence, was conceived in +a spirit so noble as to raise the estimate of human nature in the minds +of all who knew its contents. Whatever the inner convictions of the +much-tried woman to whom it was addressed, the document was too precious +to her husband's cause not to be exhibited, though in the matter of +inner convictions Lois was obliged to caution her. + +"I wouldn't put it beyond him, not a mite," Mrs. Fay had confessed, with +tragic matter-of-fact; "not after the way he's talked, I wouldn't, and +Matt don't, either." + +"Has your son said so?" + +"He's said worse. He's said that if he didn't do it, he ought to have. +That's the way he talks. Oh, he's no comfort to me! I knew he wouldn't +be, after that awful place, but I didn't look for him to be quite what +he is, wanting to kill and blow up everything. An I. I. A. is what he +calls himself, and the Lord only knows what that is. I blame myself," +she went on, with dry, unrelenting statement of the case. "I didn't +bring them up right. I was discontented--" + +"Oh, but there's a discontent that's divine," Lois broke in, +consolingly. + +"Well, this wasn't it. It was 'hateful and hating one another,' as Paul +says. I put it into their heads--I mean Fay's and the children's. Matt'd +commit murder now as quick as a kitten'll lap milk--or he says he would; +and as for Fay--" + +Lois interrupted, hurriedly, "We shouldn't do him the injustice of +condemning him in advance, should we?" + +The woman held herself erect, her hard, uncompromising eyes, in which +there was nevertheless an odd suffusion of softness, looking straight +over her companion's head. "I can't help what I know." + +"And _I_ can't help what _I_ know, which is that you and I have nothing +to do with judgment, still less with condemnation. There are others to +attend to that, while we try to bring"--she uttered the word with +diffidence--"try to bring love." + +"Oh, love!" The tone was that of one who had long ago given up anything +so illusory. + +"Then whatever we can find that will take the place of love," Lois +replied, with relief at getting back to ground of which she was more +sure. "Let us call it good will." + +Good will was, in fact, what Reuben Hilary had called it, and it was +from him she was quoting. Having gone to him for the analysis of her own +state of mind, she had been comforted to learn that she placed no +impediment in the way of public justice through being privately +merciful. + +"The mission of Christ, me dear Mrs. Thor, was salvation. And what do we +mean by salvation? Isn't it the state of being saved? And what do we +want to be saved from? Isn't it from trouble and evil of all kinds? And +where and when do we want to be saved from them? Isn't it right here and +right now? And who are the people that need most to be saved? Isn't it +those that are threatened with danger? And who is to save them? Isn't it +you and I? What more do you ask?" + +"So that when it comes to justice--" + +"Ah, now, I'm not botherin' about justice. Justice has her sword and her +scales. Let her look after her own affairs. What you and I are out after +is good will." + +So Lois got further light upon her way and followed it. She followed it +the more easily because her father-in-law seemed willing to follow it, +too. He could do this with a touching grace since more fully than by +letter she assured him that Claude had come back to redeem his word. + +"Oh, thank God!" Ena had exclaimed, on hearing this information +emphasized. "The darling boy was always the soul of honor." + +An ethereal vision in black, she was having a cup of tea in the library +before going up-stairs to take off her traveling-dress. Thor, who had +met the party at the dock, had accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby to +their own house, so that Lois was able to get a few words with the +sorrowing parents alone, giving them in fuller detail that which her +letters had only sketched. She had assumed the privilege of the daughter +of the house to sit at the tea-table, while for the minute the returned +voyagers took their place as guests. + +There were reasons now why Archie was able to echo his wife's rejoicing +in Claude's change of heart. In this new turn to the situation, which he +had but imperfectly seized from what had been written, he could get the +same kind of consolation that a father draws from the death of a son in +a war with which he has no sympathy. It was the death of a brave man, +when all was said and done. It was also death in conditions that made +his own position the stronger, since it was an aid to the clearing of +his conscience. It detracted nothing from his grief that he should use +Claude's yearning for redemption as a fresh proof that Jasper Fay had +not even a shadowy motive for revenge; and with the elimination of Fay's +motive for revenge, he, Archie Masterman, was more amply acquitted at +the bar before which the hereditary Masterman impulse summoned him. Lois +had the greater confidence, therefore, in making her appeals. + +"If they do imprison him, you see, the family will be left without +means. One of these days I think Rosie will marry Jim Breen--" + +Ena gave a little cry of disapproval. "What? After _Claude_!" + +"Oh, it won't be for a long time yet; and while this trouble is hanging +over her father she won't listen to any suggestion of the kind, little +as she would before. Still--in the end--it will be only natural--" She +left Rosie there. "And Thor's been so good about the son--only--well, +the I. I. A., whatever that is, have got hold of him, so that we can't +count on him to do anything for the poor mother, if she's left alone, or +for Rosie--" + +"I'll take care of them." It was probable that Archie Masterman had +never in his life said anything that gave him so complete a +satisfaction. Before Lois could respond to his generosity he went on to +add: "I needn't appear in the matter. I'll leave it to your ingenuity to +find the way to take care of them without mentioning me at all--unless +you think it would be a comfort to them, as a sign of my confidence in +poor old Fay. _That_ I should like to have generally known--that I +absolve him entirely." + +By sheer force of will Lois refused to see him as sacrificing to the +hoodoo or the voodoo of which her mother's letters had apprised her. If +she had nothing to do with condemnation in the case of Jasper Fay, she +had nothing to do with it, she reminded herself, in that of Archie +Masterman. Her part in life was to accept every one at his nominal face +value, for only so could she put good will into effective operation. + +Tea was over and they were on their feet when she felt her own need +demanding consideration. It was not without nervousness that she said, +"You know Thor has been staying here with Cousin Amy and Uncle Sim." + +"So we understood." + +"Well, I think he might like to stay a little longer." + +"That's not necessary on our account," Masterman said, promptly. + +"It wouldn't be on your account, but on his own. That is," she +explained, "he might think it was on your account, but in reality to +feel that he was comforting you would be a comfort to him." + +Claude's mother gave way to the first little sob since entering the +house, while the father's face settled to the stoniness that masked his +suffering. "Wouldn't it look very queer?" was all he said. "People might +not understand it." + +"Oh, they haven't understood it as it is; but does that matter? I know +there's been talk in the village during the past few weeks, but surely +we're in a position to ignore it." In the hope of opening up the way for +Thor in what he had to make clear, she decided to go further. While +speaking she kept her eyes on Masterman. "You may not need him, but he +may need you. As a matter of fact, he has still something to explain to +you which I may as well tell you now. On that night--the night of the +ninth of July--Thor and Claude were here in the house together. There +was trouble between them." + +Mrs. Masterman gasped; her husband breathed hard, saying, merely, "Go +on." + +"I don't know what the quarrel was exactly, but--but--there were blows." + +"Not the blow--?" Masterman began, with horror in his tone. + +"Oh no, not that," Lois interposed, hastily, going on to explain briefly +the incidents of the struggle between the brothers, as far as she knew +them. "That part of it was all over," she continued, eagerly, before +either of the parents could comment on this new phase of the event. +"Claude wasn't much hurt. You can see that from the way he was able to +get up and come out into the air while Thor was running up to our house +for brandy. If there hadn't been some one lurking in the shrubbery--" + +"He's been a terrible son to me," Masterman broke in, wrathfully. "When +it isn't in one way it's in another. What have I done to deserve--?" + +"He _is_ terrible," Lois admitted, soothingly; "but, oh, Mr. Masterman, +he's terrible in such splendid ways! He hasn't found himself yet; but he +will if you'll give him time. Whatever he's done wrong he'll atone for +nobly. You'll see!" + +The mother's intervention came to Lois as a new surprise. "Whatever he's +done wrong he's sorry for. We can be sure of that." She turned to her +husband. "Archie, Claude was my son; and I want to tell you now, before +we go any further, that no matter what happened between Thor and him, I +forgive it, if there's anything to forgive." + +"I know Thor feels there was something to forgive," Lois confessed on +her husband's behalf, "whether there was or not." + +"Then tell him to come to me," Ena commanded, in a tone such as Lois had +never heard from her. + +"I'll tell him to go to you, if you'll ask him to stay here with you a +little longer." + +"I sha'n't ask him; Archie will, won't you, Archie?" She laid her hand +on his arm, pleadingly. "If you do, it will mean that you and I are not +trying to judge our two boys, or take sides between them"--she gave a +little sob--"now when it's no use. They quarreled, as brothers will, but +they were fond of each other, for all that." + +"Thor adored Claude," Lois said, simply. "I think he cared for him more +than for any one in the world that--that I know of." + +Masterman wheeled suddenly and walked away, while his wife made signs to +Lois that they had won. + +But it was in another frame of mind that Thor's wife said to herself, as +she saw him coming toward her along County Street: "Now I shall see! I +shall see if he will!" + +She meant that now he might return to her, that he might return as a +matter of course. If he came of his own accord, something within her +would leap to greet him. So much she knew; but beyond it she would not +trust herself to go. "I shall see if he will!" she repeated, with +emphasis, throwing the responsibility of taking the first step on him. +It was on him, she felt, that it lay. She had asked him to leave her +until she was prepared to call him back, and she was not prepared. If he +were to ask to be taken back, her attitude could lawfully be different. +Since it was he who had made void the union she had supposed to be based +on love, it was for him to suggest another built on whatever they could +find as a substitute. Great as her pity for him was, she could not by so +much as a glance or a smile relieve him from that necessity. + +As they drew near each other she recognized the minute as one that would +be decisive, if not for the rest of life, yet for a long time to come. +She could look ahead and select the very tree under which they would +meet. As a result of the few words that would be then exchanged their +lives would blend again--or he would go to the one house and she to the +other, and they would be further apart than they had ever been before. +He might not think it or see it, because men were so dense; but she +would be as quick to read the signs of which he would remain unconscious +as a bird to scent a storm. + +For this very reason she reduced her manner, when they came face to +face, to the simplest and most casual. It was a matter of pride with her +to exert no influence, to leave him free. Not that she found it +necessary to take pains, for she saw from the first minutes of encounter +that his mind was far away from that part of their interests which she +put first. Into her comments on the wonderful courage displayed by Mr. +and Mrs. Masterman he broke, abruptly: + +"They've arrested Fay." + +What came next was as nearly of the nature of a vow as a man could +venture on without melodramatic eloquence. All his energies, all his +money, all his time, were to be dedicated to securing Fay's acquittal. +For Claude's death one man, and one man only, was to blame. It was +probable enough that Fay had actually struck the blow; it was probable, +too, that he had done it not to avenge himself primarily on Claude, but +on Claude's father. To Thor that was secondary, almost of no importance. +Had he not allowed himself to become a prey to whatever was most +ferocious and malignant in human nature, the crime would never have been +committed. Granting that Fay would have lain in wait for Claude in any +case, an agile young man would have been more than a match for so +enfeebled an antagonist even when armed with a knife, had not some +preceding struggle exhausted him. + +To Thor it was so clear that he was beyond the reach of argument. He was +likewise beyond the reach of anything that could be called a purpose or +a wish but that of seeing that another man shouldn't suffer in his +stead. From the region into which this absorption and consecration +carried him Lois found herself and her claims on him thrust out. Whether +he went back to her or whether he did not was, for the time being at any +rate, of so little moment in his eyes that apparently no thought of this +aspect of their situation had occurred to him. It was more stinging to +her pride that he should not consider it than that he should consider it +and refuse. She was fully aware that her irony was thrown away when she +said, in a tone kept down to the matter-of-fact and colloquial: + +"And, Thor dear, if they ask you to stay on at the other house, don't +think of me. I've got papa and mamma again. They'll keep me company as +long as"--she was obliged to think of an expression that would imply a +term--"as long as I may need them." + +In response to these words he merely nodded. "Very well." The assent was +given as if, whatever the arrangement, it would be a matter of +indifference to them both. + +So he went his way and she went hers. Monstrous as it was, monstrous as +she found him, as she found herself, she could hardly conceive of their +doing anything else. If she was unhappy, her unhappiness lay too deep in +subliminal abysses to struggle to the surface of her consciousness. That +he should go to the one house and she to the other was as right as it +had been ten years before. It was so right that she was stupefied by its +rightness. It was so right that the rightness acted on her like an +opiate. It was a minute in which sheer helplessness might have relaxed +her hold on her substitute for love had she not had such pressing need +to make use of it there and then. + +She made use of it as, on occasions requiring a show of lavishness, +people eke out a meager supply of silver with plenty of plausible +electroplate. In installing her parents in their old rooms, in bidding +them take their place as masters and forget that they were guests, she +simulated the pleasure not only of a happy daughter but of a happy wife. +While the circumstances of the home-coming tempered anything in the +nature of exuberance, they couldn't forbid all joy, and of joy of just +the right sparkle she was as prodigal as if her treasure-chest had been +stocked with it. Moreover, she was sure that except for the protest, "If +we take these rooms, what are you going to do with Thor?" the worthy +couple didn't know the difference between what she placed before them +and the sterling metal with the hall-mark. + +If there was a suspicion in her mother's mind it reserved itself till, +on kissing them good night, Lois fled to the room she had occupied as a +girl. Though she closed the door behind her, the mother pushed it open. +"Look here, Lois," Bessie said, not quite with anxiety and yet not quite +without it, "there's nothing between you and Thor, is there?" + +Lois felt that the form of the question saved her. It enabled her to +answer so much more truthfully than her mother knew. "No, mamma dear; +there's nothing at all between us." She went so far as to make the +declaration emphatic and indulge in a tone of faint bitterness: +"_Absolutely_ nothing at all--and I doubt if there ever will be--now." + +Though the mother retired before she could catch the concluding +syllable, Lois regretted the bitterness as soon as she felt it escape +her. There was no bitterness in her substitute for love, for the +substitute for love was.... She had always admitted that she didn't know +_what_ it was. But there came back to her mind the words she had been +acting upon for a fortnight and more: "The mission of Christ, me dear +Mrs. Thor, was salvation." And there was no bitterness in that. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +"Funny thing the way people talk about salvation," Uncle Sim observed to +Lois, on an evening in the autumn when his legs were extended before her +fire. "To hear 'em you'd think there was no salvation except for sin, +and none even for that but what is post-mortem. Post-mortem salvation +may be all very well, but if there's anything blessed I want it right +now." + +"Of course, with a good man like you--" + +"Good? Good's got nothing to do with it--or not much. The man who is +called the Saviour, above every one else, didn't wait for people to be +good before He saved them. He saved them first and said 'Sin no more' to +them afterward." + +"Oh, but with His extraordinary means--" + +"He had no means that you haven't got yourself--in essence. Difference +between you and Him is not in kind, but in degree. If He could save all +men, you and I can at least save one or two or a dozen--or do something +toward it." + +"You mean save them _here_." + +"Saving 'em here is saving 'em anywhere, isn't it?" + +"And you don't mean saving them only in the theological sense of saving +their souls--" + +"Mean saving 'em anyhow. Save a man from hanging, or a child from +tumbling in the mud, or an old woman from having her best bonnet spoiled +by rain--it's all salvation--it all meets the human need--it's all part +of the same principle--it all works to the same end." + +"And what is the end?" + +"The same as the middle, and the same as the beginning, and the same as +it is all through." He rose and stretched himself. "I leave you to find +your own name for it. I call it by a word of four letters," he laughed, +"and it begins with an _l_. You can't have too much of it, if you know +what it is--which is just what many people don't know." + +She stood before him, coloring, smiling a little, but with eyes lowered. +"I wonder if _I_ know what it is, Uncle Sim?" + +"If you don't," he smiled down at her, "you're taking a good way to +learn." + +This view of the principle she was using as a guide was not new to her; +it was only illuminating and corroborative. It was spectrum analysis +where she had seen a star. It was the kingdom of heaven reduced from a +noble phrase to such terms of simple, kindly living as she knew herself +able to fulfil. It was the ideal become practical, and the present +rendered one with the eternal, with the fruits of righteousness sown in +peace of them that make peace beyond anything she had ever expected. On +the winter afternoon when Jasper Fay was acquitted she could look back +over the preceding seven or eight months and see how relatively easy all +had been. She said relatively easy for the reason that much had of +necessity been hard. The distinction she made was that what had been +hard would have been overwhelming had she not taken the principle of +immediate salvation, where it could be brought about, as law. By meeting +each minute's need with the utmost of her strength she found the next +minute's need less terrible. By allowing no one to suffer a shade more, +or an instant longer, than she could help, she perceived a lessening of +the strain all round. With the lessening of the strain it was easier to +calm passions and disarm antipathies. If she could say nothing else for +her substitute for love, she was obliged to admit that it worked. + +She was thinking so with a great thankfulness when Thor came to tell her +of the rendering of the verdict. Though he had telephoned the fact, he +was eager to give her the details face to face. He did this while they +stood in the tapestried square hall, avoiding each other's eyes. + +It had not been picturesque, he explained to her; but it had been +satisfactory. Though an hour had sufficed the jury to reach their +decision, the farmers and market-gardeners who had formed the mass of +the spectators had forestalled it and scattered to their homes. The +dramatic interest was over; it was generally felt that no more than a +formality remained. When for the last time Jasper Fay was led in to +confront his peers it was before a comparatively empty court. + +Because he had suddenly become self-conscious, Thor went on with his +account stammeringly and with curious hesitations. Still wearing his fur +motoring-coat, he held his cap in his hand, like a man in a hurry to get +away. + +"I couldn't see even then--at the very end--that the old fellow knew +what it was all about. He looked round him with the same glassy stare +that he's had ever since--ever since that morning when we gave him the +coffee. Mind all gone, poor old chap--and perhaps it's just as well. He +smiled a bit when it was all over and they pushed him from one group to +another to shake his hand, but he didn't realize what he had escaped." + +Lois, too, was self-conscious. In this lifting of the burden from Thor's +mind something had changed in their mutual relation. It was as if a +faculty arrested on the night Claude died had suddenly resumed its +function, taking them by surprise. Not in this way had she expected the +thing that seemed dead to come to life again, so that she was unprepared +for the signs of its rebirth. Absorbed as she would otherwise have been +in Thor's narration, she could now follow him but absently. "How did +they get home from Colcord?" + +She asked the question to keep him going, lest he should say the thing +she was so strangely afraid to hear. He answered like a man who talks +about what isn't on his mind in order to conceal what is. "I drove them +in. The old fellow sat in the tonneau with Rosie and Jim Breen. Matt Fay +refused the lift and took the train to Marchfield." + +A little crowd at the court-house door, he recounted further, had +called, "Three cheers for Dr. Thor!" Another little crowd had greeted +them with a similar welcome on their arrival in Susan Street. A third +had gathered in the grounds of Thor's father's house, shouting, "Three +cheers for Mr. Masterman!" till the object of this good will responded +by coming out to the porch and making a brief, kindly speech. He was +delivering it as Thor drove up, just as the winter twilight necessitated +the turning on of the electric lights--his slender, well-dressed figure +distinct in the illuminated doorway. Thor could hear the strains of "For +he's a jolly good fellow" as, to avoid further demonstration, he backed +his machine from the avenue and turned toward the other house. + +She seized the opportunity to say something she had at heart, which +would also help to tide over a minute she found so embarrassing. "Oh, +Thor, I hope he'll not have to suffer any more. He's paid his penalty by +this time." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean that I hope he'll never have to be any more definite with +himself than he's been already. You can easily see how it is with him. +It's as if he was two men, one accusing and the other defending. I don't +want to have the defense break down altogether, or to see him driven to +the wall. I couldn't bear it." + +He waited a long minute before speaking. "If you're thinking of the real +responsibility for Claude's death--" + +She nodded. "Yes, I am." + +Again he waited. "He puts that on me." + +"He puts it on you so as not to take it on himself," she said, quickly, +"because to take it on himself would be beyond human nature to bear. +Don't you see, Thor? We know and he knows that if Jasper Fay did it, it +was not to avenge himself on Claude, but on some one else. But now that +the law says that Fay _didn't_ do it--" + +He interrupted, quietly: "I've talked it out with father, and we +understand each other perfectly. You needn't be afraid on his account. +I've taken everything on myself--as I ought to take it." + +"Oh, Thor!" + +"The only thing that matters about the law is that it shouldn't condemn +any one but me. Now that that danger is out of the way, I can--begin." + +She forgot her embarrassment in looking up at him with streaming eyes. +"Begin how, Thor?" + +"Begin doing what you told me from the first--begin to start again--to +get it under my feet--to stand on it--to be that much higher up--and not +be"--he fumbled with his cap, his head hung guiltily--"not be ridden by +remorse--any more than--than I can help." + +"You'll do it, Thor; you'll do it nobly--" + +What she had to say, however, got no further, for the front door was +flung open to allow of Mrs. Willoughby's excited entrance, with Len +puffing heavily behind her. + +"Oh, so you're here, Thor!" Bessie cried in the tone of a woman at the +limit of her strength. "Well, I'm glad. You may as well know it first as +last." Breathless, she dropped into one of the hall chairs, endeavoring +to get air by agitating an enormous pillow-muff. "Len's been having--No, +it's too extraordinary!--and I predicted it, didn't I? If you've kept my +letters you've got it down in black and white! Len's been having--It's +just as I said!--it's the shroud and the lighted candle! Len's been +having the strangest, the very _strangest_, talk with Archie." + +Lois crept near to her mother, bending down toward her. "But, mother +dear, what about?" + +Bessie answered, wildly: "Oh, I don't know what about. I wasn't there. I +was in the drawing-room with Ena. I knew something was going on, from +Ena's manner. What's come over Ena I can't imagine. I've heard of trial +turning human beings into angels, but I never believed it and I can +hardly believe it now. Archie began it himself--I mean with your father. +He beckoned him into the library in the solemnest way. That was after he +had finished his speech and the crowd had stopped cheering. If it _is_ +the shroud and the taper--well, all I can say is that he carries them +off just in the way you would expect. No one could do it better, as far +as _that_ goes." + +"As far as what goes, mother? I wish you'd tell us." + +"It's exactly what I said when I wrote you from London last year. If +you've kept my letters you've got it all down in black and white. He +wants us, and Ena wants us, all to come to dinner. I'm not a bit +surprised--not a bit--though I never counted on it--_never_!" + +Thor also bent over her, standing before her, with his hand stretched +out to the back of her chair. "Is it about money, Mrs. Willoughby?" + +But she was too far beyond coherence to explain. "He says he wants to +talk to us both after dinner--to Len and me. He's been going over the +accounts again and he finds--he finds--" But she beat with her high +heels on the floor and buried her face in her muff. "Oh, tell them, +Len!--for goodness' sake, tell them! They'll never believe it--not any +more than me." + +But her emotion was too much for the big man's shattered nerves. As he +stood just within the doorway, looking with his snowy beard and bushy +white hair like some spectral, aureoled apostle, he began to cry. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +Thor and Lois were glad of this interruption. They were glad of the new +and exciting topic. They were glad of the family dinner at the other +house, where they could be together and yet apart. Taking refuge from +each other in any society they could find, they kept close to Mrs. +Masterman when, after dinner, Thor's father retained his two old friends +in the dining-room for the promised explanations. Later in the evening +it was with an emotion like alarm that Lois heard that her parents had +gone home without waiting to bear her company. Secretly she began to +plan methods for stealing away alone. Her shyness of Thor was like +nothing she had known in the days of courtship and marriage, or during +the months in which they had been holding off from each other for +scrutiny and reflection. + +It was a shyness which, when they were at last side by side in the +avenue, drove her to affect an over-elaboration of ease. She talked, not +merely because there were so many things to say, but also for the sake +of talking. She talked because he did not, because he towered above her +in the moonlight, dumb, mysterious, waiting. It was that sense of his +waiting that thrilled and terrified her most. It was a large waiting, +patient and deep, the waiting for something predestined and inevitable +that could take its time. It was like the waiting of the ocean for the +streams, of sleep for the day's activities, or of death for all. It +seemed to brood over her like the violet sky, and to quiver with +radiance as the crisp air quivered with the moonlight. It was wide and +restful and bracing. She was walking toward it, she was walking into it, +as she walked over this virginal carpet of snow. + +She talked with a kind of desperation--of Thor's father and mother first +of all, of how good they were, each with a special variety of goodness. +It was wonderful what sorrow had done for Mrs. Masterman. "I never see +her now, Thor dear, without thinking of that look in Claude's face that +seemed to us like dawn. I see it in her. Don't you?" Without waiting for +an answer she hurried on. "And your father, Thor. He is good. No one but +a good man could have been so noble toward poor old Fay, when he +knows--when _every one_ knows--no matter what was proved or wasn't +proved in court--when he _knows_ the truth." She seemed to be answering +some unspoken argument on his side as she continued: "Oh yes, I remember +what mamma wrote about it--about the hoodoo or the voodoo--mamma's so +amusing!--but you and I have nothing to do with that, have we, Thor? We +can only take what we see, and judge by what is best. And so with this +wonderful new thing for papa and mamma--that they're to have some of +their money back--we _can't_ go behind it, can we? If he says it was a +mistake we must accept it as that, and never, never let any other +thought come into our minds. I know that papa and mamma, dear, innocent +things--they _are_ dear and innocent, you know, in spite of +everything!--I know they'll only be too glad to take it in the same +way." + +Except for an occasional word he had hardly spoken by the time he had +reached the corner of Willoughby's Lane and County Street. Lois had a +renewal of the terror from which her own conversation had distracted +her. The crucial minute was at hand. The door was but a few yards away. +He would either go in with her--or he would go back. She hardly knew +which would be the more supportable--the joy or the dismay. + +She caught at the first possibility of postponing both. "Oh, it's so +lovely! Let us walk on a little farther. It isn't half-past nine yet. I +looked at the clock as we were coming out. Papa and mamma ran off so +early. Don't you adore these windless winter nights?--when the air is as +if it had been distilled." She paused in the middle of the road and +looked around. "What's that star, Thor--over there--the one like a great +white diamond?" He told her it was Sirius, adding that its light took +eight years to travel to the earth, and going on to trace with his +finger the constellation of the Dog. The minute's return to the old +habits took some of the feverishness from her sense of tension as they +continued their walk up the hill. + +Up the hill there were only two directions in which to go--along the +prosaic road to Marchfield or into the quiet winter woods where masses +of shadow lay interspersed with patches of white moonlight, while, on +this soundless night there was not a murmur in the tree-tops. By +instinct rather than intention they followed a faint, familiar path +running under pines. + +Lois was now speaking of the Fays. "Mrs. Fay _knows_. The others +don't--not certainly. Rosie has brought herself round to thinking him +innocent, and Matt and Jim only suspect what happened--but Mrs. Fay +_knows_. It must be a tragic thing to spend your life with a man who's +done a thing like that. Poor soul! We must do what we can to help her, +mustn't we?" + +She pursued the theme not for its interest alone, but for the sake of +the objective point to which it was leading her. By speaking freely, +first of Matt and then of Jim Breen, she came at last to Rosie. She +spoke freely of her, too, at the risk of opening up old wounds, at the +risk of lacerating that which was probably still sensitive. Her main +purpose was to speak, and if possible to make him speak, so that this +name should no longer be kept as an inviolable symbol between them. +Since the day when it began to have significance for them both it had +scarcely been pronounced by either otherwise than allusively or of +necessity. She was resolute to make it as little to be shunned as his or +her own. + +Not that she was successful, for the minute at any rate. His responses +continued to be brief, so brief that they were hardly responses at all. +They were not grudged or ungracious; they were only like those first +little flashes of lightning which hint that the heavens will soon be +alive. As a frightened boy whistles from bravado, she talked to conceal +her trembling at this coming of celestial wonders. + +"Oh, Thor, there'll be so much now to do! It's really only beginning, +isn't it? And it brings in so many elements of our life--I mean of our +whole national life. I like that. I like getting out of our own little +groove--so futile and narrow as it generally is--and being in touch with +what is stronger, even if it's terrific. That's what I feel about Matt +Fay--that he's terrific. He represents a terrific movement, doesn't he? +and one we can't ignore. When I say terrific I don't mean that I'm +afraid of it. I'm not. It seems to me too strengthening to be afraid of. +With all you can say against it, it strikes me as a tonic in our rather +flaccid life, like iron in the blood. I've sympathy with it, too, to +some extent; I've sympathy with _him_. You know, I do belong to the +people. I'm glad we know him, and that in a way we've a right to get +near to him. It puts us in touch with our own national realities as +perhaps otherwise we shouldn't be. Oh, Thor, there's so much to work +out! Isn't it a splendid thing that we can help even to the slightest +degree in doing it!" + +To this there was no response whatever. She was not sure that he +listened. Beside her the tall form strode on dumb and dark, crunching +the frozen snow with a creaking sound that roused the winged and furry +things of the wood and silenced her half-hysterical efforts to fight +against that which awaited her like a glory or a doom. Growing suddenly +aware of the uselessness of speaking, she said no more. + +After an interval in which her mind seemed to stop working, that of +which she became conscious next was a world of extraordinary purity. +Nothing was ever so white as this snow or this moonlight; nothing was +ever so like the ether beyond the atmosphere as this air; nothing was +ever so golden as the stars in this purple sky, or so mystically solemn +as these pines. As they climbed upward it was like mounting into some +crystal sphere, where evil was not an element. + +They came out on that spot in which all the wood-paths converged, that +treeless ridge that rose like a great white altar. It was an end which +neither had foreseen when a half-hour earlier they had prolonged their +walk; otherwise they might have shrunk from it. As it was, the +association of the past with the present startled them, startled them +into pausing long enough to become conscious, to seeing each in the eyes +of the other such things as could not pass into words, before renewing +the ascent. As they continued the way upward it was as if in fulfilment +of some symbolic ceremonial. + +They had stood for some minutes silent on the summit, looking out over +the wide, white radiance at their feet, when Thor spoke. "I'm not +thinking about the things you've been talking of. I'm not primarily +interested in them any more." + +"You mean--?" + +"I mean the helping of others--in the way I've tried it. I see the +mistake in that." + +She was faintly surprised. "Indeed?" + +"Through the things that have been happening I've worked out--I may say +I've stumbled out--to a great truth." + +There was not only surprise in her tone, but curiosity. "Yes, Thor dear. +What is it?" + +"It's that a man's first occupation is not with others, but with +himself. It's not to put them right; it's to be right on his own +account." As for the moment she was too disconcerted to comment on this, +he continued: "If reaching this conclusion seems to you like discovering +the obvious, I can only say that it hasn't been obvious to me. It's just +beginning to come to me that I was so busy casting out other people's +devils that I'd forgotten all about my own." + +"You've been so generous in all you've thought about other people, +Thor--" + +He interrupted with decision. "The most effective way in which to be +generous to other people is to be strict with one's self; but it never +occurred to me till lately. I've been so eager that my neighbor's garden +should be trim and productive, that mine has been overrun with weeds." + +Against this self-condemnation she felt it her duty to protest. "But +Uncle Sim says you've always been on the side of the--" + +"Yes, I know," he broke in, with what was nearly a laugh. "But it's just +where the dear old fellow has been wrong about me. I've wanted every one +else to be there, on the side of the good things--I admit that--but I +was to have plenty of rope. Now I'm coming to understand--and it's taken +all this trouble to drive it home to my stupidity--that if I want to see +any one else on the side of the angels I must get there first. That's +where the ax must go to the root of the tree. In the main other people +will take care of _them_selves if I take care of _my_self--and I'm going +to try." + +She was hurt on his behalf. "Oh, Thor, please don't say such things when +you're so--so noble." + +"I'm only saying them, Lois, to show you that I see what's been wrong +with me from the start. You've tried to say it yourself at times, only I +couldn't take it in. Do you remember the day in my office when you came +to tell me that"--he nerved himself to approach the subject with the +simple directness he knew she desired--"that Rosie had--?" + +She hastened to come to his aid. "Yes, but I didn't mean it in just that +way." + +"No; but I do. I mean it because I can look back and trace it as the +cause of all our disasters from--" + +"Oh, Thor!" she pleaded. + +He went on, steadily: "From the way in which I asked you to marry me +right up to what--to what happened about Claude." He was obliged to draw +a long, hard breath before saying more. "I was so determined that every +one else should be right that I didn't care how wrong _I_ was--which is +like handing out water from a poisoned well." + +She wished she could touch him, or slip her hand into his, by way of +comfort, but the distance between them was still too great. She could +only say: "That's putting it unjustly to yourself, Thor. If you've made +mistakes they've been splendid ones. They've been finer than the ways in +which most of us have been right." + +She thought he smiled. + +"Oh, I don't ask to be defended or explained. I only want to say that +from to-night onward I shall be starting on a new plan of life. I shall +be working from the inside, and not from the outside. If I'm to do +anything in this world, something must first be accomplished in me--and +I've got to begin." He turned from his contemplation of the dim, white +landscape to look down at her. "Will you help me? Will you show me how?" + +It seemed to her that without having moved she was somehow nearer to his +breast. She couldn't so much as glance up at him. She could hardly +speak. The words only trembled out as she said, "If I can, Thor dear." + +"You can," he said, simply, "because you know." + +She barely lifted her eyes. "Oh, do you think I do?" + +"You've got the secret of it. There _is_ a secret. I see that now--a +secret, just as there is to everything else that's worth learning." + +"Oh, Thor, you make me afraid--" + +"Through all these dreadful months," he pursued, tranquilly, "you've +kept us straight, and led us out, and raised us higher, not because +you're specially strong, Lois, or specially wise, but because--because +you've got some other quality. I want you to show me what it is, so that +I may have it, too. If I could get it--get just a little of it--it would +seem as if Claude hadn't--hadn't died in vain." She was now so near his +breast that he was obliged to bend his head in order to speak down to +her. "You wrote me last year that you were looking for a substitute for +love. Couldn't you find it in that?" + +She was so close to him that her cheek brushed the fur collar of his +coat, yet she managed to keep her mind clear and to control her voice so +as to ask the thing she most vitally needed to know. "And if I did, +Thor--if I _could_--what should you find it in?" + +"In adoration--for one thing," he said, simply. + +It was such happiness that she tore herself away from it. Advancing +swiftly over the light snow to a higher point of the summit, she stood +for a minute poised alone against the dark sky, crowned to his eyes with +a diadem of stars. Very slowly he strode after her, but even when he +reached her side it was only to slip his hand into hers and gaze outward +with her into the far, dim, restful spaces. + +It was she who spoke at last, timidly, and against rising tears. "Shall +we go home, Thor?" + +"I'm _at_ home," he said, quietly. But the quietness gave way suddenly +to fierceness, as little lightning flashes yield in a few seconds to the +violent magnificence of storm. Seizing her in his arms with a clasp that +would have been brutal if it had not been so sweet, he whispered, +"You're home to me, Lois--you're home to me." + +"And you're the whole wide world to me, Thor dear," she answered, +drawing his face downward. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Side Of The Angels, by Basil King + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS *** + +***** This file should be named 30301.txt or 30301.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/3/0/30301/ + +Produced by Chris Curnow, Michael, Mary Meehan and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +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. 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